Ebrima, thank you very much for your highly important contributions to the
national discourse. Please keep the brilliant ideas coming. As Saul Khan
said, your ideas should be studied carefully by the Gambian public, in
general and opposition leaders, in particular. Although am more interested
in policies for a transitional government (as opposed to a permanent
democratically elected government), I have been following your contributions
keenly and would have commented earlier, but for some other engagements. The
benchmarks you are setting for our next democratically elected leaders are
very important. This will enable the ordinary Gambian to cry foul as soon as
they detect major deviations from these standards. I agree with you entirely
that Gambians should have high expectations from their leaders. People
should also be prepared to effect changes if those expectations are not met.
Ebrima, allow me to suggest a few issues you might want to consider in
future messages. These issues pertain mainly to the break-down of law and
order in the country. By now everyone knows about the lawlessness in The
Gambia. Government sanctioned thugs terrorize citizens with impunity. The
last place ordinary citizens would want to report crimes is the police. Even
the police admit that the public has lost confidence in them. State
attorneys are corrupt and incompetent. Magistrates and judges are
intimidated and the judicial system is rotten. It is not too long ago that
Halifa Sallah told us that there were citizens rotting in jail because the
courts cannot try their cases.
Ebrima, this law and order problem is one of the biggest threat to our
society and it needs to be addressed urgently by future governments. When
people cannot have redress through the proper channels, they take the law
into their own hands and anarchy ensues. For example, because the police and
the courts cannot guarantee the safety of opposition leaders, people like
Ousainou Darboe have an entourage of guards that are ready to do anything to
defend their leaders. This phenomenon coupled with the activities of the
July 22nd Movement members is a recipe for chaos. As you eloquently stated
in your numerous postings, we are sitting on a time-bomb. The demonstrations
on April 10 and 11 happened because justice was denied to the citizens in
the Ebrima Barry case. The subsequent massacre was caused by a breakdown of
law and order.
How do we solve this law and order problem? The top echelon of the police
has to be manned by highly competent people that can lead by example.
Resources have to be made available to the police for a more rigorous
training in community policing, crowd control etc. The police code of
conduct has to be revisited with the aim of eradicating political party
partisanship in the police. There should be zero tolerance for corruption in
the police department. The relationship between the AG chambers and the
police should be clearly defined. The police's relationship with the central
government and the municipal authorities should also be addressed.
The NIA is also an institution that requires a thorough overhaul, if it is
going to survive. The AG chambers should exercise a certain degree of
oversight on both the police and the NIA. The AG should ensure that these
institution operate within the bounds of the law. If the AG believes that
he/she cannot justify the actions of the police or secret service agents
before a court of law, the latter should desist from that unlawful conduct.
Major work also needs to be done at the AG chambers. The next government
should endeavor to entice a highly skilled Gambian of impeccable character
to head the AG chambers. We should get rid of all the foreign prosecutors
and revise the remuneration package of state attorneys (with an aim to
attract and retain competent Gambian lawyers that can file their briefs on
time). Am not xenophobic, but I cannot stand what some of those foreign
prosecutors are doing to the ordinary Gambians. These foreigners can be
replaced by the young lawyers that have recently graduated from law school.
With the right coaching, these lawyers can do a better job than those
corrupt foreigners.
Our judiciary should also be rid of the foreign judges. Gambian judges have
demonstrated that they are more sensitive to the plight of the ordinary
citizens and they are cognizant of the fact they have to live in the same
community with the people the authorities at times seek to victimize. There
are a lot of competent Gambian lawyers that are willing to become judges if
they are remunerated fairly and given adequate independence. If these
Gambian lawyers are confident that there will be no government tampering
with the judiciary, they will gladly want to serve at the bench. Structures
have to be put in place to make it more difficult to fire judges. Parliament
has to be actively involved in the hiring and firing of judges. Judges
should be paid from a vote totally independent of the department of justice.
Some of the archaic rules we inherited from the British should also be
gotten rid of. For instance, we should abolish court vacations. The courts
should be open all year round to hear all types of cases. Judges and their
staff can take annual leaves just like other government functionaries. This
will help clear some of the backlog we currently have in the court system.
There are numerous other changes that could be put in place to speed up the
dispensation of justice and ensure that the courts dispense justice
properly. We should also address our appellate process and decide whether
the legal system is matured enough to have a permanent court of appeal where
the buck will stop (as opposed to having an ad hoc court of appeal or going
to the Privy Council).
Ebrima, as you can see, we have a lot of work to do with our law and order
problem. Sorry if I repeated some of the points you already made. I do not
pretend to have all the answers to our problems. I sincerely think that we
need a serious debate to address ways and means by which we will be able to
restore confidence in the police and the justice system. As I said before,
without law and order in a society, we will revert back to primitive living;
law of the jungle; might makes right; an eye for an eye. Thanks again for
your contributions.
KB

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface
----------------------------------------------------------------------------