Saul, Hamjatta, Modou,
I will be responding tomorrow. It is my duty at least to share what I know.
Frankly, I must thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to engage in
this exercise. May be my next piece will be the last contentious one. Then I
will proceed to do what none of you has asked me to do+ADs- that is, to give you
a chronological presentation of how things went and our position throughout
the transition period. I am sure some will find the revelations very
interesting. A lot happened which we never intended to state for fearing
that it would constitute some form of egoistic venture or political
opportunism. It is, however, necessary to say them since there has been so
many questions.
Saul, in passing, I must ask you to take your time to read the constitution
and then start quoting what sections permit what actions. It is not helpful
to answer people's questions without basing them on something tangible.
Somebody asked whether the indemnity provisions cover only the period when
the AFPRC was in power. Of course, this is exactly what the Indemnity
provision does. In fact, it is part of the Transitional and Consequential
Provisions, a schedule attached to the main body of the constitution. Once
the new constitution came into force, no member of government is covered by
an Indemnity provision. Indemnity provisions are very crude provisions which
are usually put into force after state of emergencies or coup d'etats when
arbitrary use of power is usually prevalent. As I have mentioned, Jawara's
regime had to enact an Indemnity Act to cover themselves for actions done
during the state of emergency after the 1981 coup. I think I have mentioned
somewhere that because of that provision, a colleague of mine had to lose 13
years of service without having the right to go to court to claim for his
entitlements. Many people are also taking the Jammeh regime to court for
actions done during the coup period but the cases are being dismissed
because of the indemnity provision.
However, actions done against Lamin Juwara after the coming into force of
the constitution can clearly be pursued in Gambian courts. You may be aware
that the refusal by the prison authorities to release certain detainees from
Jarra after a court decision led to the prosecution of the Commissioner of
Prisons and his assistant. They were found guilty of contempt of court and
given a dressing down by the judge. When you invite Darboe and Juwara to
this forum, you may ask them whether the Gambian judiciary is independent or
not, and what cases have they pursued in court after the constitution came
into force.
What we must differentiate are the provisions of a constitution and the
commitment of a government to them. You can have the best constitution in
the world and still have a government which does everything to make it
unworkable.
What is the issue now is not whether the APRC Government is abiding by the
constitutional provisions+ADs- that is an entirely different subject which one
can take on later when you invite a representative of the APRC on this forum
to explain their case. I believe the point at issue is the essence of the
constitution and why I voted 'yes'. I have given you reasons and I have also
read Saul's contentions. I will clarify more. However, I will go on to pose
some questions so that all of us will be able to reach some form of
consensus of what actions were defensible under the circumstances. In short,
if all of you were here, would you have voted 'yes' or 'no' and why. That is
the question. After everything is clear, I will pose that question and those
who would have voted 'no' should take time to convince the rest of us that
that would have been in the best interest of the nation at the time. I hope
all of you are thinking in that direction. I guess we can develop the norm
of trying to explain things more to convince each other and attack each
other less.
I have been engaged in writing many consultancy documents which occupied our
computer for sometime. We will be a bit freer tomorrow and I will capitalise
on it to give feedback to Cherno Baba, address Hamjatta's questions and
Saul's concerns.
Greetings
Halifa Sallah
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