PDOIS DESK OFFICER CLOSES CHAPTER ON WARITEH AND MATHEW

 

Dear Editor:

 

I am not sure whether Wariteh or Mathew would respond to my postings. However, I will not insist that they do. It is their prerogative to do as they wish.

 I only wish to thank you for your note and to assure you that you have not caused us any inconvenience by publishing divergent views. In fact, you have done us a great favour in doing so. It enables us to put our party’s principles, policies, programmes and practices to the test. This is what Democracy is all about. And we anticipate that we will be subjected to more tests in the future.

We hope that members of other parties will not only criticize in the abstract but would also indicate their own principles, policies, programmes and practices so that the Gambian people would be able to determine for themselves who can best guide the affairs of their country.

In order to close this chapter of the debate, I would like to make a minor observation for the benefit of Tijan.

In his reply to Wariteh and Karamba he mentioned, “PDOIS would set up a Government that would create its own tax revenue and stop borrowing from international organizations”. What PDOIS is saying is that there is need to generate revenue to be able to maintain schools, hospitals, and other public services. If PDOIS takes over it will be inheriting a country with a small private sector and a few workers who could pay income tax. This is not going to be sufficient to maintain public services, and as you have said, with the wasteful attitude of the Jawara Government of the past and the Jammeh Government of the present, the tax money becomes totally insufficient to meet public services. This is why they have been borrowing without any ability to pay.

What PDOIS is saying is that we will not rely only on that little tax base of the private sector but we will also manage and expand the productive public base so as to generate dividends from public Corporations to add to the tax revenue.

It will also ensure financial discipline to stop the type of wastage we see in public corporations giving donations for endless commemorations.

Now, if we can estimate the amount of financial resources to be generated by public corporations in five years, what stops PDOIS from borrowing from international financial institutions, money to build a strategic road, a solar or hydro- electric facility or a ship to ply the river or public buses or ferries and all other public productive ventures which can equally generate revenue with immediacy in one way or the other and even either open up the scale of economic activity like roads and generate revenue and services.

 

Secondly, if Tijan were to talk to each Gambian and ask them whether they want to be rich, very few would say that they are satisfied with having their needs. So there is really no quarrel with people having aspirations to be wealthy. The problem is that very few people can really be. If there is a system that can make everybody wealthy capitalists, then there would be no need to talk about a Government that would be sensitive to the plight of the poor and the marginalized.

In the Gambia, the governments which have existed so far could not even build a viable capitalist system where you have a large private sector which can provide employment to the largest number of people so that the few who may be left out could be protected through Social Welfare programmes.

They have not also built social Democratic countries where both the public and private sector provide employment to the vast majority of people and taxes are used to promote equal opportunity and reduce poverty.

One must also admit that this has not happened in Senegal. This is why we need a third option, which PDOIS is clearly trying to promote.

This option would require a development of a productive public sector, a productive private sector, a productive Cooperative sector and a productive informal sector.

The issue of collectivism that Karamba may have alluded to is one where peasants are forced to combine their land together and work as a collective against their will.

PDOIS has made it very clear since its inception that in the Gambia there are extended family farms, the kafoo farms and the community farms. In terms of marketing of produce, these farmers would form a nation-wide Cooperative Union which would be given all the capacity to purchase its storage and transportation facilities and the authority to negotiate prices and move produce for marketing.

Instead of mighty lands into foundations of heads of state, they will be kafoo and village farms geared towards the development of villagers and community gardens where individuals can work according to their capacities for their individual benefits.

Lastly, PDOIS is to inherit a country where there are no industries to produce machines and most of the things are consumed. The state will not be able to own land, which is the major means of production, and have no industries to nationalize even if it wanted to. Hence it cannot possibly be the importer of all goods and services nor its distribution even if it wanted to.

PDOIS has stated very clearly that what it can do is to provide an objective regularly framework and partnership with all economic actors, public, private, Cooperative and informal to ensure that all will work on the basis of the principle of people centred development.

We can only build the type of society, which we have materials for and the material that we have to build a new Gambian society is the one we will inherit from any existing government.

Our policies will explain exactly how we are going to regulate and forge these partnerships.

I would therefore call on Tijan to reach me via e-mil for further dialogue on PDOIS’ policies at: suwiboutouray@yahoo.com