Dark clouds loom over the horizon (Commentary)
The Independent <http://www.qanet.gm/Independent/independent.html>  (Banjul)
August 14, 2000
Banjul - 'It is better to guard speech than to guard wealth' - Lucianof
Samosata.
The reverberations of President Jammeh's recent speech to the APRC youth wing
when they called on him during the celebrations of the July 22nd coup are still
being felt in various sections of the community. While some people, particularly
civil servants, who have been among those directly threatened in his speech, are
quite worried about the consequences of the speech, there are many others who
see it as merely hot air coming from the mouth of an embattled party leader.
Whatever the case however, it would be foolhardy for anyone to outrightly
dismiss the seriousness of the threats to dismiss civil servants for merely not
supporting his regime, or even the threats of death to opponents of the regime.
There is absolutely no doubt that President Jammeh has a genuine wish to see
peace prevail in our sub-region and even beyond, but I sometimes wonder whether
he also realises that like charity, peace must begin at home. It is quite one
thing to lead peace caravans to Guinea-Bissau, Senegal/Mauritania and
Liberia/Sierra Leone, but it is no doubt much more important for him to promote
and maintain peace in his own country before he would earn the reputation as a
genuine peace maker.
Obviously, threatening to kill opponents of his regime and bury them 100 feet
deep is far beyond what anyone would expect from a democratically elected head
of state, particularly a self-appointed regional peace-maker. Indeed even his
apparent incitement of the over-zealous and mostly uneducated youth wing members
to take the law into their own hands and deal with opponents of the regime and
to also bring him names of any civil servants who harbour opposition sympathies
for immediate dismissal, is enough prescription for chaos and confusion in the
country.
Therefore, in view of the seriousness of the threatening remarks made by him, it
was very unfair for the director of press and public relations at State House to
castigate the local media for giving it prominence. As a seasoned journalist,
she should know that those threats of dismissals and death were the most
newsworthy aspects of the speech and any journalist worthy of his/her salt would
have treated them as such. She should have at least been honest and bold enough
to acknowledge that her boss has neither the constitutional power nor the moral
right to threaten to sack civil servants merely for opposing his regime as the
constitution guarantees everyone the right to support any party of their choice.
It therefore appears that both President Jammeh and some of this 'wailers' are
confusing the APRC as a political party and The Gambia as a state. Civil
servants and other public service employees are expected to be loyal to the
state but necessarily to the ruling party as the two are not the same.
It was indeed sad and a good indication of what this country has degenerated to,
when everyone heard the assistant commissioner of the Upper River Division
Momodou Soma Jobe not only threaten to sack civil servants in his division who
do not support the APRC, but even disclosed that he has already dismissed some
people and replaced them with members of the APRC youth wing. It is indeed worth
asking where we are really heading to with such a calibre of decision makers.
Now that these people have been given the carte blanche to not only report civil
servants who do not support the party, but even the power to dismiss those
within their domain, then we are beginning to see the end of the civil service
as we knew it this country and its replacement by a group of unskilled and
incompetent people whose only qualifications would be their blind loyalty to
President Jammeh and the ARPC.
That of course spells doom for this country because in the absence of
professional technocrats in the civil service, the country's slide to the
doldrums would be accelerated. In fact the civil service is now completely under
siege and civil servants are now left with no initiative of their own but
instead they now only wait for 'instructions from above' before they would take
any action.
There is no doubt that despite all the arbitrary sackings and unwarranted
threats, there are still some highly professional civil servants but because of
the volatility of the environment they are operating under, they now hardly
initiate anything new as they are virtually living on a day-to-day basis, always
expecting to be sacked on very flimsy reasons. 'Every morning when I get to my
office, I expect to find a termination letter because of the fact that even
politically appointed school drop-outs can initiate the sacking of a senior
civil servant,' remarked a sombre looking senior civil servant.

C

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