Media endorsement of party and political candidates

The request took me back to October 14, 2005, when Mmegi newspaper ran a screaming headline “endorsing” opposition leader Otsweletse Moupo over Robert Masitara in a tightly contested G-West North Parliamentary constituency by-election.

The newspaper maintained that the other candidate was a rape accused and that the ruling party had increasingly betrayed intolerance to dissent. By voting Moupo, the paper argued, the opposition’s voice in Parliament would be strengthened and the public would have an opportunity to gauge his performance as the nation’s alternative president.