Dr. Ceesay Criticizes CRC’s Errors and Holds UDP Accountable for 2020 Draft Constitution’s Failure

Dr. Ismaila Ceesay, Minister of Information

By Buba Gagigo

Dr. Ismaila Ceesay, the Minister of Information, has criticized the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) for making two significant mistakes and has held the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) responsible for the failure of the 2020 draft constitution.

“The CRC we have to commend them for a good job, a very competitive work, but I think they made two mistakes along the way and I think some political stakeholders too made mistakes along the way. The CRC once failed to pay attention to concerns of the border spectrum of the stakeholders. I will give you an example. When the cabinet made a position paper that the retroactive clause was problematic for them, the CRC didn’t pay attention, they still maintain it. 

“But when lawyer Darboe, the leader of the UDP made a statement that the clause that barred anybody who was convicted from running for president is maintained from the original 2020 draft of the constitution that they will make sure they fight the constitution. I think the CRC paid attention to that and removed that and rewarded it to allow convicted people to run for office. But they failed to pay attention to the concerns from the cabinet,” the information minister said.The Information Minister identified another mistake by the CRC: reducing the powers of the president.

“They have to understand that Gambia is a very strong presidential system. You cannot bring a system where you kinda take all the powers away from the president and give it to the national assembly and other organs of the state,” he said.Dr. Ceesay warned that this shift could lead to a constitutional crisis.“So at some point, we realized that the 2020 draft had serious fundamental flaws and that most of the powers were taken away from the presidency in a very strong presidential system, which could cause a problem, a lock jam along the way. And these powers were given to the National Assembly. So effectively they created a president with no powers and this was very problematic and this could cause us problems along the way. I understand that CRC thinking at that time, coming from dictatorship, coming from the way Jammeh was abusing power. They thought that the next president should not have those powers, so they took most of the powers from the president and this was problematic,” he said.

In addition to his critique of the CRC, Dr. Ceesay blamed the UDP for the draft constitution’s ultimate failure. He recounted a stakeholders’ forum where political parties identified ten key issues, reaching a consensus on all but the retroactive clause.

“I went to Abuja representing the Citizen’s Alliance party at that time. We were hosted by Goodluck Jonathan. Political party leaders were there to discuss the constitution. We all agreed on almost all the ten sticking points except the retroactive clause. All of us in the room agreed to at least negotiate and accept the retroactive clause to be removed in exchange for us to have a constitution. The UDP was the only party in that room that disagreed. So effectively, the reason we don’t have a constitution today is because of the UDP and its leadership,” he said.

He further suggested that the UDP would likely continue to block the draft if it is reintroduced in parliament.“Because they are saying even if a comma is removed from the CRC draft they will vote it out, and they want the original draft to come back as it is, which is not possible,” Dr Ismaila Ceesay told GRTS.