THE RESURRECTION OF DEMOCRACY IN THE GAMBIA AS A SECOND REPUBLIC BUT ARE THERE NEW HOPES FOR THE CITIZENS?

By Jadama Sadibu. (Stockholm Sweden)

The signs of the death of democracy in the Gambia in my opinion are caused by total fragmentation. The Gambia I observe is divided into absolute fragments.  Gambian politicians should realise that the type of   democracy that they are crying for requires wholeness, a body politic participating in making the decisions that affect everyone. Democracy can only be protecting universal human rights that belong to every citizen of our country. There can be no wholeness in a world of international trade, communications, travel and intercourse unless it is wholeness of humankind under a single democratic constitution.

From my personal observations I have now come to understand that the type of democracy I am yearning for cannot fully exist within nations since governments in a world of international insecurity and chaos must function in secret, which is a total death of democratic principles. More to that, democracy cannot exist within nations when global capitalist not only has the power to control governments but has the ability to travel elsewhere should any government attempt to control or limit their destructive practices.

The first dimension of the Gambia’s democratic fragmentation is a national economic system predicated on absolute winners and losers. This system which  dating back from the date of our independence from  British rule allows vast concentrations of wealth and power that, we have seen and still seeing, has immense capacity to exploit and enslave people in the service of ever greater wealth and power. We have seen that money is power, under this system, to buy the votes of legislators, to buy high priced lawyers to evade the law, to buy lucrative, to buy human beings as sex slaves, to buy untold thousands of poor and starving young Gambian people as wage slaves. The Constitution of the Republic of the Gambia is predicated on the wholeness of humanity and initiates a new economic order that replaces fragmentation with the rule of democratically legislated law protecting the most vulnerable from victimization by the rich and powerful and regulating economic life for the benefit of the welfare of the future generations.

The second dimension of our fragmentation today is a Gambia divided into absolute power territorial nation. This makes people think of their national self-interest before the good of humanity. It puts our government at odds and creates a national order that military power, police power and the Power of the state secrete agents and not justice determines the outcome of domestic conflicts. Indeed I expect a legal authority that can represent of interests of all people fairly within the whole of a democratic national order. Nations’ rights are preserved to the extent that every nation may choose it own economic, political and social order consistent with the universal human rights guaranteed by their constitution. But nations are now demilitarized and disputes are settled by the world court system under the equitable rule of law applied to all. Economic might and military power no longer dominate and destroy the weaker in pursuit of their fragmented self-interest.

The third dimension of fragmentation in today’s Gambia involves the chaos of partial identities and group egoisms preventing people from recognising each other around as fully human and deserving of equal treatment before the law. Tribalisist, sexist, religious, ethnic, class and nationalistic hatreds and conflicts tear our country apart. It is easy for people who identify with one tribe to degrade others and ignore the misery of others to stereotype the religious faith of Muslim brotherhood, etc. The new constitution of the Gambia not only makes all this illegal, it creates in human history the unity of all persons as citizens of a Sovereign state. For the there is an enforceable legal and moral category of universal human economic and political rights, protected by law, police, the executive, the National Assembly and the world judiciary. People now have an incentive to identify with the diversity and rich multiplicity of all others on the planet, for those different from themselves no longer have the power to threaten or destroy them. Wholeness supersedes fragmentation and genuine democracy could be made possible in human history.

The forth dimension of fragmentation involves the mass media who are inevitably loyal to those fragments that are the source of their livelihood and those nations in which they operate. It is only human (all too human) that the mass media in Gambia are loyal to the government and economic system to the exclusion of universal human welfare and the future of the citizens. It is only natural and all too human that they are complicit in the death of democracy and the destruction of the future of our country which is inevitable under a system of fragmentation. A Constitution for the country would transform all that precisely because genuine democracy allows people to begin identifying with the good of the whole and not with some fragment. The divisive power of government and of group egoisms should be vastly diminished within the framework of just, democratically legislated law over everybody. A great liberation could take place for the mass media. They could now really begin to fulfill their traditional theoretical role as watchdogs of democracy and the common good – precisely because there would really be a legally recognise wholeness and common good for humanity.

Under the present system of irreconcilable fragments, there is indeed no hope either for democracy or the future of our precious nation. But a simple very logical step forward in our moral and intellectual lives could transform all that forever. It is a very small step to the next level of human existence on, the level in which we recognise every person in the Gambia as fully human and act to legally protect their humanity within the framework of a democratic Constitution. It is a brilliant document, designed by some of the finest minds of our time, and directed explicitly to preserving diversity within a new framework of wholeness and addressing the national crises of our environment, militarism, the population explosion, poverty and misery. In doing so it eliminates of root causes of hatred and tribalism as well as the fragmentation that induces national arrogance. Genuine democracy can only exist, as all thoughtful persons know, in a world that combines authentic peace with justice. Only a democratic constitution for the entire citizens of the Gambia can resurrect our dying democratic traditions and provide hope for the future of our people.