Concord Times (Freetown)
Alhaji Jalloh
19 November 2008
interview
Some people have often tapped my back as a budding journalist who has a sensitive nose for locating prominent personalities in society. That compliment was showered on me after I had located both former and current ministers over the last thirteen months.
The trend continued with locating some of the aspirants contending for key positions in the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), including the positions of president, vice president and secretary general.
One thing I have observed over the years is that, journalists love to interview people but most of them - excluding me - hate to be interviewed by colleague journalists. I was shocked with trepidation when a colleague journalist who wanted to be at the helm of SLAJ affairs turned me down for an interview.
The immediate outgoing SLAJ Acting President Philip Neville had agreed to grant me an interview but all of a sudden, he declined to talk to me last Friday when I rang him up. Hear us: "Mr. Neville, do you want me to come over for the interview now?" I enquired. "Jalloh, I don't want any interview from you now. All I need from you is your vote," Mr. Neville replied.
"But I have booked an appointment with those you are contending against and I don't want to talk to them without talking to you," I insisted. "Jalloh, I have told you what I want from you. As I am talking to you, I am on my way to the provinces to campaign," Neville added. I then decided not to force him.
On my way to see another aspirant for an interview, I saw Mr. Neville in his black coloured V-Boot Mercedez Benz along Goderich Street in Central Freetown probably heading for the provinces. As I said earlier that I'm one of the journalists who never run away from interviews, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Awareness Times Newspaper, Ms. Sylvia Blyden, and the Editor-In-Chief of the New Jersey based online paper, Cocorioko, Kabbs Kanu, and many more can testify that I am always ready to grant interviews. When news of my appointment as Information Attaché to Saudi Arabia was announced whilst I was in the United States, Ms. Blyden from Freetown and Mr. Kanu from Sommerset, New Jersey, rang me up for interviews.
I indeed talked to them. I'm wondering why people who want to head public institutions always shy away from talking to the public.
Though not an innuendo to my long time friend, Philip Neville, we expect people running for public offices to always get themselves prepared to prove to the public that they worth their salt. By and large, all other aspirants running for the said key positions in SLAJ, including Ibrahim Karim Sei, Umaru Fofana, Theo Nicol - who is fighting his petition- Abdul Rahman Swarray, Jonathan Leigh, Mustapha Sesay and David Tam Baryoh, agreed to grant me interview before the elections on 29th November.
I must confess that the Director of C-Met and Citizen Radio F.M.103.7, David Tam Baryoh, who is a very senior journalist in this country and author of two books, really impressed me for being the first contestant I interviewed despite he was the last person I informed about the interview. Any way, read in my next issue an exclusive interview with Abdul Rahman Swarray running for the second position in SLAJ. Below are excerpts of my interview with David Tam-Baryoh:
Alhaji Jalloh (AJ) -Mr. Tam Baryoh, your late declaration to contest for the Secretary General position during the SLAJ elections slated for 29th November comes as a surprise to many journalist colleagues, especially after one or two colleagues had long declared their intentions to run for the same office. What are your chances of winning the elections?
David Tam Baryoh - (DTB) I am going to win. I am winning because I am the better of the two candidates. I have the educational and professional background it takes to lead our Association in these trying times. My opponent knows he has no chance. My declaration was a surprise to many of my colleagues as they expected me to go for the presidency. Only for me going in for the secretary generalship, our Association could have fallen into bad and wealth-seeking hands that have come into SLAJ to chop project funds.
You've already presented your dream team and you have appealed to colleagues to vote for the team members for the respective executive positions. Don't you think your bias will militate against your chances of winning over colleagues who are opposed to your choices?
I am indeed the brain behind the dream team and I have no regrets. You see, over the last six months, some of the SLAJ executive members, especially the holy alliance between Mr. Ibrahim Karim Sei and Mustapha Sesay; have been very unfair to the rest of SLAJ membership. These two created SLAJ within SLAJ. They were running workshops and taking decisions without the consent and approval of the rest of the remaining executive. The Vice President, Mr. Philip Neville, was marginalized. To defeat 'clanism' and selfish introspection they had instituted in SLAJ, we must disband that clique of theirs. So my dream team is a proactive team that will stop Karim Sei and Mustapha Sesay from taking SLAJ to the gallows. And to finally forestall their veil plans for SLAJ, I have presented a team for the consideration of the rest of the serious section of SLAJ...that serious section, to which Mr. Karim Sei and Mustapha Sesay do not belong.
You were Secretary General of SLAJ in 1997 before resigning for another engagement elsewhere in the sub-region. Why are you going for the same position instead of the Presidency? Don't you think you should have done what the immediate past Secretary General - Ibrahim Karim Sei has done, running for the presidency after two terms as SLAJ scribe?
I asked Mr. Philip Neville to contest for the presidency, so how can I contest against my own candidate? I did not want to contest for the secretary generalship until I discovered that Mustapha Sesay, the wrong candidate as that, was almost going to win un-opposed. I am in this race to rescue SLAJ Secretariat from Mustapha's unprofessional and ill advised grip. I resigned in 1997 because there is no room for dead democrats. I needed to excuse the AFRC so as to be useful to the greater society of Sierra Leone today, not just journalism. Which journalist in my position in 1997, under the AFRC would not have done what I did? Namely; leaving the stage for machete-wielding killers for nine months!
What were your achievements as Secretary General, though you served for a limited period?
During my short stay in office before the AFRC forced me out of the country, I put $21,000 into the pockets of some 133 Sierra Leonean journalists. I was a fore-runner in the fight to achieve the Independent Media Commission Bill. President Kabbah was just about to sign the bad Press Bill, and Olu Gordon, Frank Kposowa and I were helpful in forestalling that signing until AFRC struck. During the war, I was correspondent to Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) and I highlighted the ills committed against fellow journalists. My less than six months in office was traumatic courtesy of the excruciating suffering journalists went through during the rebel war.
Many people say the Harry Yansanneh case is no longer pursued like before. If elected, do you intend to collaborate with the Association to pursue it?
No. That case is being pursued. It's only the Attorney General's office that's delaying us. You know politicians. It will be pursued with much vigor with me as Secretary General and Philip Neville as head of our Association.
As a senior journalist, what do you know about the ongoing case between SLAJ and the Government of Sierra Leone over the 1965 Public Order Act (POA)? Is it dying like the Harry Yansanneh case?
If my colleagues had followed my advice at the Bo SLAJ convention, we would have been far gone with the case of the 1965 POA, now in the Supreme Court. I advised that we push President Ernest Bai Koroma, to make good his election promise to the Sierra Leonean journalists. I advised that we as SLAJ can only ask the first gentleman of the state to do just what he said he would do, namely; to help Parliament to remove certain sections of the POA, with special reference to Section 33. But the greater majority at that Bo convention voted for court action. Now see where we are. When you ask President Koroma now to help fulfill his promise, he will say, like President Tejan Kabbah used to say when we asked him to drop the Paul Kamara case, I AM CONSTRAINED. The case is in court and I don't want to be accused of meddling into judicial matters. However, when we take over, come first week in December, I will advocate a new approach which I am not at liberty now to discuss.
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