At a time when conscientious political leaders and honest pragmatic technocrats around the world are moving their nations towards democracy, good governance and accountable leadership, in the Gambia it is the opposite. The Barrow Papers 2024 is the blueprint of the country’s political leaders and their technocrats who, in their wisdom, think that the Gambia should rather go the opposite direction by building a corrupt autocratic dispensation. Now that they have issued their Explanatory Notes, their true intentions for the ‘Mission to Dictator Land’ have become jaharang!
I have gone through the Explanatory Notes and could not find any explanation or justification therein that is geared towards building and strengthening democracy and ensuring accountable leadership in this country. Rather, I find only poor quality justifications that only confirm that the Minister of Justice cannot even defend these Papers.
The justifications they provide flout basic democratic norms while violating international human rights laws and standards. I can state without any fear of exaggeration that the Barrow Papers is purposely and squarely intended to legalize dictatorship and entrench corruption in the Gambia.
For example, the Barrow Papers 2024 deleted Section 47(5) in the 2020 Draft Constitution which states that “the State shall not penalize any person for any opinion or view or the content of any broadcast, publication or dissemination.” The explanation given in the Barrow Papers for deleting this safeguard is that freedom of expression should be balanced with the need to protect individuals and prevent hate, incitement or cause disinformation.
But this is a misinterpretation of freedom of expression hence the Explanatory Notes is not responding to the deleted provision. No one limits, in fact threatens freedom of expression as the Barrow Papers is doing in the name of preventing hate speech.
By deleting that provision, the Barrow Papers is rather effectively empowering the State to suppress freedom of expression. It means if a citizen says anything that the State does not like, it could penalize that citizen or the media outlet which broadcasts that speech when there is no element of hate speech, disinformation or threats to public morality in that speech. Hence the only reason the Barrow Papers deleted that protection for free speech is to silence the media and citizens from holding the Government accountable.
To further clampdown on rights, the Barrow Papers removed from Section 50 of the 2020 Draft the right to picket and petition public and private institutions. The meaningless explanation provided is that they want to “balance the protection of rights with public interests”. Denying citizens to assemble in front of public or private institutions and submit a petition is the heart of the right to the freedom of assembly without which a protest becomes totally meaningless and ineffective, hence shielding public institutions and private businesses from accountability.
In its General Comment 37, the UN Human Rights Council which oversees the monitoring of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that Article 21 of the Covenant on freedom of assembly includes the right to picket. Similarly, the right to petition is recognized as a fundamental human right.
Hence, to remove picketing and petition out of the right to freedom of assembly is a violation of international law, not to mention the fact it denies citizens to express their grievances as they should in a democracy. Protecting public interests cannot in any way mean that picketing and petition cannot take place at the same time.
Picketing and petitioning are in themselves public interest tools. Hence to deny Gambians to picket and petition can only mean denying them from holding the State accountable, defend democracy and demand quality goods and services, etc.
Check out for Part 2
By Madi Jorbateh