Media boss joins list of sacked state officials

The director of the state-controlled Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS), Tombong Saidy, was sacked on Friday, GRTS announced at the weekend. It gave no reason for his removal from the post he had occupied since August 1997. Saidy, a former Gambian diplomat in Washington, joins a growing list of top-ranking officials who have lost their jobs since President Yahya Jammeh won a presidential election held on 18 October. Soon after his victory, Jammeh promised to cleanse his government of opposition sympathisers and inactive supporters of his ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC). The government's two female permanent secretaries, Therese Drammeh at the Ministry of Health and Fatou Jallow at foreign affairs, were sacked on 31 October for no official reason. Both their husbands are opposition activists. However, in a victory statement to the nation on 20 October, Jammeh had appealed to his political rivals and Gambians as a whole to put "the differences and misunderstandings of politics behind us" and join together as one nation to work with the government.