If there are two things that can be said of the evolving budget that is
currently before parliament, it is that it is terrible and it would pass. Is
there anything in it that is fundamentally in the interest of the Gambian
people? No. But again list members know it is a proposal put together by a
leader who has turned government into a cartel. His sole motivation is to
bleed this long suffering nation dry of it's meagre resources and hang it's
collective carcasses to dry in the sun. He has no qualms about appropriating
D60 million to the state house which he has effectively turned into a
bureaucratic miasma replete with courtiers dabbling into everything from
scholarships to government vehicle monitoring. Of the amount , over D3million
is slated to  be paid to him as perdiem in the ever-increasing  zero value
trips he makes  to attend parades and have tea with foreign leaders of no
consequence to Gambia. If incase you wonder where this staggering sum is
going to come from, it is going to mean even less money for very basic things
like hospitals and village clinics, education  and the rest of the
government. I lost a niece this past summer to malaria precisely because
Bansang hospital where tens of thousands of people from my part of the
country go is now a shell of a hospital with no medicine. Like my family ,
the people of our country are an expendable commodity when it conflicts the
self preservation instincts of the kinds of people that constitute this
government. For the most part they are criminals who are not the least bit
perturbed by the very glaring problems they are visiting on the people. There
is not a single line item on the budget that would benefit the very pressing
needs of the people of Ballanghar. But would Fafa Touray who purports to
represent them vote for it? You bet he would. These are not serious
legislators who are burdened by the need to even contemplate what is remotely
in the interest of their people. They have long ago settled into the status
of certifiable lackeys who would trade the lives and livelihoods of the very
people they are under oath to serve. They come , they sit and they cheer an
unelected speaker of the house as he presides over the chamber scrupulously
and shamelessly enforcing flawed and undemocratic parliamentary procedures
that is designed to stifle the few opposition members who actually want to do
good. It is just outrageous to hear the speaker who is not responsible to a
single voter or taxpayer since he was handpicked by the president  chide
lawmakers for objecting to the D60million allocation. Apparently he is a firm
believer that the cartel needs to be well funded with the sweat and blood of
our people .
The finance minister who had responsibilty for crafting the budget displayed
characteristic chutzpah that is the hallmark of this administration. No he
wouldn't answer questions about $52 million contracted from Taiwan. Yes the
president needs D60 million and infact the government would open three more
embassies even as the existing ones can hardly afford faxpaper. He lashed out
at a lawmaker who labelled his proposal as uninspiring challenging him to
produce figures. Well human and economic indicators point to the miserable
state in which people of Gambia find themselves in. Unless the minister is
interested in a tortured differentiation between misery and misery-lite , I
think his anger at the lawmaker was bogus and intended to mask  the utter
failure he embodies. He furthered his wrath on the business community  over
their legitimate complaint about a burdensome government regulation that they
believe hampers their business which accounts for the number one revenue
earner for the government. He retorted that they would have to endure the
regulation or leave. Leave and go where? These are citizens of the country
who worked hard and played by the rules to build successful businesses. At
the very least they ought to be nurtured to allow them to expand the vital
reexport trade. They certainly should not be hectored by a government whose
collective leadership could not make a success out of legume stall in Albert
market.

So the fiscal 2000 budget as the ones before it has everthing in it for Yahya
Jammeh and his cronies. The rest of the country would have to scavenge a
living and make up their mind as to how long they are prepared to accept
being wronged

Karamba

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------