Unlike the APRC government, we will implement genuine Local Government
Decentralization to ensure that our Pro-Poor Policies positively impact the
grassroots of society. Our government should not have a Famara Jatta telling
donors one thing while a Joseph Joof is passing laws doing the exact
opposite. In other words, the Finance Minister will not be lying to the
donors saying that government is going to decentralize while the Attorney
General is passing laws centralizing power in the President.

We will work with the donor community and implement some of their
recommendations that make sense in the Gambian context. In areas that we are
going to disagree with them, we will at least have the decency and the
wherewithal to give them an alternative much better than their proposals.

All Pro-Poor activists agree that in order to directly and positively impact
the grassroots with development projects, the grassroots have to have a say
in what is going on. The people most affected have to have their fate in
their own hands. The best way that we can ensure that poor people have a say
in what goes on in their villages, is to implement a Genuine Democracy at
the Local Government level. Instead of appointing Chiefs and other Local
Government officials, these officials should be ELECTED. The Chiefs and
their councils should not be in their positions thanks to the presidency. As
the current system taught us, if these chiefs are appointed by the
president, they are then reduced to mere stooges that are only after the
welfare of the president. Instead of developing their communities, these
chiefs act as spies and propagandists for the president. They care less
about the welfare of their villagers. They know that the villagers cannot
vote them out of office.

We need to implement a system whereby these local leaders will be held
accountable to their constituents. Let them run for office. Once the local
councils are set up, these leaders will then be able to consult with their
citizens in order to assess the needs and resources of the community. This
should be a highly participatory exercise. Children as young as ten can even
contribute to this exercise. The Burkina Faso experience (Gastions Des
Terroirs) comes to mind. There children as young as ten were used to help
demarcate the boundaries of the villages.

Once the needs and resources of the communities are determined, these
councils then liaise with government officials, NGOs, donors and other
private entities to see how the resources in the community can be best
utilized to take care of the needs of the society. Who best to determine
what the people need than the people themselves? Rather than having someone
from Banjul imposing these 'development' programs on farmers in Kiang, let
us have the Kiangkas be the primary participants in this exercise. Let us
provide an environment to enable the Kiangkas to have a local leadership
that is accountable to them. A local leadership that will take care of the
political, social and economic welfare of the society.
KB

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