THE GAMBIA BAR ASSOCIATION: SILENCE IN THE FACE OF INJUSTICE
               By OUSAINOU MBENGA
  THE GAMBIA BAR ASSOCIATION: SILENCE IN THE FACE OF INJUSTICE
  This is part one of our developmental criticism series targeted to the institutions that impact on our livelihood as a people and a “nation”. In our quest to chart the uncharted path to a progressive Gambia, we want to engage all the honest and genuine forces in and outside the Gambia to bring about fundamental changes into our lives. We only seek after the truth, the facts about our miserable existence and the solutions to our problems. Therefore, we are not intimidated by anyone’s title, “power” or ill-gotten wealth. Forward to a proud-future Gambia!
  
  NDAM NUMBER TWO MAN
  CHALLENGES THE BAR
  After eleven years of silence, the Gambia Bar Association finally grew the balls to register its “timid protest” against “the unprecedented breakdown in the judiciary of the Gambia”. Some of us welcomed the “boycott” (from January 23, 2006 to January 27, 2006) with profound apprehension. But why are we apprehensive of the Bar’s action? If you have been paying attention, the bar only registers its protest against injustice when it affects their colleagues in practice. In other words, the Bar readily defends their private practices and the sources from hence they are heftily rewarded.
  As for the blatant abrogation of our democratic rights such as indefinite detentions and imprisonment without trial by Jammeh’s mercenary judges, the bar has never registered its protest. Instead it resorts to tactics of “timid pressures for small gains”. Such was the tactic adopted by the Bar Association following the bitter denunciation from Jammeh’s head-mercenary judge, M.A.Paul. “Injustice Paul”; always waxing indignant, castigated the Bar Association for standing by while the “temple of justice” is under attack when he, Akomaye Agim and Emmanuel Fagbelle were referred to as “mercenary judges”.
  The Bar timidly disapproved of M.A.Paul’s “unprofessional approach” and boycotted his courtroom for a brief period. Paul in turn lashed out at the Bar with his “wait till eternity” unapologetic letter in which he warned the Bar to keep “politics out of the courts”. This matter was negotiated behind closed chambers and everything returned to “business as usual”. 
  
  The recent test of the Bar’s mettle happened again following the dubious coup attempt of March 21, 2006. This time, prominent lawyers Antouman Gaye and Mariam Denton have been arrested and detained on bogus charges yet the Bar is still silent.
  To give credence to our apprehension, we must return to that eventful year of setback which in earnest began on July 22, 1994 when the AFPRC stormed into our consciousness. If we recall the events following the coup, it was lawyers like Uncle Fafa Mbye, Cheyassin Secka, Musa Bittaye, the current president of the Gambia Bar Association and a herd of vying legal advisers above and belowground, who made it possible for the AFPRC to become legitimized. The prevailing sentiment at the time was “anything but Jawara” and 30 years of misrule”. Following the coup, a deadly cocktail of anger, revenge, frustrations, opportunism and outright banditry characterized what became known as the TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. From the transitional period to this day, many Gambian lawyers took part in the sustenance and survival of the Jammeh regime. 
  Like other “technocrats” in different professions, the lawyers were under the illusion that they can effect changes from within the belly of the beast – AFPRC-APRC. Many of them accepted to be used and discarded while still being intoxicated by their illusions. Sadly enough, many of these lawyers continued to support and sustain the regime even as it turned into a cesspool. The fact that the Bar Association have been on mute in the face of all the repressive decisions of the judiciary reveals where their interest is focused. 
  Lawyers who are members of the Bar Association continue to defend gangsters who have become the most unscrupulous politicians in the history of Gambia while the “integrity of their profession” is being trampled upon by Jammeh and his “mercenary judges”. Yet Mrs. Maimuna Taal still can’t find a lawyer to represent her in court.
  Indeed, we will hold in high esteem any individual lawyer who speaks out against the draconian decrees of the AFPRC-APRC regime but a collective condemnation and protest by the Bar Association would have paralyzed the “Jammeh judiciary” long time ago from its inception. But most “African intellectuals” care less about justice, integrity, decency and truthfulness; their careers and the ill-gains it rewards them take center stage.
  With all due respect to the very few lawyers with integrity, particularly the young and upcoming lawyers; the last thing we need in Africa is another lawyer. If becoming a lawyer is to be silent in the face of injustice and to be an accomplice to “mercenary justice”, then who need lawyers? Lawyers who are honest to themselves will not take offense at this criticism but should step forward and defend the integrity of their profession. 
  
  The primary contradiction of Gambia’s judiciary continue to be the standard practice of appointing so called “foreign judges” to the high courts (supreme court) instead of appointing Gambian nationals to head their own supreme court. This practice has been baffling to many of us. But would it have made a difference if Gambian nationals occupied the supreme courts? The answer in law jargon is, “the jury is still out” on this issue. One thing is certain; silence in the face of oppression is the enemy of justice. Furthermore, silence is not a guarantee for safety as Jammeh’s recent dragnet has revealed.
  On February 22, 2006, Jammeh appointed Abdou Karim Savage to the office of Chief Justice, making him the first Gambian to hold this post. Justice Savage and his colleagues celebrate the appointment for its long overdue. But under the circumstances that APRC finds itself, Jammeh will continue to engage in the most desperate acts to cling onto his “reactionary power” base. The appointment of Savage is one of Yaya’s desperate acts to win support of Gambian lawyers, hence his reconciliation drama.
  
  To understand why Savage became the first Gambian Chief Justice after forty years of appointing “foreign judges”, we must revisit an important year in the history of Gambia. This year was 1962 when Sir Dawda Jawara of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) supposedly won the General Election which was to put him into political power for the first time and the first Prime Minister of the Gambia. In June of that year, Jawara arrived in Ghana in seek of legal aid against numerous law suits for fraud and other electoral malpractices that threatened the PPP’s political victory.
  By the time Jawara arrived in Ghana, the great Kwame Nkrumah in carrying out his pledge that “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it was linked to the total liberation of Africa” had already accepted the Honorable Alhagi Bashiru Kwaw - Swanzy to head the legal mission in the East and Central African colonies to defend the nationalists who were detained by the British colonialists. Kwaw – Swanzy and a team of Ghanaian defense lawyers were denied visas to enter Nyasaland, present day Malawi to 
  defend Kamuzu Banda and other Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) members detained without trial. Two months after the colonialists refused the Ghanaian defense team visas, the NAC detainees were released.
  Kwaw – Swanzy led another mission to Zanzibar to defend the Afro- Shirazi Party (ASP) militants who were jailed following the June 1961 rebellion against the British colonialists. Kwaw – Swanzy and his team displayed their legal prowess and succeeded in securing acquittal for all the 150 persons on trial. The pre – independence movement in Africa and other colonies shook imperialism to its foundation but the neo – colonial states came to its rescue. 
  On his historic mission to Gambia, Kwaw – Swanzy was accompanied by his colleague Alexander Aboagye da Costa. They successfully won for Jawara and his PPP all the electoral cases and made him the first Prime Minister of Gambia. So, it was Kwaw – Swanzy who paved the way for Ghanaian and Nigerian lawyers into the Gambian judiciary. In 1981 following the aborted coup attempt; nineteen years after the first invitation to rescue the PPP from accusations of electoral fraud, Kwaw – Swanzy was invited again by Jawara and was appointed as chief legal adviser to the Gambia government to institute criminal proceedings against the coup plotters.
  Should we conclude that Jawara was being loyal to Ghana and Ghanaian lawyers for coming to his aid twice or it was to take 40 years to find a qualified Gambian for the post of Chief Justice? In my view, the most plausible conclusion is that the PPP very early realized the threat posed by his accusers for fraudulent electoral practices, decided to isolate Gambian lawmakers from the high courts and made it an exclusive privilege for “non Gambian” justices of his choice to assure control of the judiciary and stifle any home grown resistance to his administration.
  So, brothers and sisters, here was the source of this practice to exclude Gambian “lawmakers” – lawyers from the high courts, a calculated strategy by the PPP to assure loyalty and Jammeh continued it where his predecessors left.
  Kwame Nkrumah’s pledge to decolonize Africa was far from the deceptive and dishonest intentions of many of the African leaders Ghana assisted during the struggle for “independence”. It didn’t take long for the neo-colonial states to overrun and crush the independence movement and brought in the sorry state of African affairs of the day.
  To us, who continue to reaffirm our commitment to genuine African unity; the practice of exchanging lawyers, teachers, scientists and other skilled workers as a solution to our problems should be the norm; the lofty ideal for African unity. But the current process of appointing judges to the high courts is rotten to the core, therefore can only serve as a breeding ground for maggots. A point of observation is worthy of mention, that in the last 40 years we have seen a few honorable justices of integrity as in the person of Ahmed Belgore, who served in the Gambian judiciary without malice and championed the dictum of justice: “innocent until proven guilty”. However, the APRC has dragged the judiciary to a gutter level making the work of the new Chief Justice Savage extremely difficult, given the “revolving door” policy of “hire by day and fire by night”; the trademark of the Jammeh regime.
  With NADD, we are marching towards a progressive Gambia and not even the arsenal Jammeh claims to be hiding can stop us. The judiciary will be a vital organ in this proud-future Gambia; therefore, we call upon the serious brothers and sisters in the judiciary to redeem themselves to be entrusted with the task of building a new society. 
  FORWARD TO A PROGRESSIVE GAMBIA!
  LONG LIVE NADD! VICTORY IS CERTAIN! 
  Look out for part two of our developmental criticism; it will be on: The demise of Agriculture by the AFPRC – APRC.
    
Posted on Monday, April 24, 2006 (Archive on Tuesday, May 30, 2006)
Posted by PANDERRYMBAI  Contributed by PANDERRYMBAI
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