Saul,
    you've got the wrong pic here. I sympathise with the Independent team and
they have my moral support in their quest to be heard fairly before the law
on whatever charges the authorities choose to bring forth.
    However, unlike you and the rest, I didn't choose knee jerk anti
Jammehism to judge what is at hand. It has to be said that the heavy
handedness that was said to be meted out to the Independent team ought to be
condemned in the loudest of all terms by all of us concerned. If I was not
noisy enough about that then my apologies. But I make no apologies for taking
the Independent team to task on what their priorities should be, how
misplaced their priorities were and how this could have been avoided. This is
the second time I have had to read stories in the Independent that reek of
avalanche journalism. One there was the case of the 5000 or so Senegalese
soldiers that they claimed were trooped near our borders. Even though the
story claimed no-one is confirming the story. Do you need the confirmation of
5000 troops near your country's border? Isn't that obvious if it ever were
there? And then this totally unnecessary story of Jammeh's "third wife."
    A sense of fair play dictates that we say it as it is with the
Independent team. It is our duty to speak up where things go amiss. Well, at
least for those who have a conscience. And Saul I do have a conscience. My
conscience dictates that I say to the Independent squarely in the face that
their travails was partly of their own making. And I make no apologies for
this Saul.
    By the way would it change anything if I tell you that Baba Galleh was
one of the first to push and coach me into doing more writing and eventually
the first Gambian editor to publish my stories. The least I could do for him
is speak my mind as it is.
Good Day.
Hamjatta Kanteh

hkanteh

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