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Momodou
Denmark
11705 Posts |
 Posted - 22 Oct 2007 : 22:08:54
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FOCUS ON POLITICS
THE 1987 SUPPLEMENTARY REGISTRATION;
PDOIS CLASH WITH PPP AGENTS
We have been focusing on politics in this column. We have traced the political history of the Gambia from Pre-Colonial to Post Independence era. The narration of events is meant to help the youngsters to know the past so as to understand the present in order to enable them shape the future.
In the last issue we have dwelt into issues raised by a political party (PDOIS) in the first ever-National Education Conference. We have stopped where we said Mr. Araba Bah replaced Mr. M.E Jallow as leader of The Gambia Workers Union and was subsequently appointed by the President as a nominated member to the House of Parliament. We then asked whether he would be able to genuinely serve trade union interest in the house even where it conflicts with government interest.
Let us continue from where we stopped.
The 1980s were the painful years not only for the ordinary Gambians but even so for elites. Despite these difficult times, there remained some genuine elites who refused to run or hide from the difficulties and stood their ground and tried to participate in the democratic struggle by establishing progressive newspapers with a view to help enlighten the masses and enable them take positive decisions. But this did not happen without a price.
In their bid to organize to get some recognition and protection from the state, the independent press in The Gambia struggled for almost four years between 1983 to 1987 to have what they called “A National Press Council” but their struggles bore naught. This was why at a Press Conference held with the President at State House, Mr. Dixon Colley, editor of the Nation told Sir Dawda that they the Press had been clamoring for the state to pioneer a National Press Council since 1983 but as he said nothing tangible has happened since then, eventhough he told him, “you have always promised to look into it.”
In hisreaction, the president called on the new Minister of Information to address the problem.
It was in this light that the new Minister Lamin Nafa Saho, met the Local Press on Friday the 8 of July 1987 to discuss the proposed National Press Council (NPC). In that meeting, the following people who mattered were invited; Mr. M.L Auber, the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Saja Taal, the Under Secretary and Mr. Marcel Thomasi, Director of Information and Broadcasting. The minister after his welcoming remarks delved into the purpose of the meeting and quoted the question raised by editor Dixon Colley of the Nation Newspaper and the president’s response to that question. The minister said after thinking about the matter, he had new ideas, which he said he wanted to experiment with. He however admitted, according to reports that he was a layman in media affairs and that he was subjected to correction. He again emphasized that the need to establish a press council was indeed felt.
Mr. A.A Njai, Secretary to the study group elected by the Gambia Press Union and the department reported that he had informed the outgoing minister and even wrote two reminders to keep the issue continuously alive but as he said there has not been any response. According to reports, as the discussion ensued the minister proposed that a seminar be organised at the end of which NPC maybe established.
This, the reports said was unanimously accepted by all and sundry.
According to the Nation, Pap Saine of Reuters also suggested that lawyers and writers be invited for their resourcefulness. This suggestion too was accepted by all except Dr. Taal, the under Secretary at the ministry but according to Dixon Colley, that was not a problem. The problem was that the under Secretary intervened
in such an outburst that could be described as “uncontrolled” emotion. The reaction of Mr. Colley in the Nation report showed how hysterical he was about the whole thing. So what did the under Secretary said that created such rancor amongst media practitioners?
Dr. Taal, according to reports said he could not take the issue seriously because as he said, the Gambian press was full of “untrained” “unorganized” and “unprofessional” journalists. Mr. Taal described certain pressmen as disc jockeys and others as the “devils” advocate’, and so on and so forth. Dixon who later responded to the under Secretary’s out bursts in the Nation described the action as immature sentimentalities; that Taal should know when and where to display it and of course to whom. Dixon fired back and said, he was surprised by the behavior since Mr. Taal was a public administrator who claimed to have been a trained journalist and who was one of the fierciest, radical and most importantly critics of the regime during his Kent street Vour days. He expressed surprise that Taal was now operator of a system he used to detest and denounce so savagely. He asked whether this was not a disappointment to the minister. He also urged Secretary General Langley to speak to Taal to avert future embarrassments to the Government in the future and so on and so forth.
Many journalists at the time felt that the regime was not serious about creating National Press Council; that the true feeling of the state was in fact coming through an Under Secretary that the meeting was just a smokescreen. Many wondered why highly certified intellectuals act in ways that do not serve the interest of the people but appeared to favour the state.
An African historian Paul Tiyambe Zeleza who studied the predicament of the African intellectual at the time described the period in his book “Manufacturing African Studies” as thus, “The economic crises that hit many African countries from the mid 1980s further compounded the problems of intellectual production and reproduction, that the social sector targeted for retrenchment by the structural adjustment programmes SAPs ostensibly adopted to rectify the crises, had affected education and intellectuals in general, forcing many intellectuals to resort to what he described as moon lighting, or sought to exercise their entrepreneurial skills in the nebulous world of the “informal” sector whilst others tried to endear themselves to the state for lucrative appointment.”
PDOIS COMMENCES RESEARCH ON REGISTRATION
Supplementary Registration of voters took place throughout the country in late 1987. The PDOIS, which had as its agenda to research into the electoral system bought caloi bicycles for its militants to monitor the registration. They took the task never to miss any single day of registration. So each registration team had a monitor attached to it. The team in Banjul was the first to discover the tactic of the PPP agents in their attempt to dominate the registration process.
The First Encounter
The PDOIS militants insisted that election officers follow the instructions of the supervisor of elections, which was a requirement by the election Act. It was also a requirement of the Act for the supervisor of elections to enforce on the part of all registration officers “fairness, impartiality and compliance with
the provisions of the election Act.
The PDOIS militants claimed that they have discovered that PPP agents were the ones issuing claim forms which they said was the responsibility expressedly assigned to registration officers by rule 2 paragraph (3) which stated that “the registration officer shall on application supply a form of claim free of charge to a claimant.
The PDOIS executive said they wrote numerous petitions to the supervisor of elections and contacted the deputy for redress without delay. All administrative channels they said had been exhausted to no avail. These petitions were made public by publishing them in Newspapers as open letters to the supervisor of elections without any reaction. The PPP Agents led by Pesseh Njie insisted that it was a custom for their party militants to issue claim forms and they were only out to help people to register. They however insisted that it was the law that should prevail not tradition.
When the struggle intensified, the PPP Agents who had no moral strength to hang on to decided to place their tables adjacent to the registering officers so that claimants would think that the PPP agents were one and the same with the registering team. The PDOIS claimed that that was sending a wrong impression to the masses that everything was under PPP control. Secondly failure to go to the PPP table could give an indication of how the person intended to vote, which could lead to victimization. They argued that the arrangement nullified the climate of impartiality, which would characterize the election process from registration to the declaration of results. The PDOIS claimed that the practice undermined the very principle of free and fair elections; that it must cease.
As the tension increased, it was a big surprise to find that the PPP agents began to hide forms under their tables. This was the time it became clear that the PPP’s Election machine had its foundation in the crude registration system, the Foroyaa commented.
It was at this time that a clandestine publication was discovered in circulation against PDOIS captioned “A Banjul Political Observer writes to enlighten public on PDOIS.”
Source: Foroyaa Newspaper Burning Issue
Issue No.124/2007, 22 – 23 October, 2007
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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