I finally found time to read the stuff Gassama sent us the other day from
Yaya’s website. At first I thought I was reading something from the ‘Jawara
website’ because the Paper seems to indicate that our economy was doing
great until Yaya stole power in 1994. According to Famara Jatta (Yaya’s
Finance Minister) “The Government of the Gambia,
embarked on an Economic Recovery Program in 1985/86 entailing the
elimination of exchange rate and other price distortions, assigning a
greater role for the private sector, rolling back the frontiers of the state
and creating a conducive environment for the long term growth of the private
sector and elimination of subsidies.

As a result of these policy measures, economic performance IMPROVED. The
Gross Domestic Product GREW by an average of 4.4% per annum, the overall
DEFICIT DECLINED from 17% of GDP in 1987/88 to 4% in 1991/92, INFLATION
DECLINED from a record high of 70% in 1985/86 to 5% in 1990/91.

In addition, the Program for Sustained Development (PSD) was introduced in
1990 with the objective of CONSOLIDATING the GAINS of the adjustment
process. The main thrust of this program constituted the following:

-Promotion of the private sector as the engine of growth;

-Divestiture of public enterprises;

-Rationalization of custom tariffs; and,

-Streamlining of the tax system.” Emphasis mine.

Now, this is using APRC’s own document. Does this strike some one as an
economy in chaos that needed High School drop outs to rescue it? Pay good
attention to the objectives of the PSD. Now revisit our arguments with Kebba
Jobe when we told him that the government he supports is good at nothing but
stealing ideas from the old regime. Now, let APRC show us how ‘Vision 2020’
is significantly different from plans already drawn by the Jawara regime. I
said here before that the very first budget these bandits passed, was a
replica of the budget BB Darbo left behind when he fled the country. We do
NOT need these bandits and their corruption and callousness to just come in,
steal ideas from PPP and take us backwards to the old order.

All we have is less-than-competent civil servants implementing stolen ideas
from PPP. Moreover, these civil servants are NOT free to think straight.
They have callous morons like Yaya, Yankuba Touray and Baabaa Jobe breathing
down their necks. To show how incompetent servants such as Famara Jatta are,
let us revisit further his utterances. When one looks at the paragraph
captioned ‘The Transition Era’, one realizes that what wrecked our country’s
economy was the 1994 illegal take-over and NOTHING else. Jatta talked about
the border closures and the devaluation of the CFA merely to provide a
smokescreen and deflect attention from the REAL PROBLEM; i.e. the bandits
that stole power from a democratically elected government.

The closing of the border and the CFA devaluation only impacted the
re-export trade (according to Jatta). In the seven years the bandits have
been in power, how did they alleviate this problem? What good is a strong
CFA (restoration of our comparative advantage) and an open border with
Senegal to us with the wars in the sub-region? I would be interested in
seeing Famara Jatta’s figures regarding the decline of the re-export trade
BEFORE 1994. I know I do NOT need figures to say that to my knowledge the
re-export trade was still thriving up to 1994. I still remember how trucks
lined up at Picton Street. I still remember how busy our port was.

The truth of the matter is, when these bandits took over, they attracted
SANCTIONS. Famara Jatta proves my point when he said that “The take-over
brought about the suspension of and balance of payment support, the
withdrawal of development assistance (by 50%), a downturn in the tourism
sector (by 70%) and contraction of private sector activity.” Do people
notice how Famara Jatta gave us tangible figures here? Development
assistance down by 50%. Tourism down by a colossal 70%. It is telling that
we do NOT have figures about how the devaluation of the CFA and the closure
of the border affected our re-export trade. This is just a smokescreen.

Moving on. Now that their ‘coup’ has wrecked our economy by making Gambians
poorer, let us examine what they are going to do to alleviate the poverty
and what their targets are for the country. According to their own figures,
our GDP growth rate went down thanks to the ‘coup’. According to their
figures again, inflation went up to 7% thanks to the ‘coup’. According to
famara Jatta, “poverty (measured by both income and non-income indicators)
has risen from 31% of the population to 62% between 1991 and 1998.” In other
words, whichever way you slice it, our people have moved from the frying pan
to the fire.

The mental midgets deciphered that “The main objective of a succession of
Development plans has been to enhance the income of the farming community
(the largest in The Gambia) and to provide basic social services to rural
areas that comprised 80-85% of the population”, yet they CANNOT even ensure
that our farmers sell their goods at competitive rates. What is going on
here is that we have a government that does NOT have the wherewithal or the
integrity to tackle difficult problems facing the most vulnerable in our
society (the poor farmers). Yaya and his cohorts have failed the Gambian
people on this (economic) front as well.

What did they do to move Gambians forward? They borrowed millions of dollars
from Taiwan. Stole the bulk of the money to open Swiss Bank accounts. Use
the rest to engage in some projects that looks good on Yaya and his gang,
but that failed to lift our people up. We had a ‘Poverty Alleviation
Program’ that rendered our people POORER.

When one looks at this government’s objectives, one sees them trying to
achieve what the Jawara regime was giving us in 1994. They want to go back
to square one. Did we pay with our children’s lives so that this callous
government can “achieve real GDP growth of 5 percent a year”? That is what
Famara Jatta says they want to achieve. Do we have to burden generations of
Gambian yet unborn with Taiwan debts in order to “Keep gross official
reserves above the equivalent to five months of imports”? When Jawara was
there, we had Reserves that provided for nine months ‘imports cover’. Famara
Jatta is aiming for five months. Talk about ALES.

These morons CANNOT take the country forward. As we said before, the reality
of the matter is (a staggering) 90% of our ‘Poverty Alleviation Program’ is
funded from loans and grants from our development partners. What we need is
a government populated with real heavyweights that can draw comprehensive
development plans for the country. We do NOT need a government where Baabaa
Jobe (UN sanctioned criminal) is a top official. We do NOT need a government
where morons like Sedat Jobe go around alienating our development partners.
We do NOT need a government headed by vermin like Yaya going around
attracting sanctions to our country. We need a democratically elected
government that is respected worldwide, with leaders that can attract
meaningful development to the country. We do NOT need a government that gets
loans from nations like Taiwan just to steal the money to put it in private
bank accounts. To turn around this economy and help our farmers, we need
people with vision and the freedom and the integrity to implement plans that
will help our farmers sell their goods. We need peace and the restoration of
law and order in the country so that the tourists will come back. We need to
help stop the war in Casamance and restore meaningful bilateral relations
with our neighbors in the sub-region. In short, we need to do a lot of
things that Yaya and his inept servants like Famara Jatta CANNOT do in a
million years.
KB


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