I think arguing only the merits of the bids in the context of telcoms (a strategic/security issue) will only provide half the answers. The country is in political transition and headed into another election where the jury on peace is still out. In the last few weeks, I have noticed political bias starting to appear in TV coverage depending on the political affiliations of the owners. The media may forget itself again in the heat of the election competition and I would not be suprised if someone in govt. wants the power to switch stations off - the Chinese can do this but local media houses would find this unacceptable.

Hopefully, if media demonstrate maturity next year, govt. may cease to be concerned about who controls the signals.

Its not a nice picture for media freedoms or harnessing local capacity for that matter. But there may hard realities the govt. may need to be ready to deal with.

On the other hand, I may be entirely wrong and it may well be that the Chinese bribe was the biggest!..(another of our hard realities)

Wamuyu

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