All

I thank Foroyaa for bringing us this vital information confirming our contention that section 114 of Gambia's Criminal Code does not apply to communications to the President.

I was pleased with Gumbo's acquitall but utterly dissatisfied with the reasons advanced for it. The Government has now accepted the Gumbo Touray-type case was outside the ambit of section 114. In my view, the law itself is repugnant of the Constitution and must be scrapped. 

Gumbo Touray and similarly situated people are due for large compensations for unlawful arrest, detention, malicious prosecution, and in some cases wrongful conviction and imprisonment.

Do they have the courage to demand compensation and reinstatement where appropriate?

Please read this material from FOROYAA

LJDarbo

BEWARE OF ATTEMPT TO CHANGE THE LAW ON FALSE INFORMATION TO PUBLIC OFFICER MAY BE RISKY TO PETITION PRESIDENT, MINISTERS, SPEAKER AND MPS IF IT PASSES UNLESS…

Published on Tuesday, 02 April 2013 12:06 | Written by Ousman Njie

A bill has been drafted for introduction to the National Assembly aiming to amend section 114 of the Criminal Code under which many people have been charged after petitioning the President. Foroyaa had argued in the past and had also published letters addressed to the executive to indicate that Section 114 is restricted to false information given to a public servant and did not include the President, Vice President, Speaker or Deputy Speaker of National Assembly, Minister and member of the National Assembly. It is clearly stipulated under Section 166 of the Constitution that the designation public servant does not include elected representatives. We went further to add that Section 25 subsection (1)(f) of the Constitution states that “every person shall have the right to freedom to petition the executive for redress of grievances and to resort to the courts for the protection of his or her rights.” In short, it is a right to speak one’s mind to the President and it is for the executive to decide whether to address one’s concerns or not. One goes to the law courts out of one’s volition. The public should take note of the fact that petitions are just opinions from a petitioner. No right thinking official could be misled by a petition to do wrong. Every right thinking person must conduct investigation to determine the veracity of allegations before taking any action on a petition. The risk taken by a petitioner for exaggeration of facts is to have one’s petition thrown in a trash basket for lack of merit. This is why many people are of the opinion that Section 114 should be repealed or be interpreted not to include petitioning political representatives. Instead of repealing it or restricting its interpretation to information given to civil servants, the state continued to charge people who had addressed letters to the executive. Some of these cases were appealed against on the ground that the executive is not classified as a civil servant. Many people were of the opinion that a crime classified as a misdemeanour which makes the guilty liable to a fine of five hundred dalasi or an imprisonment for a period of 6 months or both is not worth maintaining in our statute books. A progressive criminal justice system does not aim to punish just for the sake of punishment. It aims to promote social justice in a way that balances penalties with the weight of a crime. In short, instead of making begging a crime that lands a person in jail to be fed by the state one would spend the moneyused to maintain the person in prison to provide assistance to the Social Welfare department for the beggar to start petty business. Instead of sending a person to jail for false information and deprive a family of a breadwinner and the community of an employee a letter cautioning the petitioner not to mislead the authority should be sufficient to bring shame to the person to restrain him or her from doing the same again. This however is not the reasoning of the state. Instead, a bill is being prepared for introduction to the National Assembly which has been gazetted since 15^th February 2013 aimed at amending Section 114 of the Criminal Code to include petitions to authorities who had been excluded by the Constitution. The state wants to increase the penalty to five years imprisonment and a fine of 50000 dalasi or both for giving false information to a public servant or the President, Vice President, Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Minister or Member of the National Assembly. The objective of the amendment is stated as follows: “To ensure effective administration of criminal justice system, and specifically, section 114 of the Criminal Code which create the offence of giving false information to a Public Officer is found to be grossly inadequate to the extent that sections 166(4) and section 167 of the 1997 Constitution of the Republic of The Gambia exclude the President, Vice President, Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Ministers or Members of the National Assembly, etc. From the definition of ‘public officer’ and therefore outside the contemplation of the Criminal Code. “It is pertinent that the amendment to the Criminal Code be made to reflect the current socio political realities.” We will follow the debate at the National Assembly and inform the public accordingly.

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