By Amran Gaye
I don’t know who this Sankareh guy is writing press releases for the State House, but he really needs to be replaced. Even apart from the amateurish writing and terrible proofreading, this continuously petty, whining and defanteh tone is not fit to be the voice of our Government. I’ve also noticed that he has a very narrow and simplistic view of what democracy is – you can see it in the half-baked arguments he makes as he tries to defend Barrow’s actions.
I finally had enough today after seeing this latest press release claiming that what the president said about “no political activity” was “exaggerated”, while also threatening (I don’t know what else to call it) that the president would silence people who use “insults and foul language” by working with the National Assembly to draft laws against such words.
Meaning of course that Sankareh and his boss get to choose what constitutes “insults and foul language”. Imagine an NPP rally where someone is insulting UDP or PDOIS – you really think they will be stopped or arrested under these new laws? Meanwhile imagine it happening in the opposite direction, with someone being vehemently critical of NPP at an opposition rally or even online. What do you think will happen then? That’s ALL these kinds of laws are for. They come wrapped in sanctimonious prose about “being civil to each other” etc. But it has nothing to do with that – all it is is giving the incumbent the power of censorship, and therefore the power to control the conversation. These same laws are present in every single dictatorship on earth.
What it comes down to daal is this: We are ADULTS we do not need the government to regulate what we can and cannot say; we don’t need Barrow or any president to approve our words before we are allowed to speak them; he is not our parent or guardian. It is long past time we move past this nonsense of thinking of our leaders as elders we cannot speak honestly with or challenge. We literally elect these people and are paying for their salaries, feeding, housing, travel – every single thing.
Barrow, Sankareh, and everyone else who works under him are our public SERVANTS not our masters. I think Sankareh and Barrow himself would do well to remember this, as they seem to have forgotten as he becomes more comfortable with power.
We chased out one dictator, we’re not going to watch a new one build himself up before our eyes. VOTE WISELY IN DECEMBER. That is the only way out of this.
