The Gambia is a great country in prospect but which is being destroyed by dishonesty among some of our public officials. As Nelson Mandela vividly puts it “political freedom without economic freedom is incomplete “. The Gambia need to usher in a non- corrupt society. Corruption has got no place in a country that deserved more than her current poverty status on international platform. Prosperity has to take place so let us transform the economy to benefit all Gambians.

The former government and politician spending scandals involving the former president, parliamentarians, and many high ranking civil servants showed clearly that The Gambia needs stronger rules, and stronger enforcement and penalties for violators, to prevent dishonest, wasteful, fraud spending by politicians, including politicians who use taxpayers’ money to pay their personal or political party costs.

As well, dishonesty in government spending is rampant across the country. The Janneh commission has revealed many cases of the former president, government Cabinet ministers, and high profile individuals in public institutions, making false claims about government spending and budgets in the past 22 years. Given that the commission’s mandate has been extended to look into the past dealings of the former government, preliminary figure on the total funds embezzled or misappropriated exceeds $200 millions. Even the central bank has also been stopped from doing its work by the political high class, Cabinet ministers and government officials refusing to provide key spending information, leaving the treasury in serious debts.

• The Democracy Watch Gambia (DWG) is now calling on government politicians to make the following key changes to strengthen the independence and powers of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) in the following ways, and we are calling on every political party to establish such bodies akin to PBO with the following key structure:

• The government must be required before proposing significant spending to check with the PBO to ensure that the actual total of the proposed spending is being accurately estimated.

• The PVP must be given the power to order the disclosure of any information they need to do their cost and spending assessments.

• The PBO must be required to release the findings of their investigation as soon as they are completed whether or not parliament is in session.

• The PBO must be made a full Officer of Parliament, independent of Cabinet, with a fixed, non-renewable term of office and full power over the selection and management of their staff;

• The selection of the PBO must be approved by a majority of party leaders after a public, merit-based nomination process to ensure a non-partisan and effective person is selected;

• The PBO must be given the resources needed to fulfill their mandate each year (based on an independent needs assessment of their proposed budget);

While there is an Auditor General, s/he also needs to have key powers, and resources, needed to ensure the public’s money is spent wisely, and efficiently.

Cases of fraud spending by politicians are usually dealt with in secret, behind closed doors, protecting themselves and their party members instead of enforcing the rules and ensuring that taxpayers’ money is not spent inappropriately. This cannot be allowed to continue if The Gambia wants to call itself a democracy.

We are also calling on politicians to make the following key changes in parliament to strengthen rules and the powers of the Auditor General to audit politician spending in The Gambia to ensure, especially, they are not using taxpayer money to pay their personal or political party costs:

• Require all politicians, their offices, staff people, and all government institutions and organizations that receive significant government funding to submit actual, detailed receipts and information showing the number and identity of people at any event, what exactly was purchased, by whom exactly, for what use, and at what price, for all expenses claimed and require the same for all travel expenses claimed;

• Require all politicians, their offices, staff people, and all government institutions and organizations that receive significant government funding to disclose within 30 days after it is signed the full details of every contract handed out (amount spent, exact work done, all evaluation reports); and to disclose within 30 days of completion every internal evaluation report about spending;

• Require all politicians, their offices, staff people, and all government institutions and organizations that receive significant government funding, before making significant purchases, including for government advertising, to check early on with the Auditor General’s office to ensure that what is being bought, and the proposed spending process, both comply with spending rules;

• Empower the Auditor General to reject any proposed government advertising if the advertising is essentially an advertisement for the ruling party and to only approve informational advertising that informs the public about key aspects of government laws or programs in a non-partisan way;

• Require the Auditor General to regularly audit spending by all government institutions, and by politicians and their staff (at least once every 3 years) and ensure they are given the resources needed to fulfill their mandate each year (based on an independent needs assessment of their proposed budget);

• Require that all investigations of politician spending be conducted by Auditor General who is fully independent from Cabinet, approved by a majority of party leaders in the legislature, and fully empowered and required to investigate all alleged violations of rules, and give the Auditor General the power to penalize violators and to order a correction of any wrongdoing, including mandatory high fines, loss of any severance payment, and partial clawback of any pension payments;

• Require the Auditor General to rule publicly on every complaint and situation in which there is reasonable evidence of wrongdoing, and;

• Require the Auditor General to release the findings of their investigations as soon as they are completed whether or not parliament is in session.