By Alagie Saidy-Barrow
If you look around The Gambia, you will see various institutions, commissions, or bodies set up by the Gambian Government to supposedly ensure that the interests and welfare of the Gambian people are protected and advanced first and foremost. These institutions “regulate” the conduct or activities of certain “industries” to ensure that the people’s interests remain supreme. Essentially, regulatory bodies ensure that the public is not abused or taken for a ride. In The Gambia, such regulatory bodies include the Public Utility Regulatory Authority, Medicines Control Agency, and, yes, the National Human Rights Commission, and importantly, for our so-called democracy, the ostentatious Independent Electoral Commission.
Now, imagine if the telecommunications industry somehow managed to exert so much influence over Pura that Pura turns a blind eye to ridiculously high internet and phone charges. Can you imagine such a scenario? Some tell it’s actually the reality.
But let’s imagine a situation where media houses become so controlling of Pura that terrible journalism based on lies, slander, profiteering, mass hysteria, etc., is celebrated as excellence.
In both scenarios, it is the people who will suffer. That is why I never understood the silence around the dictatorial memorandum from the former director of GRTS, who, like many civil servants, apparently doesn’t realise they are servants of the people, not the president or those who favor him.
But on the issue of influence, let’s also imagine a scenario where those who order medicines into The Gambia control the Medicines Control Agency, allowing importers to flood The Gambia with fake or untested medicines while the Agency turns a blind eye because the board of directors also owns pharmacies. Or simply because those in charge are affiliated with pharmacies. Again, it is the people who will suffer, and such scenarios can lead to the loss of lives. Especially when such medicines are meant for children, and we end up losing over 70 innocent lives!
Regulatory bodies are established to protect people and promote their interests. But when industry stakeholders, such as telecommunications companies, control a regulatory body, like Pura, we have what some smart people call regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is a situation in which a regulatory body that is supposed to regulate an entity is effectively in the hands of that very entity.
Now welcome to the so-called Independent Electoral Commission, an institution that is supposed to regulate the conduct of political parties, and “provide the Gambian people with an independent and efficient electoral process that is based on fairness, transparency and trust and supported by competent staff for the democratic conduct of all public elections and referenda.” That is according to the perfunctory mission statement on the IEC website. And if you believe Alieu Momar Njie, the Chairman of the IEC, he claims that “our system of election is the most transparent, free and fair, throughout the world.” And what is that claim based on? Because according to him, the IEC makes “sure from the beginning of registering the voters, we invite all parties to be present, and they are giving the voters card free of charge on the spot. On Election Day, we send in observers (and) party agents to ensure that what is going on is transparent, free, and fair, and to oversee spot counting as well. No matter what, we do our best to make sure that it’s free, fair, and transparent.” I am not sure how that makes the Gambian election system the best in the world, but that is what our able Chairman claims. Ironically, Mr Njie was encouraging political parties to promote youth participation in national politics. The man himself is in his 80s and is refusing to retire. He wants others to give youths a chance, but he himself has no desire to do so. Much like our political parties, which harp on term limits, but in their minds, term limits should apply only when one is in power, not when one is in opposition. You can almost guess who will be the leaders of all the political parties if they contest. But I digress.
The question I have is: Is the IEC truly independent as a regulatory body, or is it at the government’s mercy? Independence goes beyond the ability to manage one’s budget. Critically, it means being “free” from political influence. And political influence is not always exerted through financial squeezes; it can also be implied. The most influential players at the IEC are there based on the approval of the very people whose political behavior they are supposed to regulate! We are witnesses to how Yahya Jammeh fired or selected whomever he desired at the IEC. To date, those of us immured within this colonial space we call Gambia have very little influence or voice in who becomes a member of the IEC. It was and still remains the sole preserve of the President and his men and women. How “independent” can a Commission referee elections when its financial sustenance is in the hands of one of the players? Won’t it be the case of “who pays the piper, decides the tune?”
If an institution like the IEC, which is as critical and important to this so-called democracy we claim to be building, is in the control of the very people that it is supposed to regulate, how can such an institution claim to be independent? If anything, the IEC, like all government bureaucracies, is susceptible to the whims and machinations of those in power and their entourage. There’s a reason we insist on including “independent” in the name of our electoral bodies, even if it’s in name only. No electoral body can perform its functions if it’s not independent or does not have autonomy in its operations. But in order to continue claiming democracy, we are obliged to keep the electoral fallacy alive and well.
Mind you, this is the same IEC that oversaw Yahya Jammeh’s elections and ignored all his unlawful activities. It was so bad that in 2011, Ecowas observers refused to “observe” the charade. Yet, the IEC bravely marched on and declared him the winner. Their excuse is that no election is ever perfect. And since no election is ever perfect, I guess there was never any need to tell hapless civil servants not to wear Jammeh’s T-shirts and turn themselves into clownish and mindless zombies of the tyrant.
So the IEC simply accepted Jammeh’s decisions because perfection is impossible. The contrivance of ethnic politics, control of state media, and use of state resources to gain advantage over the opposition never mattered to the IEC because, well, no election is ever perfect, even if it is the best in the world, according to Alieu Momar Njie. Like all government institutions under the dictatorship, independence is mostly in name only. If you ask me, I’d say the IEC needs to be freed from the regulatory capture of those in power. But since denial is our comfort zone, let’s continue pretending that the IEC is independent and that we indeed have a democracy. Denial is as comforting as it is dangerous!.
