Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung@ 40 in Ghana question of the media promoting the rights of workers but most importantly called for the reinstatement of some journalists who had been transferred to the Ministry of Information from their newspapers, an act that was seen as a form of intimidation and punishment. The years that followed, particularly the 10 years of another military rule from 1981 to 1991 marked some decline in the activities of the GJA and consequently relations with any major partners including the FES. But for the records relations between the GJA and FES picked up in 1988 when Edward Ameyibor was elected the President of the GJA. 1991 marked a crucial development in the relations between the FES and GJA when just on the eve of return to multiparty rule in Ghana the FES sponsored a major conference on the Media and Democracy which saw participants raising the clarion call for a more liberal media atmosphere. This conference coming after a long period of culture of silence beginning with the advent of the PNDC military government, the subsequent arrests and detention of journalists, the closure of the Free Press and the Catholic Standard and the passage of a Newspaper Licensing Law in 1989 opened the discourse and debate that influenced the far reaching provisions in the 1992 Constitution that entrenched press freedom in Ghana. It is also pertinent to mention here that from 1988 to 1992, during the Presidency of Edward Ameyibor, the FES and the GJA embarked on a massive educational programme through seminars, workshops and conferences that essentially aimed at improving and strengthening the professional competence and skill of Ghanaian journalists. These seminars also addressed the fundamental issue of media accountability. The seminars were not limited to only journalists in Accra but reached out to journalists in all the other nine regions. Seminars and workshops were rotated among the regional capitals. 37