“The order of the Minister of Communication is illegal”

The Ministry of Communication, Telecommunications and Digital (Mctn) announced in a press release that it will publish, by November 30 at the latest, the list of media recognized by the State. This initiative completes the process of registration of press companies undertaken by the supervisory authority and the subject of a decree taken on October 1.

If the president of the Council of Broadcasters and Press Publishers of Senegal (Cdeps), Mamadou Ibra Kane, considers that the text allows the implementation of a legal provision, he considers it “illegal” on one level. “The minister’s decree on the part concerning the validation of press companies is null and void,” asserts the boss of press bosses in an interview published this Thursday in L’Observateur.

Mamadou Ibra Kane explains: “An administrative authority will never give authorization to a press company to operate on the national territory. This does not fall within its competence and no administrative structure, whatever it may be, gives authorization to a press company. It is the desire of the entrepreneur to create his press company or to create his media without there being any authorization from the administrative authority.

The president of the Cdeps perceives in the supervisory initiative “an attempt to muzzle freedom of the press, but in reality, it will never succeed because it is not in accordance with the law”. Especially since, Kane supports, the press management will face it. “We are going to fight on the legal level,” he announces. We are not going to accept this failure to succeed. Because, when we violate the law, either out of ignorance or through the desire to impose our diktat on press companies, that is truly a crime in violation of the Constitution. And there, we are going to fight with all the means of law so that this crime does not happen.”

Mamadou Ibra Kane insisted: “Freedom of the press is a conquest of the Senegalese people which was materialized in the Constitution of 2000 and there is therefore no question that we can allow ourselves to be dispossessed of this fundamental freedom.”