By Omar Bah
Lamin Manneh, the deputy secretary external affairs of the United Democratic Party, has said President Adama Barrow’s failure to immediately embrace and proactively engage the new Senegalese government could be a missed opportunity to maintain or even further strengthen the deep historical, cultural, and socio-economic connections ties between the two countries.
Speaking to The Standard, Manneh averred that strengthening ties between the two countries is essential for regional peace and security, especially after past tensions during Yahya Jammeh’s regime.
“All the difficulties we have had with Senegal is as a result of a lack of consultation and we can avoid that by making use of mechanisms like the Senegalo-Gambia Permanent Secretariat which has been here for decades now. It has had its ups and downs but it has been here and we can strengthen it. We also have other inter-ministerial committees between the two countries. You have to strengthen these institutions and have a collaborative framework with Senegal based on the protection of the interest of the two countries. Without these, there could be unnecessary friction,” Mr Manneh said.
He said The Gambia and Senegal are condemned to live together and “we have a lot of interest in common and therefore must work together instead of having conflictual relations which we always try to fix afterwards when it already creates unnecessary bad blood.”
“One would have expected that after the swearing of this new government in Senegal and President Diomaye Faye’s visit, The Gambia would have taken its step also to initiate a visit to Senegal by President Barrow, again, to strengthen our relations and design the policy between the two countries. That could have been followed by an engagement between our diplomats to strengthen our relations but we have missed all of those opportunities. In fact, on the contrary, what happened was that just before President Diomaye came, The Gambia undertook a policy to increase the taxes on cement coming from Senegal to 600 percent. That is a very bad foreign policy approach so when President Diomaye came here, they discussed that briefly and they made promises to the government of Senegal which they never kept,” Manneh said.
Mr Manneh then made a philosophical analysis of the conversation between the two presidents during the visit. “Barrow said unfortunate things to Diomaye who responded that ‘the snake is smaller probably but the venom is still as strong’ (which means don’t take me for granted, I can be tough on you. Macky Sall is gone but we are here).
“That was unfortunate. Yes, Barrow was supporting Macky Sall and Macky was supporting him but you should know that countries have interest, not permanent allies. You have interest that you have to safeguard. He was close to Macky to a point where it was unfortunately a situation of big brother and small brother dominance,” Manneh said.
He added: “That should not have been the case because each is a president but he puts himself in that position where he was a junior partner in a relationship and gave to Macky too much compared to what should have been the case in a normal functional relationship.”
Manneh said when Macky left Mr Barrow wasn’t flexible enough to go back to the position of neutrality and get in touch with the new government of Senegal to assure them that The Gambia will give them the support and treat them the way “we should but it seems like he had this reflection that my friend is gone so the person who beats him is my opponent. No. Diomaye and Sonko are not his opponents”.
“They are the new authorities in Senegal – You work with the new authority and don’t unnecessarily develop a conflictual relationship with them so that was again unfortunate. It went to the point of you saw the tension building especially when it comes to the issue of the cement.”
He said Senegal is protected under the Ecowas Protocols to protect its industries.
