allAfrica.com: Gambia: 'I Am Not Running for a Second Term'

"I am not offering my self for a second term GPU presidency" Madi M.K.Ceesay.He said this at the Gambia Press Union congress held on Saturday the 22 March 2008. Ceesay said he has served GPU as Vice President for three years in the former executive and another three years as president 2005-8.

For me that is enough and that some other people should be given chance to contribute their quota to press development in the Gambia. His report to the congress is here reproduced unedited.

It is yet another very important day for the Gambia Press Union, the fifth congress. This is a time when members meet to take decisions in the interest of their union. The fact that in thirty years or so of the life of this union there has not come a time when congress is due it fails in its duties to hold one, is a clear manifestation that we at the Gambia Press Union valued the democratic principles.

That the union and its members are not mere preachers but do what they preach. I thank you all for that bold achievements. The GPU have managed to handle things in the past three years with much difficulty.

When this GPU executive came to office, one of our major problems was the environment we found ourselves. It was not an ideal one for any genuine journalists to operate. This was a time when our colleague Deyda Hydara Editor/publisher of the point newspaper was killed. That was coupled with some other arsenal attacks on the media and its persons.

There were many arrests of journalists in connection to their work as journalists. That has led to the fleeing of some journalists and in other cases media houses and institutions were closed down. Some media laws were also in places which make the work of the journalists' one of a difficult one.

What this executive did was to go in for capacity building a major tool for us to operate. As indicated in the Secretary General's report. We then conducted training and workshops for members just to brush the talents of the general membership.

This included the two election trainings. Still in the quest to build the capacity of the membership, The Gambia Press Union was able to collaborate with Gambia Media Support (GAMES) a Danish international NGO to come with a 1.2million dalasi project on capacity building. This will be a two year project and is already in progress. Where the GPU made not much progress, is the numerous cases of journalists being assaulted or have the houses closed down.

Here the GPU could do very little without the full participation of members themselves. Like the GPU do not own any newspaper or media house as a result it cannot take any legal actions on any cases like the unlawful closure of media houses. It is they themselves who should take such actions.

Like in the case of Citizen FM, the late proprietor Babucarr Gaye took his case to court. Another area that we did not achieve much is in the case of Deyda Hydara. Since the report was out, the GPU did express dissatisfaction about the report and urged government to involve external investigators if they feel the resource and manpower is not enough to handle the case.

We at the GPU said we have seen it in some countries where governments for resource constraints do invite external assistance.

However we were not able to convince government on that aspect. The GPU was able to convene an international conference in December 2005 to raise more awareness on press freedom issues by commemorate the one year anniversary of the killing of Deyda. The same magnitude was planned for 2006, but we could not. I only hope the next GPU executive will be able to do the same for 2008. December 2008 will mark three years since Hydara was gunned down by unknown killers.

Colleagues, there is ample need for the union and government to dialogue in order to forge ahead. I can assure you that some efforts were made in that regard but it is still full of constraints. Government must see the GPU as genuine partners otherwise the dialogue will continue to suffer. There cannot be any meaningful dialogue without going through our line ministry.

FINANCIAL REPORT

The Gambia Press Union is a non profit making organization and as a result it is not in any business. How ever we derive our income from membership dues, which is ten dalasi a month. Looking around this room how many of us are here?

If we all pay our dues regularly how much money is that? However regular pay of dues is not the case and yet the union has survive.

We have a regular staff of three to maintain. We have to pay our rent which thirty six thousand dalasi (D36, 000.00). This is what we are supposed to do to stay where we are. It was not easy at all. In some instances we have to go begging to get this obligations met.

The current executive saw the need to come up with an income generating project that should be able to take care of some of our over head cost. Like salaries, telephone bills, electricity bills, and office rent.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine

Relevant Links

Relevant Links

Gambia

at a Glance

Today's Most Active Stories