Lawyer Darboe Reacts to the High Court Ruling
Friday 27th October 2006

By Abba Gibba

In what could be seen as the UDP leader’s reaction to the recent dismissal by the High Court of a case he filed against the conduct of the 22nd September elections, Lawyer Ousainou Darboe yesterday convened a press conference to give his views on the issue. Below is an unedited version of Mr Darboe’s comments:

The court knows that I do not have a counsel, so service should be on me. I received it and signed it but there was no personal service. Now the court never dealt with these applications. If it was dealing with this interlocutor’s application then we could say that a single judge of the Supreme Court was sitting to hear the matter. According to the ruling instead there was an application to have the matter struck out for lack of diligent prosecution and that was the application. The court was not in my view properly prosecuted because there was no previous application before it, which could warrant a single judge to sit on it. While GRTS and others are boasting about showing or trying to show that there was no diligent prosecution on my part, probably, what everything shows is that there was no diligent exercise of judicial discretion on the part of the presiding judge. One, he could not sit or be striking out a case and want a diligent prosecution when the case is not ready for hearing. The case must be ready for hearing before you can strike it out for diligent prosecution and then you absent yourself or for some diligent reason could not proceed, or if the court has given certain directives to be undertaken or to be done and those directives have not been complied with, then you can talk of lack of diligent prosecution of the case.

Why in  this particular case is because, as one of the lawyers said, that this is a matter in the highest and a matter involving the president of the republic. I want to say straight away that I didn’t sue the president of The Gambia. I know better and I can never sue the president of The Gambia. The constitution and the laws of The Gambia does not allow me to sue the president of The Gambia.

I see Yahya Jammeh as the APRC-sponsored candidate for the presidential elections and I didn’t have president Jammeh in the courts. I know that under the Constitution, nobody can sue the president. What has happened in my view shows that one of three factors must be responsible for this ruling. One, and I say this without fear of contradiction. One it  is either the judge doesn’t know the law, because if he does when a matter is set down for mentioning and not for hearing you cannot strike it out for lack of diligent protection and you cannot be claiming to be sitting on an interlocutory application  when there was no previous interlocutory application filed for striking out the matter for diligent prosecution. I think they were helping them. What they ought to have done was to say OK we are dealing with this application which were not served and which I should have 48 hours notice not withstanding you do not have 48 hours notice and I was not given 48 hours notice. But I said ok, notwithstanding you do not have 48 hours notice, we will deal with that, then that could have justified that the honorable judge could have said that I will sit as a single judge of the court. But I believe that it was wrong for him to say that he was sitting as a single judge of the court. It is either the judge was  ignorant of the law or he knows the law and disregarded it, or he has some other exchange of reasons and I want to say that the reference that the matter is involving the president may be one of the reasons and whatever the reason, whether there is ignorance of the law or disregard of the law or some exchange of reasons, then in this country, we are into a very sad moment because a judge should not know the law and disregard it. So if this might be the case, it could be seen as a very sad situation for The Gambia because the boss of all the judges should be well grounded in both substantive and procedural laws and if it is extreme matters, then that will call into question the independence of the judges. I think these are the issues that the GRTS and others do not understand… some of  the instances in this case.

And I think it is my duty to say that I am wrong; I can do something about the matter. But will not because this is a political matter and we will deal with it politically. I will take this judgment anywhere and make a political issue of it.

So as far as we are concerned our allegations have not been contested.