By Tabora Bojang
Veteran politician and leader of the Gambia For All Bakary Bunja Dabo on Saturday told his party’s congress delegates that the current economic hardship is creating disillusionment and a growing sense of despair among the populace.
He said this has sadly led to fostering a system in which the language of money politics speaks loudest.
“For the past years we have been contending with an environment characterised by depression, pervasive poverty and an alarming extent of hardship on the people. This is a situation that leads to disillusionment; driving many among our people to reserve their energies for the daily struggle to put food on the table for their families,” BB Dabo lamented.
He told his audience that under such a situation, partisan political cause are seen as presenting very little interest which leads to a less positive attitude to civic responsibilities.
BB criticised what he called the ‘growing trend of polarisation’ that has come to be the dominant feature of politics in the country sustained by “unscrupulous actors” whose “selfish agenda runs counter” to national interest.
According to him, recent talks of dialogue between political players and consensus building approaches to governance have dominated political discussion, but whereas in principle the idea is positive, in reality it still amounts to not much more than empty rhetoric with the evidence of the will to change from old tricks lacking.
“Judging by the trend of political discourse in the country it is clear that the focus of our politics is less on principles, on ideas or on governance systems which should help citizens make informed choices; rather, increasingly, citizens are overwhelmed with relentless propaganda, use of violent language and such other unscrupulous methods calculated to manipulate opinion. Today we have started to witness the phenomenon of diminishing public trust in the political class, a factor which tends to inhibit constructive engagements by serious minded parties who seek the ears and attention of the masses,” BB Dabo said to attentive GFA members and invited guests at the weekend congress
