(JollofNews)- Dear Mr. Samba,
It is your own advice that you gave me in 2008 (on record) that I want to give you. When your mentee Yaya Jammeh refused to vacate State House, I also gave him his own advice to his friend Gadafy: “Go!”
In your own words in 2008 you advised me (and Jammeh!) that “The Daily Observer is going the wrong way”. I ignored you (so you might in return chose to ignore me!).
My advice is this: the Daily Observer is registered as newspaper and not an APRC-propaganda sheet. It may have been APRC-supporting, but it is not owned by the APRC and was not founded as the mouth-piece of the APRC (infact, the founder Mr. Best’s lawyers may soon be knocking on your door with a writ asserting that Mr. Best was unlawfully deported and deprived of his newspaper under duress!).
The Daily Observer’s current stance of covering and amplifying the disruptive utterances of Jammeh’s last “Information Minister” is not conducive to the peace and stability that The Gambia’s new democratic rulers – and the international community – seek to establish. Ex-Jammeh activists need to realise that Jammeh is gone forever, peace and democracy have returned to The Gambia, and stop fanning the flames of party-based sectarianism. Quite rightly, the Barrow-government and the police and the armed forces committed to peace will have none of it. The Daily Observer must not allow itself to be used by trouble-makers hankering for the days of the dictator.
As the owner/proprietor of the Daily Observer, you are responsible for what the Daily Observer puts out there (as you were responsible when I was the MD “going the wrong way”!). The fact that you may not have wanted to be “proprietor” and wanted your name removed from the bottom of the back page saying so is neither here nor there. The “registration” documents, if they exist, state that you are the “proprietor” and even if you “managed” it for Jammeh, legally you are responsible for the Daily Observer’s output of news/propaganda.
If registration documents now exist for the Daily Observer at the Registrar of Companies then I have no doubt that you would be listed as the “proprietor” of the Daily Observer. I say “if” because in 2008 we could not find the registration documents at the Registrar’s (when I challenged you on that, you are recorded as telling me the documents do exist and that I should “speak to Mrs. Jallow” at the Registrar’s). Clearly, if the registration documents do not exist, then Daily Observer newspaper is trading illegally and you as the “proprietor” are breaking the law.
Please advise your Daily Observer editors to stop amplifying APRC demagogues – and to support the peaceful and democratic aims of the new government that is overwhelming welcomed by Gambians and the international community as a breath of fresh air after 22-years of Jammeh’s “managed” tyranny.
Yours as always,
Dida Halake.
