When the dust settles and Yahya Jammeh is removed from the scene, Gambians will find themselves with a bankrupt shell of a nation with a devastated bureaucracy that is functionally dead. The Gambia government as currently constituted simply doesn't work. The basic framework the present government inherited in 1994 had the same organizational flaws with the now added blight of incompetence and terrible leadership. Whoever comes in this year would also inherit an organizational labyrinth paralyzed by inefficiency and rudderlessness that will never succeed in delivering the much needed services for it's only clients, the Gambian people. Consequently the magnitude and scope of change that would be required to recast our government to be effective would be so big and difficult that it would demand the wisdom and active participation of not only our elected leaders, but every one of us determined to change for the better. I recently had occasion to chat with two people with vastly different backgrounds. Both of them however worked for the Gambia government. One was a twenty-five year veteran with graduate degrees who served as a permanent secretary for years. The other was a trained qualified teacher who ended up running a small school in the provinces. In their unique ways both gentlemen left me with a very strong and unsettling believe that our government is not only structured to fail, but had the almost fatal addition of being incapable of self correcting even in the face of obvious and endemic problems. I began with the permanent secretary by asking him what his role was within the bureaucracy. He said the P.S was the ministries principal policy maker who oversaw a core group of technocrats and administrators in formulating and executing government policies. That got me into asking a seemingly simple but profound question of how policy is made in the Gambia government. In a nutshell he said the P. S would summon his senior staff within the ministry and essentially brainstorm. They would ultimately formulate a policy with all the technical details and hand it over to the minister who almost always goes along with whatever is entailed in the paper. The minister then takes the policy proposal to the Cabinet where it would be discussed as part of the overall agenda of the nation within a specified period. Once the cabinet approves it, the policy would be promulgated and the ministry with the jurisdiction which is the one that formulated it in the first place would now be charged with executing it. My first question was with an almost non existent civic or other non governmental organizations lobbying on behalf of the people specific policies are going to affect, do departments get the kinds of input necessary to measure the value or effectiveness of policie they formulate? I was told they may call in the principal nurse at RVH if this a substantial health policy to get her input. But she too falls under the same bureaucracy overseen by the P.S who is the principal formulator of the policy. This is especially relevant in a governmental set up that does not reward or even condone descent. As a result it is a save bet that the nurse in the example would see his or her role as only being cooperation because she is not independent or vested with any clout. She can't determine her own budget. My conclusion is that ideas that go into making policy that are by design not diverse and even if you have the world's smartest people hunkering down in these offices to hammer out ideas, you will end up a monolithic thought process that would not always work to best interest of the nation. The President who has ultimate responsibility for policies of his administration relies on the bureaucracy to formulate and execute ideas within the broad framework of his agenda. But neither his office nor the Cabinet that approves or decline proposals is equipped to fully examine them as they make their way up the chain. There is no substantial policy office that the President or the cabinet can rely on to score, evaluate and advice on proposals or to measure their effectiveness once the President signs off on it. Such an outfit if it ever exists can be at the forefront of policy planning living the rest of the bureaucracy to focus much more on execution leaving ample room and time to correct policies that have not worked as foreseen. The President can hence have something of a balance between planners and executioners making him more aware of the general direction of his administration and helping recognize priorities. It would foster innovation by stoking the creative minds of talented people into thinking and exploring better ideas. I believe the best ideas emanate from vigorous debate amongst all participants in a transparent and professional manner. Our current system rewards ineffectiveness and leaves a spectacular trail of one bad idea after another. My encounter with my second friend leaves me heart broken about an education bureaucracy with more than a half dozen directors that is presiding over a near catastrophe especially for small isolated schools in the heart of the provinces. My friend was the headmaster of a 200 pupil primary school with 8 teachers half of whom need a lot of teaching themselves. With no operating funds and nestled in an isolated dusty patch, running his school is a daily nightmare of trying to persuade poor and destitute parents from yanking their kids from school to help them in the fields they rely on to stave off hunger. He must also contend with an aloof bureaucracy called a regional education office with vehicles and staff who require him to pedal or work a dozen miles every month to file a single page report about his school. When he comes to the office, he is told to leave it with the first layer of bureaucrats and then come back some other day to discuss the contents of his report with the real officer in charge. Another 12 mile trek for the poor headmaster to discuss an utterly useless report that brings his ramshackle school and suffering kids zero relief. The government provides a few text books and he is told they must be rented out to the kids for D20 in a village where most people can hardly feed themselves. His sad conclusion is that more than half of these poor kids would never make it past the primary grades because they will not have the required number of qualified or motivated teachers or the books to forge ahead. Like their parents they would succumb to depravities of a hard village life coupled with an education bureaucracy that would never succeed in creating a conducive learning environment. The tragedy is the system would protect incredibly heartless and awful leaders and consign another generation of Gambians to illiteracy and a vicious cycle of poverty. The next government must reform the education bureaucracy so that all these bogus and nonfunctioning administrative layers of countless directors and regional offices are removed. They must increase and target the funding to ensure that at least 80% of appropriations go directly into classroom in the form well trained and well paid teachers, books and other learning resources. That is the only way we can begin to help all of our people. As it stands the 200 pupils of my friends school can't count on their M.P, their local government and certainly not their central government. No one cares about them. We must all roll up our sleeves and do what we can to reform our institutions once a new government comes in. We can do it from anywhere in the world by engaging the politicians, the budding civic society and our respective communities. If we don't, we would be saddled with serious and endemic problems that may overwhelm even a well meaning successor government. We've got to quickly transition from very understandable and justifiable anger and frustration to a sustained effort at actually working for change. I am optimistic we can. Karamba ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------