Kelvin Lewis
President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists says the courts have “conspired to make the Independent Media Commission (IMC) redundant.”
Presenting his organisation’s position paper to a sub-committee of the Constitutional Review Committee, Kelvin Lewis said “the IMC still has several cases before the courts, which challenge its very existence. Some of these cases have been in the courts for over five years without any decisive conclusion. This has put the IMC in a limbo...”
Lewis told the State Policy and Human Rights sub-committee that the IMC had largely succeeded in quickly resolving cases to the satisfaction of all sides but that “the snail pace of the courts has given the opportunity to mainly politicians to negatively use the courts to punish journalists even before the courts decide on their cases.”
He said “this happens when on the first appearance of the journalist in court, bail is most times refused, and the journalist is sent to jail mostly over the weekend which causes them to spend a minimum of three nights in the prison. After this the case is usually abandoned.”
Lewis told the committee that all media cases must first be heard by the IMC, with the possibility of the parties still going to court should they feel a need to.
“This would benefit the litigants in the first place because they would then pursue a less expensive resolution of their grievance within a short period of time; and it would benefit the journalists too because then the use of political power and connections in high places is limited.”
The SLAJ president repeated a long standing SLAJ demand that criminal and seditious libel provisions in part five of the Public Order Act of 1965 be repealed, paving the way for civil provisions of the same Act. He said “if the court fines a journalist and he cannot pay the fine, then that person becomes a debtor and as such is declared bankrupt...then that person can no longer practice a regulated profession and by virtue of the IMC Act, journalism is a regulated profession.”
Lewis told the sub-committee that media work in Sierra Leone was facing a lot of “negative perceptions” because “people very quickly forget the sacrifices we have made and which we continue to make for the survival of this nation.”
The sub-committee members welcomed SLAJ's position statement and suggested to Lewis that in seeking to influence constitutional review in the interest of his members, he should also consider reforming their own practice to address public concerns about media accountability.
The SLAJ team was also urged to make recommendations covering other aspects of the review process and not to solely concentrate on matters dealing with the media.
© Politico 02/12/14
