'Gambia’s Ruling APRC Contemplates One party state'

Alleges Gambian journalist

By Abdoukarim Sanneh. London. UK.

The fragmentation of the opposition parties on the basis of nationalist tribal politics, and the selfish individualist ambition of power struggle for leadership, continue to put The Gambia on the map of African nation-states starved of political change, crying out for a functioning democracy and rule of law. With the decline of the opposition parties, our country is now virtually a one party state, and news coming out of Banjul but not officially confirmed by the regime, indicates that clandestine discussions are taking place within some elements of the ruling APRC dominated parliament to amend the Constitution by a referendum to a one party state.

Since 1994, the political terrain in The Gambia has transitioned from one form of coup d’état to another. These astonishingly overwhelm our elite politicians who construct their political debate by quoting section after section of the bogus philistine 1996 Constitution, as if the regime was operating within the context of the legal framework of constitutional democracy.

Yahya Jammeh’s driven agenda is to build a capitalist enterprise called a nation-state in The Gambia. Not content with criminalising our nation in his pursuit for wealth and material power, siphoning our national coffers, with his mentally sick brain and weak heart, he is ready to use the force of absolute power, even if this causes the country to break into civil conflict. Since 1996, there has been a continual manipulation of the Constitution to entrench and consolidate Jammeh’s dictatorship. The only change between military rule and a cosmetic constitutional democracy was that Jammeh’s APRC party deleted the letter F from the original AFPRC junta, but his absolute power and dictatorial tendencies still continue to worsen.

The 1996 Constitution has been subjected to numerous bogus amendments being rubber stamped by parliamentarians most of whom do not even possess a School Leaving Certificate and so cannot determinate the legal implications of their actions. For many of these people, being an MP is the only means and end to their lives. Many could never have hoped to attain such privilege positions in The Gambia if the rules were based upon educational background, skills and experience, and a democratic culture free of manipulation.

The first manipulation of the 1996 Constitution was when the majority decision of limiting the presidency’s term, which most citizens advocated for during the National Consultative Review process and the review of the 1970 Constitution, was deleted in the final draft. The Constitution as a sacred document was subject to discussion when there was a ban on all political parties. It was therefore, crafted to indemnify members of the Armed Force Provisional Ruling Council (the brutal junta that seized power on July 22, 1994) in the name of crimes committed for our so-called freedom /liberation.

The removal of trial by jury, the amendment of the provision on the Local Government Clause, which gave the dictator the power to hire and fire Divisional Governors, elected Councilors, District Chiefs and Village Heads (Alkalolu) at will, was the handy work of our so-called legislators. They went to the extent of empowering the Head of State to even be sacking and removing the head of the IEC-Independent Electoral Commission and, within these past 14 years, The Gambia has seen the sacking and hiring of 4 Commissioners of the IEC. It is these legal loopholes, which continue to undermine the conduct of free and fair elections in our country. Now, given that the crack headed, paranoid, mentally sick Head of State knows that the threat of prosecution is looming over his fat head on numerous accounts of human rights violations and crimes against humanity he has committed, he turns his professional sycophants towards lobbying to save his backside. Knowing their track record, the rubber-stamp parliamentarians will do his bidding, but it is the referendum, which is the main determinant for the genesis of The Gambia into a one party state because of its mechanism as an entrenched clause in the Constitution.

Some of the dazzling characteristics of Yahya Jammeh, known by every Gambian, are that he is a manipulative, egoistic, divisive liar with blood on his hands. Jammeh has sown the seeds of the destruction of our nation, and it is about time for Gambians to be mature and forget about silly nationalist tribal party politics. The priority is to remove this monstrous autocratic regime whose only aim is a strategy of disorder to make the impossible, possible. During these 14 years, we have seen how Yahya Jammeh has built up his own personal fortune by looting our national coffers, and using the national institutions for his money making business ventures in the true leadership style of a melancholic character. Gambians should not be surprised by his present move towards a one party state. The 1996 Constitution is designed to entrench dictatorial powers using the APRC parliamentary majority in regimented acts of excessive orderliness.

The Gambian Constitution has suffered numerous amendments by rubber-stamping parliamentarians, the vast majority of whom are APPRC whose political maturity is called into question. This bunch of nonentities and political prosecutors would even sacrifice their own children without even thinking about it only to gain political power and position. They never consider what their role and function is to the citizens they are supposed to serve. They allow their arms to be twisted in the name of loyalty to a party with an archaic authoritarian leader. They continue to pass bill after bill leading to the enactment of laws, which allow for the abuse of power, retard civil liberties and act as a barrier to functional democracy. For 14 years now, every move of the rubber-stamping parliament has been motivated by greed, egoism and systematic selfishness, the totality of which has destroyed the fabric of Gambian society.

The deficit of the 1996 Constitution is so complex that it requires serious scholarly research by students of constitutional jurisprudence to unravel. The first violation to signal to the Gambian people that the Constitution would not be respected after soldiers civilianised it, was the provision of constituency demarcation. In his pursuit to strengthen his tribal/regional politics, Yahya Jammeh’s regime re-demarcated the Foni Constituency, contrary to what was stipulated in the Constitution, giving Foni more representation than Kombo North, Central and South, each with a higher number of voter population than Foni. The regime also prevailed on its majority in parliament to amend section 63(2), which dealt with the possibility of a second round of voting.

The enactment of military decrees and the imposition of such decrees as statuary codes, which are never put to scrutiny, also undermine functional democracy in The Gambia. The 1996 Constitution legalises most military decrees as binding statuary codes without giving lawmakers the chance to scrutinise their suitability in a democratic environment. Three General Elections were conducted, all administered by military decrees. In most of these elections, when the rules of fair level playing fields or electoral malpractices are challenged by the opposition parties in the High Court, judgments are always given in favour of the regime, mostly based on technicalities arising from loopholes in the drafting of the decree which make them open to abuse in favour of the incumbent. It is also the electorate which gave the dictator absolute power to appoint and sack members of the Commission.

The enactment of decrees 70 and 71 and their replacement with the Media Commission Act was all part of the efforts of the criminal regime to curtail press freedom. The enactment of the decree in 1996 imposed heavy fines on media houses involving astronomical sums of money and thus led to a news blackout for weeks. In July 2002 came the draconian Media Commission Act, which was strongly opposed by The Gambia Press Union. This act was challenged with a lawsuit in the Supreme Court on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. The Commission, which was composed of non-journalists, drew up a code of conduct for media houses, giving themselves the power to dictate what media houses should and not do. Journalists should reveal their sources and their stories, so that arrest warrants could be issued. When the court ruled the act as unconstitutional, the criminal regime used the rubber-stamping parliament to enact the Newspaper Amendment Act and the Criminal Code Amendment Act 2006, which have reduced all of the country’s media houses to self-censorship because of its repressive nature.

On Local Government matters, efforts to decentralize local government was seen by the regime as a threat, because it lead to some local government authorities being dominated by an opposition party. Divisions are now called Regions and Commissioners are now called Governors, who are civil servants who also become involved in the machination process of rural folks. Campaigning on APRC party platforms and intimidating rural folks to vote for the APRC was added to their job description. The only qualification for a District Chief is to be strong APRC militant, and any district chief suspected of supporting or sympathizing with the opposition is sacked, and then detained for days on end by the most notorious and feared NIA-National Intelligence Agency.

The case of my former Muslim High School teacher, Pa Sallah Jeng, is a clear-cut example. Mr. Jeng, who returned to The Gambia after completing graduate work in the USA, was a well-known role model and highly principled fellow in The Gambia, and he was elected as Mayor of Banjul on an independent party ticket. This gentleman of the highest order became a victim of character assassination by an element of the Banjul APRC sycophancy. He was not allowed to serve his term in office and was charged with corruption, which was thrown out of the High Court, but was never allowed to resume duties, even after the Court ruled in his favour. Today, Jeng has returned to the States adding the abhorring statistics of West Africa’s brain drain.

The recent news about the suspension of Hon. Baba Daffeh, the UDP Member of Parliament for Kiang West Constituency, for challenging the autocratic policies of Yahya Jammeh, just makes me wonder whether the Honourable Speaker, my one time good friend at the Daily Observer, Fatoumata Jahumpa Ceesay, is not suffering from hemianopia. Madam Jahumpa’s apparent incompetence and disturbing utterances are not a surprise to many of us who knew her. She is nothing but a loud official who trades on the name of her late father as if it was an intellectual property right to lobby for power.

The removal of Yahya Jammeh is the only way to build a sustainable democracy in our country, where every citizen will be treated equally, but the disunity within the opposition has made this course of action further remote. Their indecisiveness and seeming indifference to the plight of the Gambian people and their wishful thinking, ignorance, and lack of patriotism is questionable in this state of prevailing madness. Jammeh’s dictatorial rule is so entrenched that NOW is time for ideas for the way forward. We should act NOW before it is too late!