The Great Question of the Day (part One)


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The Independent (Banjul)

EDITORIAL
May 14, 2004
Posted to the web May 18, 2004

Banjul

History is today's witness and posterity its judge. No fact luridly dressed up by the loaded details of the present crisis of constitutionality in The Gambia will ever escape the nimble grasp of moral and civil conscience. When accursed apostates of the written and spoken word depend on the mindless use of arbitrariness and unbridled power to destroy the media landscape, not giving two hoots about the ayes and nays of the manifold element or the bruising impact therein, the world should be compelled to listen and take note. The unscholarly and rabid fear of ideas, particularly those suggesting constructive dissent has rocked the inner circles of this warped establishment to such an extent that it finds itself moved more by an arbitrary desire to tame and tamper with the entire media to do its every bidding than by an honest commitment to the democratic sanctity and good values naturally handed down to us by the freedom to write or speak as one may. Without any demonstrated readiness
 to temper this brazen lust for peremptory control and influence with an ounce of honest reasoning, they have held the Gambian media hostage and they have betrayed the democratic agenda.

The media's trial for unfettered independence enters a crucial and decisive phase as the ridiculous deadline for journalists and media organisations to register with the media commission ticks unconcernedly away. It is a time bomb for not only the media, but for also those whose existence sanctioned it in the first place, the public who may be seeing the very last copies of newspapers they have been used to reading on their breakfast and work tables.
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For three years we have reasoned and wrestled with our conscience, for that number of years we have brainstormed among ourselves over the wisdom and moral justification for recognising and working with the media commission as an arbitrary controlling mechanism over journalists in the country. We can appropriately say we have seen no justification because there weren't any.
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Since the state is in the mood for nothing else but a blind and indecent haste to proceed with the commission, the great question of the day cannot be settled by mopping and mowing but by standing firmly behind our moral conviction, which is that the media commission reeks of unconstitutional illegality for all the ludicrous reasons, which go outrageously against the grain of constitutional provisions positive and explicit about the inalienability of freedom of expression and the irrepressible culture of a free press, hence our moral challenge of it in the corridors of justice. The state itself knows that the moral balance of scale in the protracted argumentative twists and turns either for or against the media commission is tipping in our favour thanks to the fact that this Frankenstein nemesis threatening to torn the media landscape apart represents a duplication of functions, simulating roles already played by institutions already in place to regulate the working of the media. It
 strikes no agreeable chord with our article of democratic faith.

Our pending challenge of the constitutionality of the commission automatically kills whatever arbitrary mandate is vested in the commission, rendering its authority null and non-binding. Until the courts decide we will hand ourselves the benefit of the doubt. It would not suit our purpose nor serve our common cause as journalists to register, because that very deplorable and unthinkable move can only always be translated as automatic recognition. There is always a lurking danger of compromising our case in the courts by dint of registering, suffice it to add that the mechanism against which we have gone too far in our opposition to ignore would have been easily handed the initiative to begin work in earnest. Technically recognising it would mean accepting its powers over us and all Gambian journalists should know what this means. The simple disarming fact is that we are not prepared to even faintly acknowledge the presence of something we don't recognise.




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