The Vice President of Uganda Law Society (ULS), Pheona Nabaasa-Wall, has said that there is no law that says that politicians should be first vetted before being hosted on the television or radio station as directed by police.
She made the comments shortly after the force directed media houses especially the radio and television stations across the country to notify police commanders within their areas of operations about their late night shows that might require their guests to move beyond curfew hours.
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According to police, media houses will be required to write to their area police stations indicating the guests to be hosted, where they stay, the routes they will be using while returning home after the talk shows and the time the programs will start and end.
But Nabaasa said everything that police is doing should be within the law noting that the issues of Covid-19 and what it has done to the electoral process leaves a lot of sensitivity and room for abuse if the force is not very careful.
"So we have to be deliberate in ensuring accessibility for everyone, equal opportunity for everybody. So there is no law that provides for the people that are going to appear on radio or television station to be vetted,"she said during an interview.
Nabaasa said the legitimacy of the elections will affected if police happens to deny people free access to the media .
"Right now since we are protecting people from Covid-19, the only thing available is the media whether electronic or print. If you deny these people, it means you are pushing them against the wall and that means that there is issue of legitimacy in this election,"she said.
She said as Uganda Law Society, they won't allow this kind of injustice to carry on especially during this period as the country heads to the 2021 polls.
