Foroyaa Newspaper

Issue No.80/2003 (20-22 October 2003)


Attempt to Burn Independent

At the time of going to press FOROYAA received reports of an attempt to burn
the premises of The Independent Newspaper. The attempt to commit the arson
reportedly took place on Friday, 17 October, at mid-night. Some young men
are reported to have approached the security guard at the entrance and asked
for matches. When he told them that he had none they engaged him in a
conversation. During the conversation one of the men sprayed him. As he was
struggling against its effect another hit him on the forehead with an iron
bar. They continued to beat him up. They also beat up the guard at the CCF
premises just nearby. They quickly disappeared when he started shouting.

The Independent guard reported the matter to Kairaba Police Station. He
contacted the headquarters of his employer, Uncle Sam Security. Another
guard replaced him.

Not long after his replacement a green Mitsubishi pick up without number
plate stopped in front of the premises and told the new guard that they are
police officers. They told him that his injured colleague was receiving
treatment at Bakau Health Centre and offered to transport him there. The new
guard boarded their vehicle and he was taken to Bakau Police Station where
he was forced out of the vehicle. They made a U-turn at this point. The new
guard rushed to The Independent where he found young men attempting to scale
the fence. When he shouted they ran away. They are believed to have sprayed
the windows and electric meter before attempting to set the office ablaze.
An empty gallon containing petrol was found on the roof. He sought
assistance and they were able to put off the fire.

There was a similar attack against Radio 1 FM Station before. The matter was
reported to the police but the culprits are yet to be traced. Mr D.A. Jawo,
GPU Chairperson has expressed dissatisfaction with the slow reaction of the
police after the complaint was made by the guard at The Independent.

Foroyaa Newspaper

Issue No.81/2003 (23-26 October 2003)

EDITORIAL

"OPERATION NO COMPROMISE" UNDERMINING INVESTMENT AND DONOR CONFIDENCE


Two fundamental errors are undermining the progress of the country under the
APRC Regime. First and foremost, the behaviour of few tycoons who think that
they can use the guise of patriotism and nationalism to build commercial,
financial, agricultural, industrial and service empires by exploiting their
proximity to political power. Their rivalry with other stakeholders will
ultimately lead to expenses that would undermine investor and donor
confidence. Foroyaa has repeatedly emphasized that The Gambia is a dependent
economy, which relies on grants and loans to finance the development
projects of the country. In short, over 90% of our development budget for
2003 comes from loans, grants and Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
Initiative. The country is very vulnerable to donor apathy.

All Gambians would want to have control over our economic affairs. This must
come through genuine policies not through conspiracy schemes, which are
ultimately designed to enrich few tycoons.

On the other hand, "Operation No Compromise" has unleashed a regime of
impunity. Reports have it that farmers in Sara Ngai were searched and their
CFA seized. The same goes for leading business tycoons. The government
cannot import the goods needed because of the state of its foreign reserves
and its huge indebtedness.

The danger is that such tycoons may refuse to utilize their external bank
accounts to order goods for fear that when they spend their foreign exchange
to purchase goods they would only be left with Dalasis after sale.

It is very clear that foreign exchange is very difficult to get from the
banking system even though the President claims that all foreign money
should head towards the banks. As it stands all the small investors are in a
state of limbo and the economy is being reduced in volumes of economic
transaction by the day. The President should be told that "Operation No
Compromise" is leading to investor and donor vote of no confidence on the
regime.

HALIFA’S LETTER TO PRESIDENT JAMMEH ON SECURITY MATTERS

"Vehicles without Number Plates"


Mr. President, it is the duty of a State to safeguard the security of its
citizens. This should be done without fear or favour, affection or illwill.

The violent attack on a Security Guard who was simply assigned the
responsibility of ensuring the security of the office of The Independent
Newspaper and the attempt to commit arson against the premises are clear
indications of the extent to which lack of respect for the law and state’s
disregard for human decency can go. The Security Guard is simply trying to
earn an income. He is not associated with the views expressed by the paper
in anyway. The assault causing bodily harm is a manifestation of senseless
violence.

The purpose of conveying this letter to you is to draw your attention to the
evidence provided that a vehicle without a number plate enabled the culprits
to move about and escape capture.

It is therefore absolutely essential for the state to intervene to stop such
a practice without equivocation.

There is no justification for any vehicle to ply the road without a number
plate. This can only promote the culture of impunity. Once a person drives a
vehicle without a number one is given the aura of supremacy to act without
regard for the law.

Mr. President, impunity abounds everywhere and is undermining national
stability and economic prosperity. It is therefore absolutely essential for
you government to give immediate instruction for all vehicles without number
plates to be parked or given numbers.

If the practice is not put to a halt it would be necessary to expose your
government to be aiding and abetting terrorist tactics. This will certainly
not speak well for the country.

Let me conclude by indicating that authority that is not retained by just
laws must head towards tyranny. Such authority is not suitable for a
Republic where sovereignty belongs to the people. An unchecked and
unrestrained authority can only sow the seed of its own destruction. Time
has come for you to take stock of your policies. 2003 is not 1994, times
have changed, and people have become mature. They cannot live on hope alone.
You claim that you will take the country back to the 1994 years. Let me
emphasize that those who try to live in the past are like the man in the old
fable who slept for 20 years only to wake up to find that the world has left
him behind. Those who live in the past are asleep. They cannot be conscious
to the demands of the time. Those who look at the present alone become
myopic. They would think that things would remain the same in the next 50 or
million years. This shortsightedness does not give rise to proper
understanding of the needs and aspir! ations of the people. Those who live
only in the future are dreamers. They continue to promise that things would
get better while implementing policies that make things worse.

What Gambia needs is a leadership which is awake to its past, present and
future; a leadership which makes objective assessment of the realities of
the country and makes realistic policies to address them.

Security is a priority. If is your duty to prevent this nation from building
up a culture of violence and revenge. This is what gave rise to all war torn
countries.

It is hoped that you will discharge your responsibility in urging action to
arrest the culprits who attacked the Guard of The Independent and put a stop
to Operation of Vehicles with Number Plates.

Foroyaa Newspaper

Issue No.82/2003 (27-29 October 2003)

EDITORIAL

THE GOVERNMENT DESERVES A VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE

In any country where Parliament is composed of truly independent
representatives of the people the current government of the Gambia would
have received a Vote of No Confidence. The reason for this is simple.

The primary responsibility of a President is to establish departments of
states to address the economic, health, educational and other needs of the
people and appoint secretaries of state who would exercise direction and
control over such departments of state.

The constitution has made it categorically clear under section 72(1) that
the secretaries of state should be technically or professionally competent
to fulfil their mandate. The relevant portion reads:

"The Vice President and Secretaries of State shall be responsible for such
Departments of State or other business of the Government as the President
may assign to them. In making such assignments, the President shall have
regard to the desirability of ensuring that such responsibilities are
entrusted to competent persons with relevant qualifications or experience".

At this very moment there is no Attorney General and Secretary of State for
Justice. It has been over a month since the office became vacant. It
manifests a gross lack of confidence in the government for the office to be
vacant for so long. This is one part. Needless to say, in a matter of a
month the President has reshuffled his Cabinet in a most incomprehensible
manner. How on earth can one justify the removal of Bakary Njie from
Information and Communication and his replacement with Yankuba Touray. Even
though, we strongly opposed Bakary in his callous remarks against Citizen FM
and his support for the Original Text of the Media Commission Bill, there is
absolutely no doubt that he has a better professional qualification to head
the Department of State for Information, Communication than Yankuba Touray.
It is equally incomprehensible why the President would remove Momodou Sallah
in the name of using his iron broom only to! have him appointed to head
Tourism and Culture. This confirms that the President does not consider
grounds for removing Secretaries of State from office. He does this
according to his whims and designs.

This erratic way of removing and appointing Secretaries of State is
unreasonable and unjustifiable in a democratic society. Such behaviour
cannot earn one public confidence.

Suffice it to say the adventurist economic policies and measures of the
government has alienated many economic operators without achieving the aim
of the reduction of prices of basic commodities on a sustainable basis or
the reversal of the exchange rates of the Dollar below the 30 Dalasis mark.
"Operation No Compromise" simply reveals the personalization of power by the
President, but it’s adverse to economic prosperity and the wellbeing of the
people.

CABINET RESHUFFLE AGAIN!!


The iron broom is sweeping again. On Wednesday 22nd October, the President
moved Yankuba Touray from the portfolio of Secretary of State for Tourism
and Culture to the portfolio of Secretary of State for Information,
Communication and Technology. The former Secretary of State for Trade who
was swept with the iron broom earlier on is now reappointed to run the
Department of State for Tourism and Culture. It is of course only in Fairy
Tales that Iron Brooms can be used to sweep. May be this is why the
President claims that he is engaged in a cleaning up exercise which, is
simply an exercise in futility.

STATE OF THE GAMBIAN ECONOMY

CONCLUSION

One thing that should become apparent to all is that the Gambian economy is
in transition. Neither the state nor the private sector is an optimum
economic operator. This is confirmed by the fact that the formal sector,
both public and private employs only 11% of the labour force. Small scale
farm holdings and small-scale production predominates in agriculture.
Exploitation of pricing systems after the establishment of producer prices
keeps many small-scale vendors in the marketing sector. The informal sector
therefore is the engine of sustainability of the current state of our
economic life.

As an informal sector economy government must adopt a production base system
of regulation of the economy and not a command type system of regulation as
currently exist under the APRC regime due to gross lack of understanding of
the nature of the economic fundamentals of the Gambian economy by the head
of state. A production base system of regulation would require the
government to study the output in both the formal and informal sector of the
economy and promote their expansion. The expansion of output would provide
the basis to generate revenue to maintain and expand health, education and
other services.

In short, expansion of output can lead to expansion in the volume of exports
and the generation of foreign exchange. The increase in supply of foreign
exchange would enable the Dalasi not to depreciate in value. On the other
hand if output is not expanded and foreign exchange not generated in
abundance to meet the demand there would be scramble for scarce foreign
exchange, which would put pressure on the Dalasi to depreciate in relation
to other foreign currencies.

In the same vein, without expansion of output government’s revenue base is
reduced. It is left with the option of squeezing money from overtaxed
productive sectors and make them less viable or resort to borrowing, which
is a way of suspending the imposition of harsher conditions of taxation.
This is the dilemma of the Gambian economy. The regime has spent 9 years
without concentrating on how to expand output in all the productive sectors
of the economy, generate foreign currencies through exports of goods and
sale of services and promote interaction between Gambian economic operators
with consumers from other countries. Consequently Gambians are high degree
consumers of foreign goods and services.

What the Government did wrong

First and foremost, the government paid lip service to the off repeated
dictum that "the private sector is the engine of growth". The private sector
is of course the sector with its own capital base for investment. The fact
of the matter is that those with capital to develop a private sector have
specialized in mainly commercial activities. They have invested very little
in agro-business and manufacturing. They have not done much in the area of
exports. They have largely concentrated on imports since their imports far
exceeds the earning capacity of the country from exports they have developed
their own machinery for cross border trade to continue their business.
Unless the government can provide an alternative arrangement it would err in
policy to create an environment that would incapacitate such operators from
having subregional hubs to carry out their economic activities by using CFA
as a medium of exchange.

Secondly, in the area of agriculture government has been accusing farmers of
being lazy. The fact of the matter is that the problem of Gambian
agriculture has been more of marketing than output. Over the years the
production of groundnuts had exceeded what the marketing sector could
purchase.

In the absence of significant local private sector participation in the
purchase of groundnuts the farmers have had to cross the border to sell
their nuts in Senegal. This enabled them to get CFA and bring it to the
Gambia to purchase goods, which are cheaper in the country. Now, government
agents are up country searching and seizing CFA currencies. Needless to say
many small-scale vendors attend marketing days in certain regions of Senegal
to sell their goods to earn CFA. This they bring back to the Gambia to
spend. Government must not stifle these activities until it can provide an
alternative. So far it has miserably failed to find an alternative.

In short, when the AFPRC regime took over it misdirected the resources of
public corporations and gave the impression that it was going to develop the
Cooperative Union to lead in purchasing nuts and then imports essential
commodities for sale at regulated prices and this compel the local importers
to follow suit in prize stabilization. The consequences of the exercise is
gross mismanagement of the financial resources and assets of the union to
the point to driving it into bankruptcy. It closed with a deficit of 183
Million Dalasis. This deprived the government of an instrument for
regulating prices through competition and not through executive commands.

It goes without saying that economic adventurism led the government to
promise to subsidize the prices of nuts purchased by GGC when it failed to
deliver its undertaking GGC vacated at seized properties and government
ended up paying 11.4 Million Dollars in compensation. It is the government
that has abused its opportunities and thus restricted the foreign exchange
earning capacity of the agricultural sector.

The government continued to waste the potential of the public enterprises
for productive investments while the private sector received very little
capital from the banking systems to invest.

To be continued.

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