An opposition leader in the Gambia has expressed concerns at the reincarnation of a pernicious policy in the country’s police force which conditions the promotion of officers based on their loyalty to the head of state.
The government of President Adama Barrow ssupported by the United Nations and other partners has initiative a security sector reform project to transform the Gambia’s security sector into institutions that are effective, professional and accountable to the state and the people of the Gambia.
But Mai Ahmad Fatty of the Gambia Moral Congress (GMC) said the idea of a security sector reform and its implementation is being repeatedly distorted and depicts very troubling perceptions about the reluctance to make a radical break with the bleak past.
“The exponent of the pernicious policy that conditioned promotion within the GPF [Gambia Police Force] on absolute loyalty to the dictator, instead of the Constitution and our sovereignty, is most ineligible for law enforcement leadership in the new democratic dispensation,” Mr Fatty wrote on his Facebook page.
He added that: “Such a person derided competence and professionalism in favour of sheer political sycophancy, and is set to consolidate this propensity on his 2nd coming. The decision is amateurish and not in the public interest. It could only be out of absolute political expedience. It is self-serving. It is counter to national security interests.
The seeming inability to dismantle the link with the despicable past and its authors, speaks volumes on the persistent intent to validate and revive some of the tyrannical upsurge of the last two decades. A few attributes this to harrowing incompetence or inadvertence. I differ. It is calculated. It is being deliberately engineered. And it is an affront that shall, sooner than later, be met with surpassing resolve.”
