Having let the legislation languish since 2006, which was the government’s last attempt at this, our parliament is proposing to push through the Tanzania Media Services Bill and the Access to Information Bill under a certificate of urgency sometime soon.

Let’s just leave it at “sometime soon” because making firm pronouncements about government schedules is a sure way to be proven wrong.

This is of course a very controversial business, with a fair chunk of the media fraternity naturally expressing alarm and deep misgivings about it. In the cheerleading seat, the virtually solitary voice of the Tanzania Journalists Association is excited to see the Bills passed for the good of the nation, or at least that’s how it got reported in some government paper or other. There is always one, you know?

After a gestation period of nine years, it does seem more than a little suspicious to pass such important Bills in a hurry. Journalists are a sensitive lot, highly strung and perpetually on the look out for precisely this kind of threat to their precious freedoms. Those Bills never had a chance of sneaking past them quietly.

Such a lost opportunity. The complicity of the media sorority and civil society could have easily been bought by oiling up this legislation early in the game. In a country that has privileged the politics of consensus over those of stupid brute confrontation, it just seems impolite not to finagle things in a much more decorous and Byzantine manner.

Downright insulting, to be honest, like not being offered a demi-tasse of superbly strong sweet black coffee before haggling over the price of whatever is being sold. What are we, heathens? Tsk.

The official line is that all “stakeholders” have been involved (read: maybe consulted) in crafting the two new pieces of legislation- which might explain why it’s taken so many years. And so whatever is barrelling down the pipeline is going to be pleasing to all parties.

Unfortunately, everybody knows that the political class would like to recover the ground it has lost due to media meddling. Too much gleeful reporting on various scandals, too much colluding with progressive elements of society, too much posing intelligent questions to leaders who are not always prepared to give lucid answers. Some especially rancorous folk even suggest that such a free media is a dangerous element in our society.

There is plenty of reason to suspect that it is not a good time for any politician to be voting on a media Bill. Far more sinister than the eternal struggle between the media and the politicians who love and hate it is the issue of access to information.

Isn’t the Access to Information Bill the one piece of legislation that should be widely disseminated to the public for their enlightenment before it goes to vote? Or would that be too, um, literal?

It may be that there is nothing wrong with these two pieces of legislation and everything right, but how would we know that? The problem here isn’t really the media, it is the people: Over the course of time we have lost our sweet and naive faith in the inherent goodness of our leaders and there’s nothing they can do about this. This is what happens when our public institutions neglect the unspoken rules of fair play.

Let’s just embrace, communally, a few tenets. Parliamentary procedures matter, and certificates of urgency or itchiness or whatever the heck it is should be saved for real emergencies like floods that leave people homeless. Freedom of information actually starts with telling people that you’re messing with their freedom of information.

Transparency is what we are talking about here, and please do excuse me for using that filthy, filthy T-word in public.

These two particular pieces of legislation should not be a minority issue that only a handful of professionally interested parties are struggling with. It is nonsensical to keep under wraps precisely those pieces of legislation that legislate against the ability to keep things under wraps.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]