TOMBONG SAIDY, Senior Administrative Secretary for Media and Communication United Democratic Party (UDP) has criticized President Adama Barrow’s State of the Nation Address. Read the full statement made available on Saturday.

As Gambians, we listened to President Barrow’s State of the Nation Address expectantly hoping to hear from our President some good ideas on tackling the high cost of living ravaging our nation. 

Instead of some new policy approaches the entire President has to offer the nation is blaming external economic factors for our current dire economic situations and deliberately failed to mention burning issues affecting the lives of Gambians.

President Barrow and his Government have failed us.  To be clear, the State of the Nation Address (SONA) is a constitutional requirement, and it reads:

 “The President shall at least once in each year attend a sitting of the National Assembly and address a session on the condition of The Gambia, the policies of the Government and the administration of the State”.

This solemn obligation is meant to showcase the health of our democratic system of governance where the co-equal branches of Government interact freely and share a national forum to inform the nation of the Legislative Agenda of Government and policy directions of the Executive branch of the Government.

The spirit of the State of the Nation is for the President to address the nation through the National Assembly to give information on the conditions in The Gambia and what the Government policies and plans are to deal with those conditions by recommending legislation to deal with the issues confronting the citizens.

Therefore, it is important for SONA to be delivered in a timely manner, e.g.  at the end of year or in the first part of the year but not later than March of every year. Thus, it is baffling that President Barrow always delivers the State of the Nation Address in the middle the year.

Although the constitution does not state the time for the Address, good practice would suggest delivering it in the last month of the year or within the first three (3) months of the year. This is a failing we hope the President will consider for future State of the Nation Addresses.

It is not clear if the President understands what the State of the Nation Address means because if he did, he would not have said in paragraph 3 of his statement 

“Mr. Speaker, lest my address is mistakenly perceived as an activity report, let me explain that it is a precise outline of how my government fared during the 2023 legislative year, with highlights provided on key milestones, setbacks, plans, and legislative matters of direct importance to this Assembly”.

Evidently from the above quote President Barrow is poorly advised by his army of advisers and badly served by his speech writers because throughout the monotonous address the President failed to honestly address the HOPELESS CONDITIONS IN THE GAMBIA, meaning the economic, social, political, environmental and livelihood issues facing Gambians. And the President failed to clearly explain the measures his government is putting in place to deal with the myriad challenges our people face through legislative and executive powers bestowed upon him.

There is no need to respond point by point or sector by sector the President raise in his address, but it may be useful to give a general response picking certain salient points and issues:

Inflation

Reporting on the inflation rate, the President conveniently said, “As at end-December 2022, inflation stood at 13.7 percent, from an initial projection of 5 percent”.

This goes to support the earlier point on the timing of SONA. We are in June, let him tell us what the inflation rate is now, which is 17.4% according to the Central Bank of The Gambia and in reality, is even more, like Bob Marley says, “he who feels it knows it”.

 We the people know that the inflation rate is way higher than 17.4 % especially to those who buy electricity and pay water bills and also taking into consideration the ripple effect of increasing the cost of electricity and water by more than 30% recently by NAWEC, 100% owned by the State.

Health Care

As far as the health sector is concerned, the President did not address the shockingly high maternal and infant mortality rates at the main hospitals in the Gambia. Even though the Attorney General has issued a statement saying that the Government has engaged an American Law Firm to pursue the Acute Kidney Infection AKI case.

 President Barrow in his national address failed and or refused to say anything concrete on the issue of the more than 100 babies killed as a result of tainted syrup from India.  What will happen to the importers? Compensation for the victims? Measures employed to prevent a recurrence.

For critical sectors such as agriculture, education and youth and sports, it’s the same thing, President Barrow said nothing concrete.  A quick read through from the State of the Nation Address of 2021, 2022 and 2023 one will not find any marked difference between the three addresses: Here the extraordinary incompetence and laziness of the President’s army of Advisers must be called out for all citizens to note that these Advisers are paid by the taxpayers.

The baffling part of this year’s SONA is the issues the President conveniently forgot to mention such as the rising bigotry and religious intolerance in The Gambia; the lack of a FIFA Standard stadium in The Gambia that warrants our National Football Teams to play their home games in foreign countries; the new constitution for The Gambia; the environmental hazards caused by the regular presence of dead fish on the beaches along the Gambian coast; and the  mindless sand mining around Denton Bridge.

We hope that when the Honourable National Assembly Members examine the SONA in detail during their debates, they will raise these and other pertinent issues and get proper responses from the Vice President and the Ministers.

Listening to the President’s National Address, one has the feeling that it was haphazardly prepared by cutting and pasting submissions from the different ministries departments and sectors without making efforts to harmonize the final draft into a solid and flowing policy statement.

Once again President Barrow has missed the opportunity to send a message of unity and hope to our ‘diverse peoples’, as a result the President has failed to render a true and full of account of the Transitional Justice Process of the Gambia. And failed to inform the nation on the implementation rate of the TRRC Recommendations a year after issuing the Government White Paper on the same. Above all, failed to mention the raising religious intolerance in this country.

In conclusion, the State of the Nation Address 2023 has revealed that President Barrow is either very poorly advised by his Cabinet Ministers on the real state of our nation or the President does not care about the difficult conditions Gambians are living through. Either way this is a colossal failure of leadership on President Barrow’s part.

TOMBONG SAIDY

SENIOR ADMINISTRATIVE SECRETARY FOR

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION