Hi folks, My sincere apology for the original mubo jumbo. I sent the wrong post while I was in a haste to watch the Tyson/Bombardier wrestle in Dakar and relayed life on GRTS. Thanks Yus for bring it to my attention. The following is what I meant to send and the draft I was workinng on. Have a good day, Gassa. Folks, As we try to digest the 2003 budget speech of SOS Jatta and reflect on the situation of the country, I would like to give my own perspective of the situation we are in. To do that, I would like to first remind the list of the change in the political landscape of the country and an attempt to explain how we are in the state we find ourselves. To reflect on how politics have changed over the years, I would like to reproduce a portion of a FOROYAA publication of June 6 – 9, 2002 entitled: FOROYAA Burning Issue - NO: 32/2002 6 - 9 June 2002. This article gave an analysis of the political landscape of the country and how things stood around the time the article was written. Of course things did not remain static but changed drastically. First, there was the rancour within the UDP, followed by the split/expulsion from the party, of their former propaganda secretary that led to the birth of NDAM. The future of the PPP still remains uncertain months after the formal retirement of ex-president Jawara from the party. He has since then announced that he would like to spend his retirement as a private citizen, giving lectures at the University of The Gambia and to advise President Jammeh whenever his advise is sought or needed. Please read on. THE CHANGING FACE OF POLITICS IN THE GAMBIA _ From Foroyaa “The face of politics in the Gambia is changing since the presidential elections of October 2001. It is important for the Gambian people to keep track of the developments. First and foremost, it is important to find out what has happened to the parties of the first Republic, which came into existence after the demise of the PPA of the late Sherif Sisay and the United Party of the late P.S Njie. The NCP of Mr. Sheriff Dibba and the NLP of Mr. Cheyassin Secka were the first to come up in the 1970s. The GPP of Mr. Assan Musa Camara, PDOIS and PDP of Dr. Bolong Bojang came up in the 1980s. During the 1992 presidential elections the PPP, NCP, GPP, PDOIS and PDP put up presidential candidates. In 1994 there was a coup d'etat, political authorities were banned. Attempts to defy the ban led to the arrest of members of the PDOIS leadership. Before the 1996 elections the ban was lifted only for PDOIS and PDP. The regime claimed that the parties, which were banned, took part in the destruction of the country. These parties claimed that the regime was afraid of their popularity and influence in the country. This gave rise to political tension. New political parties emerged to contest the 1996 presidential elections, that is APRC, UDP and NRP. PDP of Dr. Bojang joined the APRC. From the parties of the first republic only the PDOIS participated. The banning of the parties of the first republic from contesting undermined the APRC government. Exposures intensified. Interestingly enough, the regime lifted the ban on the parties of the first republic to live room for them to participate in the 2001 presidential elections. The coverage of the elections made the country to be politically vibrant. The GPP and PPP leadership joined the UDP leadership to promote their political platforms. The NCP ran its own campaign. PDOIS and NRP were also on their own. After the presidential elections many Gambians expected a very tough National Assembly elections, which would lead to a National Assembly that would not be under the influence of the executive. One expected Mr. Dibba to win in Central Baddibu, Sidia Jatta, Hamat Bah and Halifa Sallah were seen as prospective victors in their respective constituencies. Many incumbent APRC candidates were already struggling to keep their seats. The parties of the country however did not proceed to give rise to the consolidation of the parties of the first republic and second republic. On the contrary, the results of the presidential elections destabilized many political parties and their supporters. To be on the side of the political opposition is not an easy task. It leads to political, economic and financial insecurity for many people. This may pressurize people to forge alliances in between elections. THE POST ELECTIONS ALLIANCES As preparations were being made for the National Assembly elections some alliances began to emerge. The NCP leadership decided to form an alliance with the APRC, as president Jammeh has said in New York he made the NCP leader Speaker of the National Assembly. The PDP leader did not register his party nor did he become involved with any political camp. The UDP, GPP, PPP alliance started to look for candidates for the National Assembly elections. Some candidates even declared their candidatures. Eventually the alliance made a declaration that it will not participate because of fraud in the registration of voters. The NCP /APRC alliance left PDOIS to be the only party of the first republic to operate independently of the government or any other alliances. The elections received approval by the International Observers. To consolidate its international image, amnesty was given to Ex-president Jawara. Speculations were rife as to whether he would accept or not. When his children visited the Gambia without making contacts with his political supporters rumors spread that ex-president Jawara was going to retire from active politics. Ex-president Jawara is now in the Gambia. None of the PPP members have told the press what he intends to do. He is silent while people are speaking their minds as to whether he has been given the recognition they expected or not. What ex-president Jawara feels is yet to be known. Different opinions within the UDP have surfaced in the Gambia press. What is clear is that the alliance between the NCP and APRC and Mr. Dibba's open support for president Jammeh in New York and Ex-president Jawara's coming and the declaration that he is here as a private citizen has marked the end of a period in Gambian politics. Only PDOIS is left out of the parties of the first republic, which has not forged any alliances or is confronted with leadership struggles. For sometime the APRC leadership pretended to approve PDOIS as a party it can hand over office to, but the president had to attack the PDOIS leadership when the national assembly elections became tough. This has made people to acknowledge the fundamental difference between PDOIS and APRC, which many refused to acknowledge until recently. As we head towards the 2006 elections the new political reality must come to be understood by all. Many people are angry today with the people they supported all along because of the feeling that they have been betrayed. The new Gambia must never feel betrayed by any leader. It should be clear that leadership is not a right given to a selected few but a duty that any competent person should be ready to perform. The people should therefore have independent minds and review the records of each person who appears before them to seek their mandate. They must not follow political figures on the basis of sentiments. They should not waste their emotions on people who have a right to think, feel and act they prefer to do at any given time. Leaders come and go. It is the people who should be mature so that those who come and go will leave them without their capacity to make informed choices. The duty of a sovereign people is to remove leaders who cannot address their concerns. We cannot insist on people becoming what they don't want to be. We must look for people who are what we want them to be.” FOCUS ON THE GAMBIA’S ECONOMIC SITUATION From my own perspective, whilst PDOIS hasn’t shunned a private sector led growth, it affirms the belief that the government should not wash its hands off all the productive sector of the economy. It even tends to advocate for government to take a lead role in some of these sectors. The APRC, on the other hand, seems to be more biased towards a private sector led economy. I am not quite sure of where the other parties stand on this issue. It is or should be clear to all who’s read Famara Jatta’s budget speech and followed the news of events happening here of late that Gambia is at the crossroads. Whilst our population and imports are still increasing at an alarming rate, our exports are not keeping pace. Our budget deficit is increasing as well as our national debt. While many have attributed this state of affairs that are, clearly unsustainable, to lack of fiscal discipline, corruption, decreased productivity due to a lack of resources, investment and a hardworking/skilled populace. It has also been argued by many, that efforts must be made to curtail our imports and boost our exports. Whilst some or all of the above may be true, I am very much of the opinion that the root cause of most of our present day problems can be traced back to the 70s and 80s. From the 70s to the early 90s, there has been a steady decline of exports, mainly groundnuts and a steady increase of our population. Our ability to boost local production of some of our basic needs, including rice and groundnuts, declined steadily. This period of our history also saw the demise or near demise of many institutions that use to play vital roles in our economy, thus leading to the mass unemployment of a very significant percentage of our workforce. Some of these institutions include the Gambia Produce Marketing board (GPMB), Cooperative Union, shipyard, Public Works Department (PWD), Gambia River transport (GRT), National Trading Corporation (NTC), The Gambia Commercial and Development Bank (GCDB), The Gambia Agricultural Development Bank (GADB), the former Seagull Fisheries and Tannery. The question now, is how did all these affect our country? Well, for a start, most of these institutions employed skilled workers in their thousands; and their redundancy killed the spirits of many who relied on their trades as a means of survival. Another adverse effect it had, was to re-enforce the belief that white- collar jobs were the only secure jobs and as such students did not find it appealing to learn trades. Perhaps this also explains why foreigners seem to dominate our informal sector. To illustrate this point, here are some of the roles performed by those defunct institutions. The GRT was virtually responsible of the movement of goods and, in a significant way, of people throughout the country. The NTC imported and sold goods at prices that government considered reasonable and therefore influenced how goods were priced. The GCDB was supposed to provide much needed loans to businesses to promote the development of a vibrant private sector. The GADB was supposed to provide loans to farmers to encourage the boost of our agricultural sector. The GPMB had the responsibility of marketing Gambia’s produce abroad as well as the production of groundnut oil for domestic consumption and exports. The PWD made furniture for government and the private sector, built schools and government premises, maintained government’s fleet of vehicles as well as maintain our roads. The shipyard built us and maintained ferries for domestic use as well as offering other dockyard services to ships calling at Banjul port. The former Seagull Fisheries trawled for fish and processed them for export and the local market. It also provided cold storage facilities to other local fishermen. The Tannery at processed animal hides for export as well as for domestic use. Add to the above, a dose of drought, saline intrusion, diminishing agricultural inputs and an increasingly overworked and unfertile land, and you cannot fail to see how it has put us in our present plight. While this may not explain fully why our economy is suffering at the moment, folk cannot continue to deny that none of the above has anything to do with our present situation. To advocate that all would be okay if we kick out Jammeh’s government and replace it with just about anybody else is foolhardy. Much more, how do those people expect us to replace them with people who cannot even tell us what they would do for if elected? Finally, if folks think that our people are so gullible that they would register to vote in elections, abandon all they have to do on election day, queue for hours to cast their votes and still do not know what the issues are, then I say happy slumber. I contend that one does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how all the above issues and lack of direction of the pre-Yahya Jammeh years of insignificant access to education and health, has something to do with our present plight. I will end here by again quoting from the same Foroyaa publication, which reads: “We have also seen that, even though certain sectors of the public have been sold out on the pretext that they are not viable, meaning they are not making profit to the expectation of those heading the state, when they are sold out, they still in most cases do not serve the purposes that were originally intended; and instead would start by laying off the workers etc. The GPMB is a case in point. The GGC, which has bought GPMB, has not performed to expectations, it laid off more than half the workforce of the GPMB, it continued to give promissory notes to the farmers and had not gone into any form of processing. The public enterprises, have expanded their activities to cover transport, electricity and water supply, banking, insurance, manufacturing, livestock trade, ferry services etc. if they are encouraged and the same enabling environment is open to them, instead of divesting them, they could have expanded their services to other sectors. Why is it that they could not do the necessary expansion needed? The reasons are many but the main thing is that the profits accrued from them are not necessarily utilized by them to do more investment. Going by the statistics, we know that in 1990/91, the public enterprises have made a joint profit of 32,267,000. (Thirty-two million Dalasis) even though we also know that a few of them did not make much profit. In that year, the GPTC recorded a profit of 367,000 Dalasis, Gamtel made a profit of 23.9million Dalasis, Social Security also made a surplus of 45million Dalasis, the Gambia Ports Authority made a profit of 90 million Dalasis, the then GUC made a loss of 8.1million Dalasis, GPMB made a loss of 18.4 million Dalasis, but if we subtract the losses from the total profit and surpluses they have a joint profit of 32 million Dalasis. Where does this profit go? Does it go to government to use it to provide for more services? The answer is in the negative. It means that this figures therefore do not have any developmental value because the government then and now do not see the need to utilize this monies to reinvest it in the productive sector or to give it back to the GUC or GPMB to invest it so as to become more viable. Statistics have also shown that the GPMB had accumulated reserves of over 100 million Dalasis by 1977/78. This means that it's annual turn over of about 150 million Dalasis had exceeded that of Gamtel but by 1983, all its reserves had depleted and a few years later, its liability to the banking systems were over 100million Dalasis. In 1985/86, it had a trading loss of about 37 million Dalasis.” Season’s greetings to all and may God, The Almighty, guide and protect us all in coming New Year. Have a good day, Gassa. -- There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to solve (Mike Leavitt) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~