What happened in the chambers of our National Assembly last week was worthy of the box office. Our finance Minister appeared on set for an extraordinary session of the Assembly. The motion involved the reduction of excise taxes on alcoholic beverages after he made the unprecedented fiscal blunder of raising these taxes by 750 percent. The other matter at hand was the ratification of a loan agreement to the tune of 3 billion Dalasis earmarked for projects related to the government’s bid to host the OIC Summit for 2022.

The Finance Minister, who will surely be remembered for his shenanigans in the National Assembly during the debate on the Supplementary Appropriation Bill of 2018, might have pulled off a sequel of getting away with stuff but he lost the plot to some experienced members of the legislative chamber who upstaged him and stole the show.

The Oscar for the best performance in the drama went to Honourable Sidia Jatta of Wulli. Honourable  Jatta earned the award for some noble, dignified reasons. One of the reasons was his impassioned plea to the government to get its priorities right by treating real life issues of access to clean drinking water and the plight of victims of natural disasters, as opposed to the cosmetic projects associated with the OIC. Sidia’s submission on the above issue was highly dramatic and rightly so.

Unable to match this great caliber of clear-headedness, the Finance Minister bored the assembly (and by extension the entire nation) with lame comedy. Of all the reasons he could have advanced for his hiking of excise taxes on alcoholic beverages, our finance minister gave us the risible explanation that the move was meant to curb the rise of alcohol consumption by young people.

I was shocked and disappointed to have heard such a deceptive and amateur explanation advanced by someone who is supposed to be one of the most seasoned public finance experts in our country.It is not permissible in our culture to say that what an elderly person said is not true, but, to borrow from our high school literature classic “Gulliver’s Travels,” we can comfortably and euphemistically say that our Finance Minister “has said the thing which is not!”

The minister got the run for his money from the Honourable National Assembly member from Serekunda. The immutable Halifa Sallah challenged the minister’s reasoning, asking him why didn’t government simply ban the production of alcohol if the state believed that alcohol consumption is rising with deleterious effects on the youth.

Misplaced priorities and spurious, if not incredulous announcements seem to be reigning supreme at our Finance Ministry. Having brought us an 11th-hour supplementary appropriation bill last year, the ministry went further to propose and implement a most disingenuous 50 percent increase in salaries of civil servants.

When these fiscal and financial time bombs were being set, I weighed in with op-eds to raise alarms. My first essay, On the Proposed Salary Increment centered on the most crucial question: the where. Where would the Finance Minister find the resources needed to fund his planned quantum jump in salaries? Since no new sources of funds have been identified to pay for this immense spending, the obvious answer is that the Finance Minister banked his hopes on robbing Peter to pay Paul. He would simply take out more loans and incur more debts for the government to finance the salary increase. And tax hikes, too. This is bad economics.

My second op-ed, On The Audacity of Fiscal Profligacy, decried the way and manner in which the supplementary appropriation bill fiasco was handled by the finance ministry.

And when the matter of the most irresponsible and counterintuitive 750 percent tax hike came to pass with a most destabilising effect on our main national brewery, I had to come back with another op-ed, On the Consequences of Fiscal Profligacy.

A debate ensued on this matter that actually culminated in the presentation of a new proposal to the National Assembly by our finance minister. What bothers me is the Finance Minister’s audacity to come to the National Assembly with such a daring false premise of pronouncing that the initial hike in the tax on alcoholic beverages was motivated by the need to curb alcohol consumption? Does this man think that Gambians are fools or that we are all sleeping? Is it not down right disrespectful for him to advance such a laughable reason for what was nothing but a reckless tax hike based on nothing but the desire to fill the gaps created by his voracious fiscal binge in the 2019 budget?

And lest I forget, would the National Assembly ask the Finance Minister where is he going to get the extra resources that would be needed to compensate for the loss of revenue that would be occasioned by the revision of the tax rate approved during this particular extraordinary session of the Assembly.

Fasten Your Seatbelts 

Our fiscal spacecraft is flying on some turbulent path and Gambians must brace up for a bumpy ride in our macroeconomic trajectory for the rest of this year and beyond. Unless the authorities cook up the inflation numbers (and I believe they are capable of doing that given the daring overtures of our finance minister), we are sure to see a steady rise in inflation in the weeks and months to come. The potential cover-up should not come as a surprise since a supposedly autonomous institution like the Central Bank is bold enough to mask our fiscal numbers with intent to hoodwink the unsuspecting masses.

Why in the world would the Central Bank omit fiscal numbers from the press releases they issue after their Monetary Policy Committee Meetings? Fine, they backtracked on that and they have now included those numbers after an outcry. But then why are they publishing the budget balance “including grants” rather than the more transparent and more useful aggregate of budget deficit “excluding grants” which is a more useful indicator in the matter of fiscal sustainability.

If word on the street that the IMF and allied partners might withhold budget support this year turns out to the true, then my prediction of higher inflation would be outpaced by the actual outrun. The money market that has been unfairly and unreasonably ‘backstabbed’ by the monetary authorities in crushing the policy rate may go into turbulence as well if the government does the expected — shores up resources to finance the anticipated attendant fiscal gap.

Will our economy be able to weather the storm that is gathering this summer and beyond?

Under these circumstances, the least we deserve from our fiscal authorities is to tell us the truth so that together we can work out solutions for a problem THEY created but the effects of which are going to strike us all.

Momodou Sabally

Former Secretary General, National Budget Director, research economist.

In the Attorney General’s attempt to rationalize the recommendation to release confessed killers to the society, he gave the victims and Gambians a false choice between on the one hand releasing the killers or on the other hand keeping them in custody without trial in contravention of the laws of the country. He went further to suggest that people, including the victims, who do not agree with his decision to release the killers condone the violation of the human rights of the killers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We respect the human rights of everyone, including confessed killers. Which is why I would submit that there is a third option the Attorney General should have pursued. The Attorney General should have charged these people a long time ago and sought guilty pleas from them. Even if that means they will not cooperate with the TRRC, so be it. We have to understand that the TRRC is not the ultimate goal here. Justice for the victims is the ultimate goal. Call it transitional justice or any other fancy characterization. The TRRC is just a mechanism for getting to justice. And in my opinion, it’s a poor mechanism compared to a functioning court system.

The Attorney General’s claim that the criminal justice system cannot run parallel with the TRRC is neither based on sound legal reasoning nor on solid strategic grounds.

Legally, the Constitution mandates the Attorney General, through the Director of Public Prosecutions, to charge people who violate our laws. The Constitution does not say that he should only bring charges when he gets a referral from a body such as the TRRC. Not even the TRRC Act contemplates that reading of the law. On the contrary, according to the Act the commission can only make recommendations and the Attorney General is free to ignore the recommendations. Judging by what they did to the recommendations from the Faraba Commission, it is highly likely that this government is not going to act on recommendations to prosecute from the TRRC if those recommendations do not align with their political benefits.

Strategically too, it takes nothing away from the TRRC process if witnesses such as the confessed killers under discussion are charged and punished before they appear at the commission. Matter of fact, their testimony before the commission will be more credible if they give it after they have been sentenced and without the expectation of leniency. But as things stand now, detractors of the TRRC can claim that these witnesses are being induced to give false testimony in exchange for amnesty. You avoid that accusation by sentencing them before they appear at the commission.

Finally, to show that not even the Attorney General believes in the notion that Gambians who committed crimes during the Jammeh dictatorship should not be charged while the TRRC is ongoing, just witness what the government did in the case of Yankuba Touray. Is Yankuba Touray not being charged with crimes committed during the dictatorship? Is this government telling us that it is more offensive to refuse to testify before the TRRC than to slaughter innocent Gambians? So if Yankuba Touray came to the commission and lie to the Gambian people, we should reward him by not holding him accountable? This is precisely why some of us have argued against commissions of inquiries for the past two decades. It doesn’t work. It’s a mockery to our African justice systems. I understand the Attorney General when he says that it’s practically impossible to charge everyone. True. But no one is asking him to charge everyone. We want him to charge confessed killers. It doesn’t get worse than these people. Or is the threshold that everyone below Yaya Jammeh should go free because they do not bear the ‘greatest responsibility?’ If the Attorney General is working on that premise, he needs to articulate that to the Gambian people and see if people buy that.

Muhamad Sosseh, Esq.
Washington DC

August 7, 2019

After carefully considering all the facts, I agree with the AG.
Going against the grain, and finding yourself on the opposite end with the people whose cause you are championing is the most difficult part of this decision. I have been pondering over this the last couple of days.

The victims and families can be rest assured; I will not shrink an inch from the responsibility to fully protect their interests and making sure justice is delivered. It is in fact to that end that I arrived at this decision. The Justice Minister and I had a very lengthy discussion on this matter and I trust he will do the right thing, I urge all of us to give him the benefit of the doubt.

At the end of the day – when the dust settles, the process is over, and the curtains have been drawn to clear the stage for the next chapter, everyone must be brought before a court of law whose case is a YES to any or all of the following criteria:
-Does the action meet the legal threshold of Looting of state resources?

-Does the action meet the legal threshold of Committing torture?

-Does the action meet the legal threshold of Committing murder?

There should be no Ifs or Buts about it. This is my position and I will join others to fight to make sure that is the case.
We could have done this differently, but since we have all decided to put our faiths in a Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission process – a process that is ongoing, with many perpetrators who committed some of the most evil crimes testifying and allowed to continue with their lives until the Commission finalizes its recommendations, I believe we should exercise patience while of course maintaining our vigilance.

The release of these evil murderers is a very controversial one, and after speaking to him, i have no doubt Tambadou is well aware of that. But let’s also remember that this is neither an amnesty nor a deal to let these men to go scotfree – it is geared towards consistency which is very crucial in all matters of justice and incentivizing truth telling. These men will have to be brought before a court of law where their fates will be ultimately decided. As long as that prospect is not compromised or should I say; as long as the Justice Ministry is not compromised on that prospect, I urge restraint on our part to see the process to its justice delivery conclusion. We shall overcome.

BBC NEWS

Prison authorities in Brazil have found convicted drug dealer Clauvino da Silva dead in his cell, three days after an elaborate escape was foiled.

Prison officials said it appeared that Silva had hanged himself.

Guards on Saturday stopped Silva as he tried walk out of the prison disguised as his teenage daughter.

A video showing him removing his disguise – which included a silicone mask and a wig – piece by piece received widespread media coverage.

Silva was 42 and was serving a sentence of 73 years and 10 months for drug trafficking.

On Tuesday guards found him in his cell in Bangu 1 prison in Rio de Janeiro state, to which he had been transferred after his unsuccessful escape attempt.

Brazilian news site O Globo reported that he had been held in solitary confinement since his transfer.

Silva made headlines after he attempted to escape from Bangu 3 jail by donning a silicone mask, black wig, glasses, bra and T-shirt in an attempt to look like his 19-year-old daughter, who had visited him.

Guards were not fooled by the disguise and took a video of Silva as he removed his disguise step by step.

Silva’s daughter, who had stayed in his cell while her father tried to escape, was being investigated along with eight other people for their alleged involvement in the attempted jailbreak.

Silva had escaped from prison once before, in 2013, when he absconded through the sewer system of a jail in Gericin. He was later apprehended.

Let me go straight to the point: TRRC was set up simply because we endured an autocratic rule which was notorious for massive violations of human rights. The foremost instrument of violations was the Junglers. The Junglers were terrorists of the most notorious degree. Until now each and every Gambian feared that the Junglers posed a clear and present danger if they are not contained. While the Junglers must and will face justice the Government on its part must be seen to be in line with the idea, the process and the objective of the transitional justice process.

TRRC is the foremost institution at the top of the transitional justice process to ensure truth telling as a right of victims and the basis for justice. Therefore, so long as the TRRC is going on it means other inquiries, detentions and prosecutions of the human rights abuses between 1994 – 2017 would have to be suspended until the truth commission is done. If they are done, then they must be in support of the TRRC process. This is because the whole idea of the TRRC is to expose the truth about that Yaya Jammeh Regime as a first step in order to bring about justice, reparations and reconciliation. Hence so long as TRRC hearings are ongoing we cannot at the same time arrest, detain and prosecute people for the crimes they committed when those same crimes are the subject of the TRRC enquiry.

In light of this no one should have been arrested in the first place. Rather everyone should be encouraged to come forward to speak the truth about one’s experience, commissions and omissions. The TRRC Act has stated that it can even order any individual to testify and it is a criminal offense to refuse to testify or give false testimony for which one is liable for prosecution. Therefore, so long as one has not refused to testify or provided false testimony then it will be difficult to justify arresting or detaining such a person regardless of his crime.

From that perspective I think the Minster of Justice is right that these Junglers be released. Failure to release them means holding them beyond what the law provides which is 72 hours maximum. By holding them without trial for more than the constitutionally required time limit means the rights of these people are being violated. In that case we would have succeeded to make perpetrators become victims since their rights are damaged due to prolonged detention without trial. We should avoid such violation in the new Gambia ever again. Human rights must prevail at all times regardless of who is involved. We cannot do to Junglers what they did to us. We must only make them face justice.

Much as the Junglers had indeed committed heinous crimes it will be difficult to justify their continued detention unless if we can prove that they indeed pose actual danger to society. Therefore, where the authorities decide to keep them under custody then it means the Government should prosecute them since these people cannot be held under detention indefinitely. But then the Government cannot prosecute them at the same time as the TRRC process is also ongoing. We expect that at the end of the truth telling process the TRRC will make recommendations to determine the fate of all witnesses including the Junglers. If the TRRC came to recommend that Junglers be prosecuted when the Government had already prosecuted them then how will we address that situation? Remember that an individual cannot be prosecuted twice for the same crime.

In one sense, one may argue that if there was any error on the part of the Government was to have arrested these Junglers in the first place. But on the other hand, given the circumstances at the time one could also argue that it made sense to arrest these Junglers immediately because they could be considered ‘enemy combatants’ given nature and association with Jammeh. Secondly and very importantly it is because they were arrested first that we have succeeded to get some of them testify.

The question now is for how long will they be detained or will they be prosecuted before TRRC concludes. Certainly, since there is a TRRC process it will not make sense to prosecute them before that process is complete. Secondly given that the existing law in regard to detention, whether in the Constitution or the Army Forces Act is not favourable, it meant the only solution would have been to create a new piece of legislation to legalise and legitimise their continued detention. But could the creation of such a new law be legitimate and necessary?

Usually such piece of legislation is used in situations of warfare so that enemy combatants or prisoners of war could be detained for indefinite periods. The Geneva Conventions provide for such conditions of detention but even there prisoners of war have rights including fair trial. But we are not in a state of war. Secondly I do not think we should take the path of the US where they detain people at Guantanamo indefinitely without trial and defend that by claiming that they are ‘enemy combatants. We have seen how the US is under severe pressure for that action. It appears the continued detention of the Junglers would look like the Guantanamo situation. That is not a tenable position.

The part of the argument I do not buy is to say that by releasing these Junglers who testified will encourage others to also come forward. The testimony of Ismaila Jammeh clearly shows that not even all those under custody would testify the truth much less those who have never been captured. I think there are some Junglers who are prepared to face firing squad than to testify or testify truthfully. Hence what is important is for the Government to seek other means to get these Junglers to either testify or seek their capture and prosecution when the TRRC has finished its work.

While their arrest indeed turned out to be beneficial given their testimonies so far yet having kept them for almost three years also means Junglers posed no more threat to society. We are yet to see any assault on the Gambia by the Junglers at large. Furthermore, the testimonies of Malick Jatta, Omar Oya Jallow and Amadou Badji have in fact further weakened the Junglers and put more pressure on them. In that case releasing these Junglers becomes necessary and critical in obtaining more truth and closure.

I think what we need to monitor more closely is that the Government puts in place all necessary safeguards to ensure that these Junglers do not escape or pose any more danger to society when they are released. But even where they escape, we should bear in mind that there is no safe haven for international crimes such that anywhere they go in this world they will be on the run and hiding. In most countries of the world they will be arrested and extradited back to the Gambia or tried in that country as we see with Ousman Sonko in Switzerland. This is the obligation that international law imposes on all countries of the world. Therefore, in the final analysis Junglers will have to face justice.

Looking at this very sensitive issue from another perspective is that failure to release these Junglers means the Government will now have to justify why it should therefore not also arrest, detain and prosecute Alagie Kanyi, Pa Senghore, JCB or Alagie Martin among other torturers and killers who are free in their homes and offices when they have also testified in committing international crimes. Even though the Junglers had indeed tortured and killed many more people yet those who also killed even one life cannot be left off the hook.

In conclusion, I think citizens need to do lot of reflection and analysis of the big picture as to how to go forward. We must agree that so long as the TRRC process is unfolding there cannot be detention and prosecution of people for the same crimes they are confessing before the TRRC. It is either we stop the TRRC process and prosecute all perpetrators or we let all perpetrators first testify without detention so that TRRC determines, at the end of the day, who will be prosecuted or given amnesty among other forms of justice. But we cannot have both processes going on at the same time.

In that case I think we must all trust the TRRC to deliver as per the very objective of the transitional justice process. For that matter what is required of citizens is to become eternally vigilant to ensure that when the TRRC provides its recommendations to the Gambia Government those recommendations are implemented on time and in full. We must bear in mind that the very future of the Gambia rests on the TRRC process hence we must take a position that facilitates truth telling and prevents undermining the integrity and credibility of the process. Truth commissions are mechanisms of bringing out the truth in order to not only ensure justice but also restore rights and dignity of individuals and help a society to reform and rebuild after having undergone a violent conflict or authoritarian rule.

Victims and the rest of citizens must have confidence in TRRC and the transitional justice process. The fact that we have received such highly truthful testimonies from the first three Junglers at least should serve as a significant achievement for justice and closure. It is indeed a painful idea that angels of death such as these Junglers could live in our society freely and openly even for a short period while victims are crying and grieving. But if we recognise and appreciate where our society came from and what it needs to do in order to be better and ensure justice then we must massage our hearts and reflect deeply to realise that it will take lot of painful decisions before we reach the desired destination.

In light of these issues highlighted above I wish to stand with Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou that it is a right decision to release these Junglers now.

For the Gambia Our Homeland

……………………………………………..

Madi Jobarteh

Skype: madi.jobarteh

Twitter: @jobartehmadi

LinkedIn: Madi Jobarteh

Phone: +220 9995093

I encourage the Victims Centre that was invoked by the Attorney General in order to take cover for this unpopular and wrongheaded decision to seek legal advice to get a court injunction against the Attorney General and Army, preventing them from releasing these killers to the society. The Attorney General needs to do the job only he’s mandated to do under the Constitution, i.e. prosecute criminals, rather than outsource the job to the TRRC.

It is a false premise to say that these killers should be released, because similarly situated killers like Sana Sabally and Alaji Kanji are freely walking in the society. These people are different than Kanji and Sabally, who were free before they testified before the TRRC. Besides, there is nothing in our laws stopping the Attorney General from charging all these people, including Sabally and Kanji. It is not true that the truth can only be established through the TRRC or truth-telling should be compensated with impunity.

It is insulting to the victims of Jammeh atrocities to pretend that the TRRC is even the best means of getting to the truth, and once the truth is established we should all forget about the heinous acts of these perpetrators. It’s a big fallacy. The TRRC is a one-sided tribunal where witnesses are not subjected to forensic examinations. This is the easiest job a prosecutor’s office can ask for: to have witnesses appear without lawyers and at times are not subjected to rigorous cross examination. Any lawyer should know that that is not how to get to the truth. You get to the truth by subjecting witnesses to lead examinations, cross examinations, and re-examinations, after you’ve conducted a thorough investigation. Needless to say, if we have a prosecutor’s office that is lazy or incompetent to do the hard work, it will pass it to a toothless commission of inquiry.

It is not true that without the recommendations of the TRRC the Attorney General cannot prosecute known killers, irrespective of whether they testify at the commission. The Attorney General cannot hide behind the TRRC Act to abdicate his duties under the constitution to try criminals. Yes, it will be easier to prosecute criminals after you have received confessions from them through a commission of inquiry. But that is not the only means of holding criminals accountable. It’s sad that throughout a 45-minute press conference I heard the word accountability (or a derivative thereof) mentioned only once. As I argued more than two years ago, commissions of inquiries like the TRRC are a perversion of the rule of law. The rule of law dictates that if criminals commit crimes, they are investigated, tried and punished. Not taken to a commission to confess to crimes that suit them and then be unleashed onto society to undergo some bogus counseling.

The Attorney General claimed to have taken his decision to set the killers free in the interest of the country, especially the victims. I submit that this decision was not taken in the interest of the victims. Rather, it was taken in the interest of the killers, the Attorney General and the cheerleaders of the TRRC. This government is not committed to the victims. Otherwise it would have put a mechanism in place to begin paying reparations to the victims. All the government is interested in is parading criminals before national television to confess to heinous crimes and the government taking credit for leading us to the ‘truth.’ Give me a break. These revelations are not new. Starting with Nov. 11, 1994, the killing of Koro Ceesay, the murder of Deyda Hydara, and other killings by the ‘Junglers’ revealed to the world by Bai Lowe, we have heard it all before. Any prosecutor’s office worth its salt would have leveraged those revelations and at a minimum bargain with these killers to plead to lesser offenses and be sentenced to shorter terms in exchange for their confessions. That’s what you do, rather than letting someone scot-free because they confessed to their crimes. It’s absurd to administer a criminal justice system like that. The Attorney General in another context lamented the lack of resources at the AG’s Chambers. That might explain why they want to take the easier route and unleash these killers to the society. But let’s not pretend here that we are releasing these people in the interest of the society at large.

Civil Society should challenge this in the courts. Before the TRRC Act, we have the Constitution that places an obligation on the Attorney General to bring killers to justice. It is false to claim that the Attorney General’s hands are tied until the commission finishes it’s work and make recommendations to prosecute.

Muhamad Sosseh, Esq
Washington, DC
06 August 2019.