We are still shocked and feel overawed by a statement made by President Ernest Bai Koroma last month that the HONEYMOON with journalists was or would soon be over.
Was there no irony lost in the president that he was making such a statement at an Open Government Initiative programme and that one of the cardinal principles of open governance is journalists’ ability to have unfettered access to information and to practice their trade without being intimidated by no less a person than the elected President of a country?
Whatever the honeymoon between the media and the presidency/government we are not aware of. Even if it had existed that was not because of the magnanimity of the president nor should it end at his say-so.
This is the press Ernest Koroma basked in to rise to the top. This is the media he courted and endeared himself to. If for any reason he thinks he is losing that media charm offensive, we doubt he is, he should always remember that we are all here to do a job and no one should intimidate the other from doing theirs.
Does the president need reminding that journalists in this country have survived stormier weathers? If he does, he should consider the following: We have survived a brutal civil war of boundless cruelty. We mobilised the nation in 1995 and 1996 to get rid of the NPRC military junta and to let them turn out and vote to be able to do so. We mobilised the nation to the first and second Bintumani conferences to challenge the junta to hold elections as planned and hand over to a civilian government no later than March 1996. This country’s journalists have put their lives on the line to resist the AFRC military butchery. We exposed the ineptitude and corrupt practice of the SLPP administration. So nothing will take the minds of journalists off doing what is right for this country even in the face of the unprecedented threats and smearing enterprise of the present APC administration.
We will stay the course and we will prevail.
