Dear Editor,
This remark by Dr Ismaila Ceesay is rather unfortunate. It does not reflect leadership and maturity and it is unbecoming of a public official especially at the level of the minister. Ismaila Ceesay needs to mellow down and realise that he is not supposed to be combating with his constituents.
The time has come for President Barrow to restrain Ismaila to humble down and demonstrate greater responsibility and be respectful of citizens. To claim there are media houses with two followers and two likes is not only factually incorrect but more seriously it is immature, unnecessary and insulting.
He cannot name such a single media house! What is the value of such a statement? What does he wish to achieve with such uncouth and false statements? I dare him name those media houses.
From a psychological standpoint, he is manifesting defeat at best and exposing his low self-esteem at worst. Otherwise why would he seek to discredit and misrepresent legitimate and formidable media houses in this country just because the GPU and journalists disagree with his position.
As a minister, Ismaila must recognise that he will be challenged, confronted, criticised, and condemned. Those days are over when public officials think that they can act with arrogance and insult citizens with impunity feeling that they are beyond scrutiny. Such attitudes ended on December 2, 2016 when we voted out the Tinpot Dictator.
In another country, Ismaila should be asked to resign forthwith because he has shown abundantly that he is not fit morally and professionally to handle public office.
While he claims to regulate social media to prevent disinformation, hate speech and insults yet he is the foremost public figure notorious for spewing disinformation, hate speech and insults. If anyone should be silenced therefore it should be Dr Ismaila Ceesay first!
Ismaila Ceesay is a tyrant in a tailored suit with a polished haircut and a silver tongue, but a tyrant nonetheless. Let him brace for confrontation. Conscious, patriotic Gambians will never again sit idle while an egotistical, selfish man inches our country toward dictatorship.
These obnoxious PURA media proposals are nothing but draconian and dangerous. They are totally unfit for a democratic society.
Defend the Repubslic.
For The Gambia Our Homeland
Madi Jobarteh
Kembujeh
The admirers of the dictator and their fear of the media
Dear Editor,
The Dictator ran with his tail between his legs! The dictatorship he left behind evolved, and through his admirers, it is rearming itself.
The admirers’ first target is the media, just as it was for the dictator they are dying to emulate. But with the eyes of the world on them, and seeing how the dictator ended up miserable in a faraway foreign land, condemned to an eternal vacation, the admirers want to employ sophistic regulations to control what is said about them. The dictator used regulations, spineless men and women, and guns to silence voices, but given the terrifying, irrational fear the admirers live with, they want to rely on obnoxious regulations to control what people can say about them, just as their hero did.
At the forefront of this misguided escapade against the media is an ignoble and spineless man who lost his marbles a long time ago and continues to mistake his cowardice for bravado, conflating service to the people with lording over them. We shall see whose father owns this country, he once challenged the people. You can’t help but feel sorry for such limp machismo. Someone once said that “the dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.” How poignant and profound.
You don’t need to be a Kianka expert to see that the dictator may be hibernating on an eternal vacation, but the spirit of his tyranny persists in the minds of those who think they lord over the people today. Apparently, the admirers who only wanted the dictator gone aspire to nothing but to be the “king” they thought the dictator was.
Alagie Barrow
USA
