The Jammeh administration agrees to dismantle regulatory body that has staged independent media against the government for past two years. On 21 October, Gambias Council of Ministers made the decision to revoke the controversial National Media Commission Act, which was passed in 2002. The move indicates a step towards reconciliation between the independent media and President Yahya Jammehs administration and, if passed in parliament at the end of the month, a new era for press freedom in the West African country.

The national media laws have been very controversial from the beginning. People found some of the provisions unacceptable. We found the best thing to do is to remove all of those provisions, and the president gave the green light to go ahead and do this, said Dr. Amadou Janneh, Gambias Minister for Information and Communication, to RAP 21.

The legislation also created a media regulatory body with jurisdiction over complaints against journalists, and required journalists and media organizations to register with the Commission for one-year renewable licenses. These provisions were created with fierce opposition from Gambias private press, prompting legal action by a coalition of private media.

In 2003 the Gambia Press Union and the private newspapers The Point, News and Reports, and The Independent, filed a suit in the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of the Act, and in particular, that of the Media Commission.

Alagi Yorro Jarrow, managing editor of The Independent, welcomes the news but says that another factor could have motivated this shift in policy: The Supreme Court will issue a decision on 15 November concerning the constitutionality of the Act.

Irrespective of the motivation behind the Jammeh administrations change of heart, both the government and the media agree that the move is a good one for government-media relations in Gambia.

This was a very good move toward reconciliation between private media and the government. The media commission was one of the worse media laws on the continent. This is a surprise, definitely. It seems the government wants to change its attitude toward the media, says Jallow.

Minister Janneh adds: This has been viewed as the beginning of better relations between the government and the media. The president sent out press reports to the media community in support of the revoking of the Act. Not just the government media but the independent ones, to say this is the beginning of a new era, to say lets work together to operate more like a democratic society. Now the best way forward is to repeal the entire Act.