Ministry fine tunes election airtime for opposition

The Information, Communications and Culture Ministry is fine-tuning several matters regarding airtime for the opposition during the next general election, Deputy Minister Datuk Joseph Salang said Monday.

He said consideration would be given to the distribution of time and opportunity between the ruling and opposition parties.

"The opposition has the right for airtime, but we want to know which manifesto they will use. Is it from the three parties of the opposition pact? What about the other parties? We must also look into how to distribute the airtime. Should it be according to the percentage of seats in the Dewan Rakyat?

"Such matters need to be reviewed before we announce how the airtime is to be divided for them to promote their party manifesto," he told reporters after opening an international conference on broadcast training, here.

On another matter, he said the various challenges had to be taken into account before digital High Definition TV (HDTV) was widely used.

"As we know, the use of HDTV is becoming more popular now but there are challenges we must face, for example, in terms of unstable power supply in the rural areas," he added.