Dr. Mamadou Tangara, Minister Of Foreign Affairs and Gambians Abroad
By D. A. Jawo
The failure of our Foreign Affairs Minister Mamadou Tangara to secure the position of Secretary General of the commonwealth against two other African candidates at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Samoa, seems to be a reflection of our lack of a robust foreign policy directive.
While it is obvious that Ghana, for instance, has a much more robust diplomatic clout than the Gambia, but it is possible that the outcome could have been different if we had a more effective foreign policy. In fact the very fact that President Adama Barrow chose to go to his village for his annual vacation rather than attend the CHOGM summit to campaign among his colleague heads of state and government, tells a lot about the state of our foreign policy.
We can recall that the late Badara Joof, shortly after he was appointed Vice President, was very critical of our foreign policy, saying that it was virtually non-existent. Some of his cabinet colleagues were not quite happy with that statement which some of them saw as unfair criticism of the government from the number two personality of the state.
However, reflecting on several issues happening within our foreign policy arena, one would tend to agree with the late VP Joof that our foreign policy leaves quite a lot to be desired.
For instance, we have recently witnessed many embarrassing situations from those serving in our foreign missions, including physical confrontations and some other undiplomatic incidents. This is apparently due to the fact that there are now hardly any career diplomats in our foreign missions but instead the vast majority of them are either those who were removed as cabinet ministers or members of the ruling National People’s Party (NPP) who had failed in their bid to get elected and had to be compensated with diplomatic appointments. In certain instances, some of them were failed politicians who were being compensated for supporting President Barrow during his 2021 presidential elections or those NPP militants being conveniently ‘removed’ from the corridors of power and taken away to the foreign missions.
Therefore, many people tend to blame Foreign Minister Tangara for allowing his ministry to be used as a dumping ground for failed politicians and others who had no competence in representing this country in our foreign missions.
Another recent clear manifestation of the apparent failure of our foreign policy was the outcome of the last Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit hosted by the Gambia in which only six heads of state out of more than 50 expected to attend, actually turned up, with not a single one of the big shots being among them. This is despite the millions of Dalasis of tax payers money being spent to hold the summit.
Now that the CHOGM is over, let’s hope that Minister Tangara would concentrate on revamping and reshaping the foreign policy to make it reflect the country’s reality. For instance, we were promised that the Gambia was going to take “immediate steps” to repatriate Gambian nationals from war-torn Lebanon, but it is now almost a month since the start of the Israeli invasion of that country, and there is hardly any visible action in that regard. There are even reports that at least one Gambian national has been killed in the conflict.
We have heard that Senegal was one of the countries that had evacuated their citizens, and it would have made quite a lot of sense if the Gambia had coordinated with the Senegalese government so that they would have helped evacuate our nationals, especially considering the closeness of the peoples of our two nations.