At a time when governments of the US and North Korea are engaged in high level diplomatic release of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling by President Clinton, an African president is spiraling down the same road, in the opposite direction. Even the most repressive of regimes and reclusive of persons (Kim Jong Il) today understand press freedoms, pardons and what it takes to maintain global peace in a global world and its associated politics but an obscure and myopic president as Mr. Jammeh plunges the opposite pathway in an archaic, unpopular and totally unnecessary fashion.

He has just convicted six (6) Gambian journalists on six (6) counts of
defamation and sedition using archaic defamation laws, wrongly interpreted and ruled against unfair and biased legal practices.

It is this same person that has continued to remain silent on the disappeared journalist, Chief Manneh whom his security agents had held; and has raised no finger in the case of the Deyda Hydara murder within a state he governs.

He has openly defied the ruling of the ECOWAS court on the Manneh disappearance, an indictment on the court and the ECOWAS system which he and ECOWAS leaders all signed up to.

In a day when press freedom and democracy walk hand in hand, what is the Jammeh administration saying to its people, the regional economic commission, the African Union and the international community?

Another sad case of an African president waiting to go down.