Media practitioners have been urged to ‘work together to enhance democracy, good governance, stability and prosperity of the country’.
The call was made on Tuesday by Sam A. Rwakoojo, the Secretary of Electoral Commission (EC), on Tuesday during a meeting with members of Online Media Publishers Association (OMPA) in Kampala.
He also called on the publishers to support electoral road map for the 2021 elections to help in delivering a free and fair electoral process, saying the EC will engage with various stakeholders in the electoral process regularly.
“We have scheduled training workshops for the media personnel in order to equip them with knowledge of the electoral process to enable improvement in the area of election reporting,” Rwakoojo said.
“This is because we consider it very crucial for media practitioners to have deeper understanding of the roadmap and the processes involved, in order to ease your information and education functions.”
The EC is in advanced stages of preparations for the 2021 Presidential and General Elections, expected to cost about Shs868 billion.
The last general election in 2016 cost about Shs500 billion.
“The conduct of online media in particular on how it covers the elections and the role you play in keeping the country united during and after elections will be equally scrutinised – hence the importance of this meeting, to prepare ourselves and learn from one another on how to deliver credible service to the electorate,” Rwakoojo said before promising a clean polls.
“We count on you to project Uganda in a positive way, that is, as a people who are committed to peaceful electoral process.”
OMPA president Giles Muhame called for a portion of the EC budget be spent on advertisng with online news platforms since audiences are heavily moving online.
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