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Momodou
Denmark
11512 Posts |
 Posted - 02 Jun 2020 : 15:39:37
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MAI FATTY TELLS BARROW TO FIRE ALL ADVISERS
The Standard: June 2, 2020
By Omar Bah
https://standard.gm/mai-fatty-tells-barrow-to-fire-all-advisers/
A former special adviser to President Adama Barrow has called on him, as a matter of urgency, to fire all of his “numerous advisers and deputy advisers”.
In an exclusive interview with The Standard over the weekend, Gambia Moral Congress (GMC) leader Mai Ahmad Fatty stated: “We all know they are mere political operatives and not professional public servants. Most of them have never handled a single public service file or assignment except requests for undeserved payments and privileges.”
According to the Approved Estimates of 2020, the government will spend at least D2, 215, 985 a year on the four special and two deputy advisers to the president.
Mr Fatty, who himself served as a special adviser to President Barrow, said the president should instead move all his current advisers to his National Peoples Party offices and pay them from the party coffers and “hire people with morals” as advisers.
“If not,” he charged, “he [Barrow] will have to refund every butut of their combined salaries to Gambians on the Day of Judgement. In The Gambia, people are hired to serve as presidential advisers on the back of taxpayers when in reality they are pure partisan operatives. They are barren of policy ideas, and are quick to wag tongues at every partisan political statement made against the president’s party. For God’s sake, they need to be reminded by the PMO and PSC that there are rules governing the conduct, including statements of public servants. If these bodies abdicate their duty, the president should toe the high moral ground by discouraging partisan political statements from his public servant tax paid advisers.”
“Barrow should be reminded that before the Court of Allah, there awaits for him two million files belonging to Gambians. He must account to Allah and to each Gambian, on a day that shall not fail, how he administered their welfare,” the GMC leader reminded.
Politicians
Fatty, who also served as President Barrow’s Interior minister, said the country will continue to experience leadership deficit unless voters start to vote for people with morals as president. “People have lost confidence in politicians because many of us have no integrity. Politicians say things they don’t mean, and do things because they are politically expedient. Politicians have perfected the art of hypocrisy, insincerity, cheating and lying. They turned a noble profession into a despicable, rotten field,” he noted.
Fatty said most Gambian politicians “do not fear Allah and believe marabouts could make them stay relevant”.
“It is clear in Surah Al-Imran that sovereignty is bestowed by Allah among all those who seek it, and sometimes the least expected is ordained as in the case of President Barrow. Fear of Allah and a sense of morality are important for a leader in a faith-based country as The Gambia. Amazingly, some politicians criticise when it disfavours them, and embrace the same thing when it suits them. Speaking from both sides of the mouth has become the trademark of some politicians, and it is so disgraceful. In this dishonourable endeavour, some civil servants jostle for relevance and in fact end up assuming the contemptuous role of drum beaters, while the politicians dance to the tune of embarrassment,” he said.
The GMC leader advised: “The Gambian has suffered for too long, and our people deserve only the best. We cannot afford to back track along the footsteps of the old regime. We can do better, and we must do better. Many of us would like Barrow to succeed because his success would be The Gambia’s success. If he fails, the country fails. Many of us do not dislike him. We dislike the trend of consolidating the system we overwhelmingly rejected and voted out.
“Money and position may buy one the political loyalty of those who have no value but I can assure that 2021 [election] will spring the kind of unprecedented political surprises that will defy anything known in the rulebook. Those who take others for granted may regret to never recover from it politically.”
Mr Dembo ‘By-Force’ Bojang, Henry Gomez, Dodou Sanno, Siaka Jatta and Saihou Mballow are said to be among the presidential advisers.
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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Momodou
Denmark
11512 Posts |
Posted - 02 Jun 2020 : 15:42:58
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Taxpayers are forking D2,215, 985 this fiscal year to pay four advisers and two deputies that President Barrow has put to pasture at State House. I have not seen anywhere an indication of their policy briefs or what their basic work product is for the Gambian people from whose resources they are being paid. Every single one of them essentially functions as a personal political errand boy for the President in their public pronouncements and official activities on government time using government resources. Civil service rules prohibit government workers actively and publicly engaging in partisan politics and the PMO has a statutory obligation to enforce all rules regarding appointments and associated conduct in office. They are blatantly failing to do their job and allowing political hacks to make a mockery of our entire system of government. The President who has sworn to the holy Quran to uphold the law bears ultimate responsibility for gathering a team of amateurs and hand clappers, call them advisers and stick taxpayers with nearly two and quarter million dalasi tab to maintain them. The president can retain advisers but the exercise of that prerogative cannot violate civil service rules as long as employees are on the public payroll.
We the citizens have to demand this violation of the law be halted. Lawyers need to look at ways the government can be compelled through the courts to force the removal of the entire assortment of advisers for violation of the law. Alternatively, we can insist on Parliament refusing to fund the line item in the state house budget that is dedicated to financing these utterly useless advisers. One way or the other, scarce resources must not be spent on six acolytes of the President who provide no value for the taxpayers. If the President values their services in furtherance of his political aspirations, he can certainly retain them in his party offices and pay them from privately raised funds. In their current roles, they are not serving the country and must therefor not be paid from the treasury .
By Karamba Touray
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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MAI FATTY TELLS BARROW TO FIRE ALL ADVISERS
