By Omar Bah
Lamin Keita, a Gambian professor based in Wisconsin, United States, has accused the National Assembly of foot-dragging on the country’s progress.
Speaking in a Standard exclusive yesterday, Dr Keita said the National Assembly is both “dysfunctional and gridlocked.”.
He said all around the country, people are asking what’s wrong with The Gambia and why it isn’t working the way “we all think it should be post-Jammeh’s rule.”
“The answer is the Gambian people themselves. A nation is, above all, the hearts and minds of its people. And Gambians are becoming increasingly untethered from both reality and the essential principles and traditions that have shaped our nation’s historic success. A large part of why The Gambia isn’t working is because far too many Gambians neither know nor care how it’s supposed to work or how to control their puppet masters behind the scenes of bad governance,” he said.
Dr Keita added that the realities underground in the country are telling.
“The fundamental root cause of this mania is killing the country because of the combination of three things. The first is favouritism and nepotism (either due to being once tribal or favouring relatives, friends, or associates because of political lineage). Gambians, like all humans, have deep tribal roots. This expresses itself in powerful biases in favour of one’s own political clan and searing antipathy for the other side. The second is social media,” he stated.
He said a frenzy of misbehaviour and misjudgement has overtaken Gambian politics.
“Actors and institutions—on both sides of the political divide—are silencing speech on bad governance. Our law enforcement agents and prosecutors are criminalising politics. The incumbent government is undermining the electoral system to prolong their stay in power. While a new breed of social media celebrities in the country is failing to address numerous public policy failures, from broken governance and a weak internal security system to hugely expensive and dysfunctional primary healthcare and educational systems to staggering economic inequality,” he noted.
He added that the structure of the country’s political system itself is also part of the problem.
“The numerous political parties’ system exacerbates incompetency by pitting political juggernauts against each other in a bitter, all-consuming rivalry—and gerrymandering—paving the way for the poor management of the country’s electoral system. This flywheel spins faster every day, turning the country into a failing state. It’s culminating in two overlapping threats to the Gambian experiment. The first is the criminalization of body politics, as the country’s prosecutors set their sights on partisan rivals. Since every political bombardment must be met with a greater opposite force, this has set in motion a malicious dynamic that may spiral into catastrophe,” he argued.
Election
Keita argued that the country’s election system is under attack, not just by ineffectual zealots at the margins of power or howling mobs in the street, but by the incumbent and his loyalists who put their tomb on the scale of justice throughout the state government.
“The election in two years to come will reveal a lot about the current state of the nation. Given the empirical observation that the current government is taking Gambians for granted (albeit for differing reasons), the next two years before the election will be not only a bumpy ride but a tumultuous two years from there,” he added.
