The appointment of Mr Edrissa MO Faal as Chief Justice of The Gambia on Friday has set off one of the loudest constitutional debates we have had since 2017. On one side is the Gambia Bar Association, which on 6th July, 2026 passed a resolution and on 28th July, 2026 filed a suit in the Supreme Court challenging the appointment under Section 139 of the Constitution.
On the other is the government, principally the Attorney General’s Chambers and the Ministry of Justice, and a wave of public commentary, accusing the bar, among others, of selective outrage and asking: where was this storm when the Constitution was in the gutter for 22 years? Both positions deserve to be weighed. Because at stake is not just one man’s appointment, but whether our legal institutions will enforce the Constitution consistently, or only when it is politically convenient.
According to the GBA’s own notice to its members issued on Friday, the case is not “about the person of Mr Faal, his professional standing or his distinguished career”. It is about procedure and qualifications. In its suit, the association seeks five declarations from the Supreme Court. The core of them are: that Mr Faal does not meet the constitutional qualifications under Section 139; that the appointment was made contrary to that section and is therefore null; and that the swearing-in before 1st August 2026 was invalid because there was, at that time, no vacancy.
The bar said it first raised these concerns directly with the president, the Judicial Service Commission, and the attorney general, and only went to court after those channels produced no clarity. Crucially, the GBA acknowledged this was “an extraordinary step”. To its knowledge, it had never before sued to challenge a chief justice appointment. That admission is important. It tells us the bar itself understands the weight of confronting the executive on the highest judicial office.
On the other hand, the government has not publicly commented on the criticism of the appointment of Mr Faal. However, supporters of Mr Faal and surrogates of the government have accused the GBA of “blowing down” or rather barking up the wrong tree and accused it of institutional hypocrisy claiming for 22 years under former president Yahya Jammeh, decrees suspended the 1970 Constitution, ouster clauses shut the courthouse doors, and lawyers helped draft the instruments of authoritarian rule, yet, the bar remained largely silent. They invoked Charles Hamilton Houston’s idea of the lawyer as “social engineer” not “parasite,” and pointed to Pa Edi Faal’s decades of practice in the US and The Gambia as an asset the judiciary badly needed.
The truth is, although many lawyers did serve, adapt to, or stayed quiet during the AFPRC-APRC years, many other lawyers from doyens like Ousman Sillah to newcomers like Abdoulie Fatty, stood up to the Jammeh autocracy. In fact, the one person who stood as an icon of resistance against Jammeh above everyone else is none other than Ousainu Darboe, the UDP leader, who was before anything, a lawyer through and through. And the argument that the bar was found wanting in the score of years and two from 1994 to 2016 does not invalidate a constitutional challenge in 2026. If that were the standard, no institution could ever reform itself. The whole point of the new constitutional order after Jammeh was that institutions would start doing, belatedly, what they should have done all along: defend the supremacy of the Constitution.
The GBA’s mandate, as it states, includes defending the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. So when the its general membership voted at an emergency general meeting that an appointment may violate an express constitutional provision, silence would itself be a breach of duty on its part. Nonetheless, we can ask, will the bar be this vigilant on the next appointment, and on executive overreach generally?
The matter is now before the Supreme Court, and that is exactly where it belongs. The court’s job is not to judge personalities. It is to read Section 139, determine what “qualifications” mean, and decide whether a vacancy existed on the date of appointment and swearing-in. This is not about Pa Edi Faal’s competence. By all accounts he brings a vast reservoir of litigation and public law experience. The question is narrower: did the process follow the Constitution we all swore to uphold?
If the court finds no violation, the appointment stands and the bar must respect it. If the court finds a violation, then the executive must correct it. Let the Supreme Court decide on the law. Let the bar commit to consistency after the judgment. And let the executive demonstrate that it respects constitutional limits, not just when convenient.
The Gambia has suffered too long from constitutions that exist on paper but not in practice. Whether one agrees with the GBA’s timing or not, a public, judicial test of Section 139 is healthy for our democracy. In the end, the Constitution must be bigger than any appointee, any bar, and any government.