
“GHAMRO is a result of a conflict resolution…it was borne out of a conflict. There is nowhere in the world that a collective society like GHAMRO has a board,” Carlos Sakyi stressed.
According to him, in most similar societies in other parts of the world, there are elected representatives from all stakeholders in that industry, but because GHAMRO came as result of a peace move it is made up of identified organizations who have been made part of the peace movement.
“It is an interim board but it is a board with all the powers to run the body because if you go through the constitution which was used to set up GHARMRO, the transitional provision states clearly and there is a process that we will have to go through before an election can be held, however they have all the powers to run the body”.
Rex Omar conceded that it was because of the many conflicts plaguing the industry that compelled the various groupings to come together to form GHAMRO. He, however stressed that “in any part of this world, one belongs to a collective society by assigning rights. Collective societies are not formed with organizations”.
He explained that if any renowned musician like him or other musicians with numerous hit songs do not assign their rights to GHAMRO they have no business with GHAMRO even though they are musicians.
“We are speaking to all Ghanaians therefore we need to do things for all to better appreciate and understand. GHAMRO takes its powers from the members and the members have not gone for elections to elect anybody, they are an Interim body. So any time Carlos speaks, he should address it as interim so that it is clear to everybody that it is an interim board”.
The two kept arguing back and forth, and unsurprisingly tempers went an octave higher resulting in the exchange of vituperative language.
When call for calm heads fail to prevail, the host had no choice than to stop the discussion and open the phone lines for listeners to air their contributions.
Music Producer and a member of the Interim GHAMRO Board, Mark Okraku Mantey, later came in to condemn both of them for washing their dirty linens in public describing their behavior as unfortunate and uncalled for.
To him, that was not the right platform to discuss such matters since the board will be meeting for the first time after the issuance of the certificate to the group, where all pertinent issues could be resolved.
Eventually, Carlos apologized to listeners and asked them to forgive him if he said anything offensive, adding that he believes all what happened was for the good of the music industry so that musicians and all stakeholders will be okay.
“This has been my only interest in fighting this battle for the past twelve years,” he said.
Rex Omar, on his part, said he was not invited to launch an attack on anyone but to express his opinion and urged the media to open their eyes and follow issues about GHAMRO very closely and always report the truth.