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 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.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 and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------