Demba Ali Jawo, Former Minister of Information
By D. A. Jawo
While no reason has been advanced by the Attorney General Dawda Jallow as to why he had called for the postponement of the debate on the 2024 Draft Constitution by the National Assembly until June, but as expected, many people are speculating what the reasons might be.
Some people say the delay may be meant to give more time to the executive to try and convince more members of the National Assembly in order to get it pass the second reading, while others are of the view that they may want to use the window to make some necessary adjustments to it in order to make it acceptable to its critics. Whatever the case however, both Dawda Jallow and their ubiquitous friend Dr. Muhammed Ibn Chambas have quite a lot of work to do in order to garner the required number to support the draft, seen by many people as a self-serving document meant to further entrench the Barrow hegemony.
While it is true that there were some consultations with regards to the re-submission of a new draft to the National Assembly after the rejection of the 2020 Draft by the regime’s cronies, but the 2024 Draft was definitely not the product of those consultations. We all know that the consultations with the different stakeholders revolved solely around the 2020 Draft, but the 2024 Draft is a complete deviation from that original draft. It is instead a reflection of the Barrow government’s own wishes and aspirations, hardly reflecting the principles contained in the 2020 Draft. Therefore, instead of going by the consensus of those that were consulted, the government simply took a few clauses from the 2020 Draft and went ahead to produce their own document, which gives too much power to the president.
Of course, there is no denying the fact that the 2024 Draft contains some progressive clauses, but it also seeks to give excessive powers to the president, which is what makes it not quite palatable to many people.
If indeed the government was interested in fulfilling their promise to give Gambians a new constitution, any reasonable person would have expected them to simply re-introduce the 2020 Draft and leave it to the National Assembly to make the necessary adjustments rather than coming up with an almost completely different draft whose clear objective is obviously not only to further perpetuate President Barrow in power, but it is also a self-serving document that would give him too much power that even former President Yahya Jammeh never enjoyed in the 1997 Constitution. This is certainly a complete betrayal of the wishes and aspirations of the vast majority of Gambians who had risked everything to get rid of the Jammeh dictatorship and usher in a new dispensation.
It is, for instance, quite hard to understand why President Barrow would still insist on retaining the power and sole authority to appoint members of the cabinet and other senior government officials without involvement of the National Assembly, which is a complete deviation from the modern traits of democracy and good governance. It is quite obvious that such a system of making appointments without consultations with the National Assembly had been open to abuse, with people being appointed simply for their family or other personal connections rather than their skills or competence. This is quite evident in almost all recent appointments to boards of public institutions and other state agencies most of whose appointees are well known supporters or sympathizers of the ruling NPP. It is therefore quite necessary that the President’s nominees to such senior positions should be submitted to the National Assembly for thorough vetting to ensure that they do not just represent personal or other parochial interests but are ready to serve the whole nation without any personal considerations.
For instance, there is also no justification for the President, as head of the executive to usurp the power and authority to appoint the speaker and his/her deputy as heads of the legislature, which is supposed to be a parallel arm of the government. The most basic tenets of democracy demand that the legislature should have the power to choose their own leader among the elected members rather than having people, who represent no one but themselves, to be imposed on them by the President. It would indeed be foolhardy on the part of the elected members of the National Assembly to even support a constitution that would deny them their right to choose the leadership of the legislature amongst themselves.
It is also quite disappointing to see in Clause 72 (3) of the 2024 Draft that the President still wants to retain the power to appoint the Chairman and other commissioners of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), which we are told should be done in “consultation with the Judicial Service Commission and the Public Service Commission”. It is however quite obvious that such consultations with those two institutions would be mere formalities because many of their members are his hand-picked appointees, most of whom are politically-tainted and ready to jump at his command without asking how high.
Therefore, the credibility of the IEC can only be guaranteed if the National Assembly and the other stakeholders are involved in the appointment of its Chairman and other commissioners rather than giving all that leverage to the President, who is also one of the players during elections. We are all aware of the credibility issues that the IEC is presently facing and therefore, maintaining the status quo in the recruitment and appointment of its members would certainly not be welcomed by most people. In fact, with the final departure of its erstwhile Chairman, Alieu Momar Njai, everyone is anxiously waiting to see who President Barrow would put in his place, with many people hoping and praying that he does not appoint someone whose only qualification would be his/her sympathies for the NPP.