Principles Out, Hypocrisy in (part One) The Independent (Banjul) EDITORIAL May 3, 2004 Posted to the web May 12, 2004 Banjul People shape their countries and the world by the keen edge of their perception. That is why it really cannot afford to be blunted. However, if in a country like Gambia where there is an almost pathological obsession with the keen appetite for the self more than a patriotic fervour with the nation one serve, perception especially where it has to deal with ethics does not matter to many people. Thus the bottom line is always underlined by some personal designs for self-aggrandisement. Once upon a time, a Gambian who had studied in the United States earned himself the robust reputation for being one of Jammeh's most formidable and stoic critics. He seemed a sweetly educated and morally upgraded gentleman who paraded himself all stuffed up to the throat with rigid principles and the moral scruples that promised to stand the test of time and which patriots could only crave for in a crisis-ridden administrative system such as the one we have in the Quadrangle. A seeming stickler for ethical principles it was inconceivable at the time to imagine that Dr. Amadou Janneh the new Information minister would ever toe the government line taking an inspiring cue from the hectoring criticisms he had written about its chequered leadership. It was excusable, even forgivable to believe that it was more possible for the mountain to go to Mohammed than for any such self-contradictory thing to happen. However today, we are being constrained to ask what had happened to all those ethical principles, all those stoically critical words deployed from Scattred Janneh's inexhaustible lexical arsenal dispatched to Gambian websites, accessible to millions of people around the world sending the regime to the pillory many a times for its supposed lack of ideas to run the country efficiently and progressively. What had happened to Scattred Janneh's feelings of profound remorse over the raw deal felt by the average Gambian in the street thanks to the pernicious cruelties of a situation blamed on an unfeeling regime? What had happened to his clear-eyed perception about the attitude of this government towards journalists, a perception fed in its erstwhile maturity by the fact that as a scholar of mass communication he had been an enlightened witness to the informed and symbiotic relationship between the American administration and journalists? Scattrel Janneh has raised eyebrows for all the wrong reasons, particularly considering the fact that all he has been saying about the regime had been generally true and that nothing in it had changed to warrant his sudden change of heart. We harbour no personal grudges against the personality involved. What provokes our miffed sense of demur is the principle behind it. There lies the problem. To shut out or shun the regime as if it were the proverbial leper only to reverse course and toe its line when nothing in it had changed for the positive defies the principles of moral adroitness and mocks our deep-seated belief in the reward for honesty and trustworthiness. At least accepting the post with some conditions geared towards righting some of the wrongs in the system would have helped preserve Minister Janneh's principles and protect his now glass-house image in the eyes of people au fait with his every word - past and present. Taking a cue from the fact that he had argued passionately for the media commission to be comprehensively reviewed and the climate of press freedom reinvented to suit journalists, one condition he could have put forth was for it to be scrapped, to make way for a freshly created controlling mechanism that strikes a chord with the constitution and guarantees the protection of journalists. He could have placed at the regime's feet a condition for the promulgation of a Freedom of Information Act, as a reliable safeguard for the climate of journalism to flourish in the country and allow the profitable use of divergent views to enrich our democracy and put members of the Fourth Estate in an unassailable position. Moreover, Decree 70/71, which since 1996 has been a silent but potentially dangerous nemesis for Gambian journalism needs to be quashed and we required his support to realise this. It is a screaming irony that Gambians no longer think it is fashionable to hold fast to ethical principles at a time when the country requires a culture of moral steadfastness to produce people with the right attitudes and the practical bent of mind to judiciously run its affairs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2004 The Independent. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~