Photo: Maxime Le Hégarat/IRIN

Safaricom, Kenya's leading mobile communications provider, has said all political messages sent via SMS will be vetted to ensure they are free of hate speech (file photo).

Any text message by a political party will have to be vetted and approved by the NCIC and mobile phone operators before it is disseminated.

The new guidelines by CCK makes it mandatory for political parties to present the intended text message to the cohesion commission 48 hours before, and also mandates the commission and mobile phone operators to disregard it if it is defamatory, abusive or likely to disrupt peace.

• Comment
•  

Copyright © 2012 The Star. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 130 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.