In his 2016 New Year message to Gambians, Jammeh boasted of
reducing hunger and malnutrition by 7.7% in 23 years which works out to an
average annual of 0.36 per cent. The
population of The Gambia almost doubled during the same period from slightly
over 1.0 million to 1.9 million. No
wonder, the incidence of poverty continues to increase at an alarming
rate. 69 per cent of Gambians, according
to UNDP Human Development Index, are living below the poverty line, defined as
anyone living on $ 1.25 or less. The
Gambia is still low income despite the promise by Jammeh to transform the
country into a Middle Income Country (MIC) by 2020; it is still food-deficit
country with a subsistence economy despite his repeated and unfulfilled
promises since 1994 food (rice) self-sufficiency.
Children in Central River and Upper River
Divisions are suffering from kwashiorkor which is an extreme form of
malnutrition that the regime of Jammeh has been concealing from the public for
three consecutive years. And according
to Jammeh’s own Finance Minister, there is no respite in sight when he warned
the National Assembly a couple of weeks ago that 2016 is going to be another
difficult year, after two successive years of decline of agricultural
production.
The nation’s farmers were expecting to be informed of the
market arrangements for this year’s groundnut buying season and about the legal
status of the Gambia Groundnut Corporation (GGC), a bankrupt Agency that ironically
has monopoly over the sub-sector. What
is the legal status of the proposed National Food Security, Processing and
Marketing Corporation (NFSPMC)? Has the GGC been subsumed by NFSPMC as mooted
by the regime several months ago?
Gambian farmers feel abandoned by their government because it is January
and still no official announcement has been made regarding the producer price
for their produce. These should be the
priority areas of the regime. Let us get
our national priorities right.
Yaya Jammeh also tried - in the lamest of fashion - to
explain to Gambians, and particularly to Gambian Christians, why he declared
The Gambia an Islamic Republic, without national discourse or any form of
warning of any kind. His rationale for
tampering with the secularity of the state is that Muslims constitute the
majority which, in the eyes of a myopic and erratic leader, is sufficient –
damn what anyone thinks. If majority
rule justifies preemption of minority rights, then Sir Dawda missed his chance
of renaming the country The Islamo-Mandinka Republic of The Gambia.
Jammeh also used the occasion to telegraph to the IMF, World
Bank, AfDB and the rest of the development community that he intends to ignore
IMF advise, by continuing to intervene in the foreign exchange market. He evidently had convinced himself that his
intervention will correct what he described as “certain distortions and market
failures that resulted in the continuous dwindling of the value of the dalasi
against foreign currencies.” Yaya
Jammeh did not stop at that. He
proceeded to suggest that what he’s doing is no different from what the U.S.
Federal Reserve or the Bank of England would have done in managing a financial
crisis – an absolute misrepresentation of the facts. These Central Banks are independent of the
executive branches of their respective governments as the CBG was empowered by
law. But since Jammeh is the law, I
guess we are at the mercy of the dictator.
By his unilateral actions in the foreign exchange markets,
Jammeh has set us back to pre-January 1986, i.e. before the dalasi was floated
and an interbank market for foreign exchange created, allowing the dalasi to
float freely – a system that served the Gambia and its economy well. Yaya
Jammeh is determined to destroy that too, as he’s destroyed so many component
parts of a financial infrastructure that was painstakingly put together by
Gambians at tremendous cost. The retrenchment that took place during the
Economic Recovery Program that resulted in many Gambians losing their jobs is a
distance but painful reminder of the sacrifices that many made to reconfigure
Gambia’s economy that was the envy of our regional partners. Jammeh has squandered it all.
Realizing that his market interference is not supported, not
only by the IMF and other donors but by a hamstrung and marginalized business
community, he tried, in the same message, to say that his regime “subscribes to
the principles and spirit of the free market system”, expecting Gambians will
buy his bale of goods. Happily and
finally, Gambians know better and can now see through his every bumbling
move. Jammeh will destroy the economy
for his own individual selfish business interest. It is such a human catastrophe that a head of
state legally permitted to engage in business,
consuming all his time at the expense of the economic and social welfare
of not only the Nation but individual businesses that must compete with him in
a rigged market.
As we usher in the New Year, all opponents of this
incompetent regime must rededicate ourselves to the restoration of democracy
and the rule of law in a country we love and hold dear. We must, at the same time, recommit ourselves
to the peaceful removal of the cancer, from Gambia's our body politic.
