Hi folks,
My sincere apology for the original mubo jumbo. I sent the wrong post while
I was in a haste to watch the Tyson/Bombardier wrestle in Dakar and relayed
life on GRTS.
Thanks Yus for bring it to my attention. The following is what I meant to
send and the draft I was workinng on.
Have a good day, Gassa.
Folks,
As we try to digest the 2003 budget speech of SOS Jatta and reflect on the
situation of the country, I would like to give my own perspective of the
situation we are in.
To do that, I would like to first remind the list of the change in the
political landscape of the country and an attempt to explain how we are in
the state we find ourselves.
To reflect on how politics have changed over the years, I would like to
reproduce a portion of a FOROYAA publication of June 6 – 9, 2002 entitled:
FOROYAA Burning Issue - NO: 32/2002 6 - 9 June 2002. This article gave
an analysis of the political landscape of the country and how things stood
around the time the article was written. Of course things did not remain
static but changed drastically.
First, there was the rancour within the UDP, followed by the
split/expulsion from the party, of their former propaganda secretary that
led to the birth of NDAM. The future of the PPP still remains uncertain
months after the formal retirement of ex-president Jawara from the party.
He has since then announced that he would like to spend his retirement as a
private citizen, giving lectures at the University of The Gambia and to
advise President Jammeh whenever his advise is sought or needed. Please
read on.
THE CHANGING FACE OF POLITICS IN THE GAMBIA _ From Foroyaa
“The face of politics in the Gambia is changing since the presidential
elections of October 2001. It is important for the Gambian people to keep
track of the developments.
First and foremost, it is important to find out what has happened to the
parties of the first Republic, which came into existence after the demise
of the PPA of the late Sherif Sisay and the United Party of the late P.S
Njie. The NCP of Mr. Sheriff Dibba and the NLP of Mr. Cheyassin Secka were
the first to come up in the 1970s. The GPP of Mr. Assan Musa Camara, PDOIS
and PDP of Dr. Bolong Bojang came up in the 1980s. During the 1992
presidential elections the PPP, NCP, GPP, PDOIS and PDP put up presidential
candidates. In 1994 there was a coup d'etat, political authorities were
banned. Attempts to defy the ban led to the arrest of members of the PDOIS
leadership. Before the 1996 elections the ban was lifted only for PDOIS and
PDP. The regime claimed that the parties, which were banned, took part in
the destruction of the country. These parties claimed that the regime was
afraid of their popularity and influence in the country. This gave rise to
political tension. New political parties emerged to contest the 1996
presidential elections, that is APRC, UDP and NRP. PDP of Dr. Bojang joined
the APRC. From the parties of the first republic only the PDOIS
participated.
The banning of the parties of the first republic from contesting undermined
the APRC government. Exposures intensified. Interestingly enough, the
regime lifted the ban on the parties of the first republic to live room for
them to participate in the 2001 presidential elections. The coverage of the
elections made the country to be politically vibrant. The GPP and PPP
leadership joined the UDP leadership to promote their political platforms.
The NCP ran its own campaign. PDOIS and NRP were also on their own.
After the presidential elections many Gambians expected a very tough
National Assembly elections, which would lead to a National Assembly that
would not be under the influence of the executive.
One expected Mr. Dibba to win in Central Baddibu, Sidia Jatta, Hamat Bah
and Halifa Sallah were seen as prospective victors in their respective
constituencies. Many incumbent APRC candidates were already struggling to
keep their seats.
The parties of the country however did not proceed to give rise to the
consolidation of the parties of the first republic and second republic. On
the contrary, the results of the presidential elections destabilized many
political parties and their supporters. To be on the side of the political
opposition is not an easy task. It leads to political, economic and
financial insecurity for many people. This may pressurize people to forge
alliances in between elections.
THE POST ELECTIONS ALLIANCES
As preparations were being made for the National Assembly elections some
alliances began to emerge.
The NCP leadership decided to form an alliance with the APRC, as president
Jammeh has said in New York he made the NCP leader Speaker of the National
Assembly. The PDP leader did not register his party nor did he become
involved with any political camp. The UDP, GPP, PPP alliance started to
look for candidates for the National Assembly elections. Some candidates
even declared their candidatures. Eventually the alliance made a
declaration that it will not participate because of fraud in the
registration of voters.
The NCP /APRC alliance left PDOIS to be the only party of the first
republic to operate independently of the government or any other alliances.
The elections received approval by the International Observers. To
consolidate its international image, amnesty was given to Ex-president
Jawara. Speculations were rife as to whether he would accept or not. When
his children visited the Gambia without making contacts with his political
supporters rumors spread that ex-president Jawara was going to retire from
active politics.
Ex-president Jawara is now in the Gambia. None of the PPP members have told
the press what he intends to do. He is silent while people are speaking
their minds as to whether he has been given the recognition they expected
or not. What ex-president Jawara feels is yet to be known. Different
opinions within the UDP have surfaced in the Gambia press.
What is clear is that the alliance between the NCP and APRC and Mr. Dibba's
open support for president Jammeh in New York and Ex-president Jawara's
coming and the declaration that he is here as a private citizen has marked
the end of a period in Gambian politics. Only PDOIS is left out of the
parties of the first republic, which has not forged any alliances or is
confronted with leadership struggles.
For sometime the APRC leadership pretended to approve PDOIS as a party it
can hand over office to, but the president had to attack the PDOIS
leadership when the national assembly elections became tough. This has made
people to acknowledge the fundamental difference between PDOIS and APRC,
which many refused to acknowledge until recently.
As we head towards the 2006 elections the new political reality must come
to be understood by all. Many people are angry today with the people they
supported all along because of the feeling that they have been betrayed.
The new Gambia must never feel betrayed by any leader. It should be clear
that leadership is not a right given to a selected few but a duty that any
competent person should be ready to perform.
The people should therefore have independent minds and review the records
of each person who appears before them to seek their mandate. They must not
follow political figures on the basis of sentiments. They should not waste
their emotions on people who have a right to think, feel and act they
prefer to do at any given time.
Leaders come and go. It is the people who should be mature so that those
who come and go will leave them without their capacity to make informed
choices. The duty of a sovereign people is to remove leaders who cannot
address their concerns. We cannot insist on people becoming what they don't
want to be. We must look for people who are what we want them to be.”
FOCUS ON THE GAMBIA’S ECONOMIC SITUATION
From my own perspective, whilst PDOIS hasn’t shunned a private sector led
growth, it affirms the belief that the government should not wash its hands
off all the productive sector of the economy. It even tends to advocate for
government to take a lead role in some of these sectors. The APRC, on the
other hand, seems to be more biased towards a private sector led economy. I
am not quite sure of where the other parties stand on this issue.
It is or should be clear to all who’s read Famara Jatta’s budget speech and
followed the news of events happening here of late that Gambia is at the
crossroads. Whilst our population and imports are still increasing at an
alarming rate, our exports are not keeping pace. Our budget deficit is
increasing as well as our national debt.
While many have attributed this state of affairs that are, clearly
unsustainable, to lack of fiscal discipline, corruption, decreased
productivity due to a lack of resources, investment and a
hardworking/skilled populace. It has also been argued by many, that efforts
must be made to curtail our imports and boost our exports. Whilst some or
all of the above may be true, I am very much of the opinion that the root
cause of most of our present day problems can be traced back to the 70s and
80s.
From the 70s to the early 90s, there has been a steady decline of exports,
mainly groundnuts and a steady increase of our population. Our ability to
boost local production of some of our basic needs, including rice and
groundnuts, declined steadily. This period of our history also saw the
demise or near demise of many institutions that use to play vital roles in
our economy, thus leading to the mass unemployment of a very significant
percentage of our workforce. Some of these institutions include the Gambia
Produce Marketing board (GPMB), Cooperative Union, shipyard, Public Works
Department (PWD), Gambia River transport (GRT), National Trading
Corporation (NTC), The Gambia Commercial and Development Bank (GCDB), The
Gambia Agricultural Development Bank (GADB), the former Seagull Fisheries
and Tannery.
The question now, is how did all these affect our country? Well, for a
start, most of these institutions employed skilled workers in their
thousands; and their redundancy killed the spirits of many who relied on
their trades as a means of survival.
Another adverse effect it had, was to re-enforce the belief that white-
collar jobs were the only secure jobs and as such students did not find it
appealing to learn trades. Perhaps this also explains why foreigners seem
to dominate our informal sector. To illustrate this point, here are some of
the roles performed by those defunct institutions.
The GRT was virtually responsible of the movement of goods and, in a
significant way, of people throughout the country.
The NTC imported and sold goods at prices that government considered
reasonable and therefore influenced how goods were priced.
The GCDB was supposed to provide much needed loans to businesses to promote
the development of a vibrant private sector.
The GADB was supposed to provide loans to farmers to encourage the boost of
our agricultural sector.
The GPMB had the responsibility of marketing Gambia’s produce abroad as
well as the production of groundnut oil for domestic consumption and
exports.
The PWD made furniture for government and the private sector, built schools
and government premises, maintained government’s fleet of vehicles as well
as maintain our roads.
The shipyard built us and maintained ferries for domestic use as well as
offering other dockyard services to ships calling at Banjul port.
The former Seagull Fisheries trawled for fish and processed them for export
and the local market. It also provided cold storage facilities to other
local fishermen.
The Tannery at processed animal hides for export as well as for domestic
use.
Add to the above, a dose of drought, saline intrusion, diminishing
agricultural inputs and an increasingly overworked and unfertile land, and
you cannot fail to see how it has put us in our present plight.
While this may not explain fully why our economy is suffering at the
moment, folk cannot continue to deny that none of the above has anything to
do with our present situation. To advocate that all would be okay if we
kick out Jammeh’s government and replace it with just about anybody else is
foolhardy. Much more, how do those people expect us to replace them with
people who cannot even tell us what they would do for if elected?
Finally, if folks think that our people are so gullible that they would
register to vote in elections, abandon all they have to do on election day,
queue for hours to cast their votes and still do not know what the issues
are, then I say happy slumber.
I contend that one does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how
all the above issues and lack of direction of the pre-Yahya Jammeh years of
insignificant access to education and health, has something to do with our
present plight.
I will end here by again quoting from the same Foroyaa publication, which
reads:
“We have also seen that, even though certain sectors of the public have
been sold out on the pretext that they are not viable, meaning they are not
making profit to the expectation of those heading the state, when they are
sold out, they still in most cases do not serve the purposes that were
originally intended; and instead would start by laying off the workers etc.
The GPMB is a case in point. The GGC, which has bought GPMB, has not
performed to expectations, it laid off more than half the workforce of the
GPMB, it continued to give promissory notes to the farmers and had not gone
into any form of processing.
The public enterprises, have expanded their activities to cover transport,
electricity and water supply, banking, insurance, manufacturing, livestock
trade, ferry services etc. if they are encouraged and the same enabling
environment is open to them, instead of divesting them, they could have
expanded their services to other sectors.
Why is it that they could not do the necessary expansion needed? The
reasons are many but the main thing is that the profits accrued from them
are not necessarily utilized by them to do more investment. Going by the
statistics, we know that in 1990/91, the public enterprises have made a
joint profit of 32,267,000. (Thirty-two million Dalasis) even though we
also know that a few of them did not make much profit. In that year, the
GPTC recorded a profit of 367,000 Dalasis, Gamtel made a profit of
23.9million Dalasis, Social Security also made a surplus of 45million
Dalasis, the Gambia Ports Authority made a profit of 90 million Dalasis,
the then GUC made a loss of 8.1million Dalasis, GPMB made a loss of 18.4
million Dalasis, but if we subtract the losses from the total profit and
surpluses they have a joint profit of 32 million Dalasis. Where does this
profit go? Does it go to government to use it to provide for more services?
The answer is in the negative. It means that this figures therefore do not
have any developmental value because the government then and now do not see
the need to utilize this monies to reinvest it in the productive sector or
to give it back to the GUC or GPMB to invest it so as to become more viable.
Statistics have also shown that the GPMB had accumulated reserves of over
100 million Dalasis by 1977/78. This means that it's annual turn over of
about 150 million Dalasis had exceeded that of Gamtel but by 1983, all its
reserves had depleted and a few years later, its liability to the banking
systems were over 100million Dalasis. In 1985/86, it had a trading loss of
about 37 million Dalasis.”
Season’s greetings to all and may God, The Almighty, guide and protect us
all in coming New Year.
Have a good day, Gassa.
--
There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve (Mike Leavitt)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
