President Adama Barrow and Musa Sheriff CEO Voice Newspaper
By Madi Jobarteh
I hereby condemn in the strongest terms the baseless and cowardly threat directed at Musa Sheriff and his newspaper, The Voice by none other than the President Adama Barrow through his lawyers.
The Voice Newspaper has a right to write about the public and private life of the President simply because he is the President. If the President does not want his public and private life to be discussed he should refrain from being a President. https://www.voicegambia.com/2024/09/23/barrow-chooses-muhammed-jah-as-successor-as-pres-works-on-exit-plan-sources/
As a President, it is citizens who cater for his public and private welfare hence the media has a right to scrutinize his life to report it for public consumption, without injuring his human dignity.
The Constitution has given a right and duty to the media to hold the Government accountable on behalf of the people. This constitutional duty includes holding public officials such as the President accountable. The tenure of the President is a legitimate public matter that deserves to be reported by the media for the public.
Therefore, the story that The Voice newspaper published about the President’s successor is not a defamatory story nor is it malicious. The newspaper relied on sources to report the story. Some of these sources are top members of the NPP and surrogates of Pres. Barrow who vehemently denied the story.
If the President is disturbed by or dislikes the story, he has uncountable ways to refute it. But he has no basis to sue the newspaper. Whoever told him to take this intolerant action has severely ill-advised him which has put the Office of the President into disrepute.
Public officials must know that they cannot hold public office and want to control the opinions of the media and citizens about them. If they do not wish to be scrutinized, discussed and pointed at, rightly or wrongly, then let them resign. Simple.
Therefore I hereby condemn the President for this action which tantamount to intimidation and violation of the freedom of the media which is guaranteed by the Constitution.
I call on the GPU to strongly protest this ill-advised, baseless and undemocratic action which is nothing but a threat against the media.
I call on all citizens to stand in solidarity with The Voice newspaper and its editor Musa Sheriff. This threat from the President is dictatorial and a severe violation of the Constitution for which I call on National Assembly Members to take action against the President.
If the President could threaten the media for their coverage of him then it means the President is denying the media from performing its constitutional duty to hold him accountable hence the President is raising himself above accountability to the Gambian people.
I urge Musa Sheriff not to retract nor apologize for the story and stand ready to go to court. I shall stand with you on every court day.
For The Gambia 🇬🇲 Our Homeland