Dark clouds loom over the horizon (Commentary) The Independent <http://www.qanet.gm/Independent/independent.html> (Banjul) August 14, 2000 Banjul - 'It is better to guard speech than to guard wealth' - Lucianof Samosata. The reverberations of President Jammeh's recent speech to the APRC youth wing when they called on him during the celebrations of the July 22nd coup are still being felt in various sections of the community. While some people, particularly civil servants, who have been among those directly threatened in his speech, are quite worried about the consequences of the speech, there are many others who see it as merely hot air coming from the mouth of an embattled party leader. Whatever the case however, it would be foolhardy for anyone to outrightly dismiss the seriousness of the threats to dismiss civil servants for merely not supporting his regime, or even the threats of death to opponents of the regime. There is absolutely no doubt that President Jammeh has a genuine wish to see peace prevail in our sub-region and even beyond, but I sometimes wonder whether he also realises that like charity, peace must begin at home. It is quite one thing to lead peace caravans to Guinea-Bissau, Senegal/Mauritania and Liberia/Sierra Leone, but it is no doubt much more important for him to promote and maintain peace in his own country before he would earn the reputation as a genuine peace maker. Obviously, threatening to kill opponents of his regime and bury them 100 feet deep is far beyond what anyone would expect from a democratically elected head of state, particularly a self-appointed regional peace-maker. Indeed even his apparent incitement of the over-zealous and mostly uneducated youth wing members to take the law into their own hands and deal with opponents of the regime and to also bring him names of any civil servants who harbour opposition sympathies for immediate dismissal, is enough prescription for chaos and confusion in the country. Therefore, in view of the seriousness of the threatening remarks made by him, it was very unfair for the director of press and public relations at State House to castigate the local media for giving it prominence. As a seasoned journalist, she should know that those threats of dismissals and death were the most newsworthy aspects of the speech and any journalist worthy of his/her salt would have treated them as such. She should have at least been honest and bold enough to acknowledge that her boss has neither the constitutional power nor the moral right to threaten to sack civil servants merely for opposing his regime as the constitution guarantees everyone the right to support any party of their choice. It therefore appears that both President Jammeh and some of this 'wailers' are confusing the APRC as a political party and The Gambia as a state. Civil servants and other public service employees are expected to be loyal to the state but necessarily to the ruling party as the two are not the same. It was indeed sad and a good indication of what this country has degenerated to, when everyone heard the assistant commissioner of the Upper River Division Momodou Soma Jobe not only threaten to sack civil servants in his division who do not support the APRC, but even disclosed that he has already dismissed some people and replaced them with members of the APRC youth wing. It is indeed worth asking where we are really heading to with such a calibre of decision makers. Now that these people have been given the carte blanche to not only report civil servants who do not support the party, but even the power to dismiss those within their domain, then we are beginning to see the end of the civil service as we knew it this country and its replacement by a group of unskilled and incompetent people whose only qualifications would be their blind loyalty to President Jammeh and the ARPC. That of course spells doom for this country because in the absence of professional technocrats in the civil service, the country's slide to the doldrums would be accelerated. In fact the civil service is now completely under siege and civil servants are now left with no initiative of their own but instead they now only wait for 'instructions from above' before they would take any action. There is no doubt that despite all the arbitrary sackings and unwarranted threats, there are still some highly professional civil servants but because of the volatility of the environment they are operating under, they now hardly initiate anything new as they are virtually living on a day-to-day basis, always expecting to be sacked on very flimsy reasons. 'Every morning when I get to my office, I expect to find a termination letter because of the fact that even politically appointed school drop-outs can initiate the sacking of a senior civil servant,' remarked a sombre looking senior civil servant. 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