By: Kemo Kanyi
The Secretary General of the People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS), Halifa Sallah, has enjoined all Gambians to take a stake in the preservation of national stability.Mr. Sallah made this admonition at the launch of the National Dialogue at the State House on Monday.”It is a presumption that national stability rests on collective responsibility, and without the exercise of that collective responsibility, the security of nationalresources would not be ensured, and development would be the casualty,” he underlined.
Sallah pointed out that it’s the responsibility of the government to serve while the opposition aims to serve.
“It is the role of government to serve the people, and it is the role of the opposition to aim to serve the people. And that proposition may be different from the government in form or context. So, there’s nothing wrong with having an opposition. You have different goals,” the PDOIS leader stressed.
He underscored that all partisan hats must be cast away when national interest becomes the concern.
“Essentially, the discourse here is not to transform the dialogue into
a partisan mechanism for discourse with the people. So, if this discourse is to be properly situated, we must all put partisan hats aside and look at the nation and deal with issues in such a way that the sitting government or any other government will deem those issues to be pertinent to the development of our country and the stability of the state,” Sallah pointed out.
He highlighted that the stability and management of state resources must respond to some key pillars. He added: “In that regard, we must bear in mind that stability of nations, stability of the state, and use of resources must respond to pillars. The first pillar is culture. Not our general culture but the national culture we have to develop. We have to have an educational system. There must be institutions of socialization. We must train the people who are to serve as service deliverers; the nurses, the teachers, and the technicians of all sectors of society. And if we look at our civil service, these are the people who will constitute that service. We must train them, and we must nurture them. We must nurture sovereign citizens so that we become independent of our sects, independent of our religion, independent of our ethnolinguistic groups.”
He wondered whether sovereign Gambians were being trained.
“Are we really training sovereign Gambians? Are we really nurturing sovereign Gambians, who love country and people?” Sallah asked.