By Madi Jobarteh

Public officials have a duty to be truthful and honest when they deal with public matters. This is simply because public officials are entrusted with public affairs and resources to manage and deliver on behalf of and for the welfare of the public [Section 1(2) 1997 Constitution]. Public officials handle life and death matters for citizens. Hence by law, a public officer has no choice but to be honest and truthful when he or she provides information to citizens.

As the nation is yet to recover from the betrayal of the President and his Cabinet for rejecting at first, and now butchering the 2020 draft constitution designed to legalize dictatorship and legitimize corruption, it is disheartening to hear the Justice and Information ministers go to the radio to spew false and misleading statements just to defend these Barrow Papers. Dawda Jallow and Ismaila Ceesay owe citizens an apology and a retraction for their false and disingenuous comments seeking to legitimize these illegitimate Barrow Papers.

Speaking on Coffee Time with Peter Gomez this morning, Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said the 2020 draft collapsed because of political differences. This is utterly false. The fact on the ground is that it was mainly Barrow’s allies in the National Assembly together with their NRP colleagues who all voted against the draft in the interest of Barrow himself. Of course, the votes of Yaya Jammeh’s No To Alliance would not matter if NPP and NRP parliamentarians had joined the UDP to vote for the draft in the National Assembly in September 2020.

As the Minister of Justice who took the bill to the Assembly, Dawda himself did not defend his bill at all. It was like he came with the intention to kill the bill. Therefore, it was disingenuous on his part to claim that the 2020 draft constitution did not pass due to political differences. That is an attempt to mislead and distort the facts. The 2020 draft constitution collapsed thanks to his government’s lack of support.

For the 2024 Barrow Papers, Dawda said they had done consultations. He referred to activities undertaken by the International Idea, Goodluck Jonathan in both Banjul and Abuja, the civil society and other forums that were held since then. What Dawda refused to say truthfully is that those consultations were not meant for the Cabinet to write a constitution. Rather those consultations were meant to facilitate discussions on how to reach consensus on the issues. Those consultations did not conclude that the Cabinet should draft and gazette a draft constitution. Hence to defend the Cabinet in writing the Barrow Papers based on these consultations was indeed the height of dishonesty.

Even if the Cabinet was mandated to write a draft constitution, should it not first publish its draft for wider circulation and review before sending it directly to the National Assembly? If Dawda and Ismaila were interested in and committed to inclusion and ownership as they claim, why should they send a draft for gazetting immediately and not send the draft to the public and stakeholders first for their final review?

A gazette is a legal requirement and not a public information channel. Thus, if you wish to popularize an issue, the gazette is not the tool for that. You take it to the media and to public gatherings or conferences. Hence it is misleading to speak about gazette as if it is a normal media outlet.

As if Dawda’s poor and dishonest performance was not enough, Ismaila came to further dramatize the scene. Instead of responding to direct questions from the host, Ismaila engaged in false equivalencies, falsehoods, rationalizations and generalizations which are all intended to mislead. For example, while on one hand he would claim every society has its own democracy based on its culture and circumstances, when cornered by the host, he would shift gears by referencing other constitutions as examples as if he forgot his first comment!

For example, in trying to justify the speaker or vice president assuming the presidency in the event of a vacancy in the office of the president when the host suggested the introduction of a running mate system, Ismaila debunked the idea by referring to the relationship between Kenyan president Uhuru and his vice president Ruto back then. He used that case to ridicule the running mate system and went further to state that Nigeria has no running mate system. The fact is the running mate system is set in the Nigerian Constitution 1999 under Section 142(1) which he knows because he is a political science professor. He just wanted to be dishonest.

When dishonest politicians wish to play with the people’s minds, they jump into baseless polemics just to confuse fundamental issues. Instead of dealing with specificities and facts, they digress by widening the argument unnecessarily just to cover up and divert the real issue. They engage in false equivalences and uncertainties thereby mixing mangoes and oranges just to throw off people to irrelevant things. This is the strategy of Ismaila Ceesay. After he talks, one is forced to ask what the issue was about in the first place because he makes one lose track of the facts.

For The Gambia, Our Homeland