Well said karamba. The whole process is a Kangaroo court where they have
already decided what will happen and are just going through the motions.

Jabou Joh


In a message dated 12/13/99 9:40:47 PM Central Standard Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:

If there are two things that can be said of the evolving budget that is
 currently before parliament, it is that it is terrible and it would pass. Is
 there anything in it that is fundamentally in the interest of the Gambian
 people? No. But again list members know it is a proposal put together by a
 leader who has turned government into a cartel. His sole motivation is to
 bleed this long suffering nation dry of it's meagre resources and hang it's
 collective carcasses to dry in the sun. He has no qualms about appropriating
 D60 million to the state house which he has effectively turned into a
 bureaucratic miasma replete with courtiers dabbling into everything from
 scholarships to government vehicle monitoring. Of the amount , over D3million
 is slated to  be paid to him as perdiem in the ever-increasing  zero value
 trips he makes  to attend parades and have tea with foreign leaders of no
 consequence to Gambia. If incase you wonder where this staggering sum is
 going to come from, it is going to mean even less money for very basic things
 like hospitals and village clinics, education  and the rest of the
 government. I lost a niece this past summer to malaria precisely because
 Bansang hospital where tens of thousands of people from my part of the
 country go is now a shell of a hospital with no medicine. Like my family ,
 the people of our country are an expendable commodity when it conflicts the
 self preservation instincts of the kinds of people that constitute this
 government. For the most part they are criminals who are not the least bit
 perturbed by the very glaring problems they are visiting on the people. There
 is not a single line item on the budget that would benefit the very pressing
 needs of the people of Ballanghar. But would Fafa Touray who purports to
 represent them vote for it? You bet he would. These are not serious
 legislators who are burdened by the need to even contemplate what is remotely
 in the interest of their people. They have long ago settled into the status
 of certifiable lackeys who would trade the lives and livelihoods of the very
 people they are under oath to serve. They come , they sit and they cheer an
 unelected speaker of the house as he presides over the chamber scrupulously
 and shamelessly enforcing flawed and undemocratic parliamentary procedures
 that is designed to stifle the few opposition members who actually want to do
 good. It is just outrageous to hear the speaker who is not responsible to a
 single voter or taxpayer since he was handpicked by the president  chide
 lawmakers for objecting to the D60million allocation. Apparently he is a firm
 believer that the cartel needs to be well funded with the sweat and blood of
 our people .
 The finance minister who had responsibilty for crafting the budget displayed
 characteristic chutzpah that is the hallmark of this administration. No he
 wouldn't answer questions about $52 million contracted from Taiwan. Yes the
 president needs D60 million and infact the government would open three more
 embassies even as the existing ones can hardly afford faxpaper. He lashed out
 at a lawmaker who labelled his proposal as uninspiring challenging him to
 produce figures. Well human and economic indicators point to the miserable
 state in which people of Gambia find themselves in. Unless the minister is
 interested in a tortured differentiation between misery and misery-lite , I
 think his anger at the lawmaker was bogus and intended to mask  the utter
 failure he embodies. He furthered his wrath on the business community  over
 their legitimate complaint about a burdensome government regulation that they
 believe hampers their business which accounts for the number one revenue
 earner for the government. He retorted that they would have to endure the
 regulation or leave. Leave and go where? These are citizens of the country
 who worked hard and played by the rules to build successful businesses. At
 the very least they ought to be nurtured to allow them to expand the vital
 reexport trade. They certainly should not be hectored by a government whose
 collective leadership could not make a success out of legume stall in Albert
 market.

 So the fiscal 2000 budget as the ones before it has everthing in it for Yahya
 Jammeh and his cronies. The rest of the country would have to scavenge a
 living and make up their mind as to how long they are prepared to accept
 being wronged

 Karamba
  >>

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