By Haddy Touray
Essa Mbye Faal, leader of the All-People’s Party (APP)-Sobeyaa, has said that after 60 years of self-rule, Gambians are still grappling with the harsh realities of a sinking ship with problems of high and unaffordable cost of living in which prices go up uncontrolled daily, leaving the poor and highly underpaid public servants in a desperate situation.
In his 60th Independence message to the Gambia, he described the Gambia as a very unsafe and insecure environment in which armed robberies, murders, burglaries, drug trafficking, and other serious and violent crimes are now a daily occurrence with police and security agencies ill-equipped and under-motivated to handle the situation. “Poor, disorganised and under-resourced healthcare sector that cannot offer our citizens anything other than substandard medical services and paracetamol, leaving way too many Gambians with no healthcare except those who can afford to travel abroad in search of good healthcare, a failing agricultural sector that deepens our reliance on imported poor quality food for our survival, lack of opportunities for our women folk and youths, resulting in many of them taking perilous journeys across the Atlantic Ocean in search of greener pastures and an underperforming economy that relies on transactional arrangements instead of holistic macroeconomic policies, resulting in the mortgaging of the most significant money-making assets of the country to foreign entities,” Faal former lead Consuel at Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission pointed out.
He stressed that all these are occurring in the backdrop of a crushing debt burden now standing at D120 billion and a perennially self-inflicted budget deficit (of D3 billion this year).
“This is a deeply troubling culture of waste, mismanagement, theft of public resources, corruption, and nepotism. This undesirable state of affairs does not merit celebration; rather, it calls into question who we are and what we want for our people, ourselves, and our posterity,” he highlighted, noting, “In essence, what are our priorities.”
“We can no longer afford the consequences of rampant corruption, wanton waste, and mismanagement, which have left our citizens more vulnerable as international support dwindles.
Let us look to the future and commit to a new era—one in which the dignity of the people, their welfare, their security, their healthcare, education, and progress are restored for all and to our beloved Gambia.
In contemplating our journey ahead, let us reject the politics of division, insults, and incompetence and choose a united and progressive vision for the Gambia that guarantees our sovereignty and our independence,” he said.
