By: Kemo Kanyi
Leader of political movement the National Alliance for Change Assan Martin has maintained that the utilization of State resources to bankroll a partisan event is a corruptible act and should be prohibited.
The NPP’s biennial congress in Jarra Soma on Saturday, which many government officials, especially Cabinet ministers, attended using their official vehicles has sparked a passionate debate among Gambians on various platforms.
To Martin, the general view is that political parties are private legal entities and they should not use public funds in their activities such as congresses and campaigns, citing that tax-payers money always required accountability. He said that the “abuse and misuse’’ of public funds by the ruling party must cease.
“We witnessed that the NPP administration and even the previous government were into this bad practice. We already witnessed corruption, abuse of public funds, and embezzlement is the order of the day in the Barrow administration. Both our central government and local government, no doubt, entertain the corruption culture. This practice needs to stop. These are bad governance practices that haunt us since independence,’’ he told The Voice in an exclusive interview on Monday.
He added that the worst thing in the Barrow administration is the “we don’t care attitude,” stating that this would one day come to haunt them.
“It’s a political fact that the Barrow administration has zero competence in managing the national affairs. They are feeding on political propaganda and with no guided principles and integrity. Again, there is a belief in money and dollar syndrome to do their politics, a fallacy of most politicians. This is a hopeless government with desperate strategies to entrench itself,’’ argued Martin.
“The saddest thing is that the Barrow government is conspiring with the minister of finance in selling and mortgaging State assets without regard to the national prestige and sovereignty. Let them know that most Gambians knew how to boot out a government as was the case in 2016,’’ he added.
Martin maintained that the majority of Gambians are politically mature and cannot be fooled by political rhetoric and so-called “poor-roads theories’, stating that the well-being of the population should paramount in the government’s undertakings.
“It is evident that corruption is dominant in the government. Most Gambians believe that this government and subsequent ones are expected to be ethical. More so, setting good standards in managing public funds and affairs did not happen. All that we witnessed is the carelessness in managing the public affairs, which is costing us as a nation,” he emphasized.
Lawyer Martin argued that the Barrow government does not have any success story to narrate but only focuses wastage of public funds in buying expensive vehicles at the expense of the poor masses.
