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Mr Deputy Chairperson, Executive Committee members, the membership of the National Unity Party (NUP), the fourth estate, distinguished guests.
We are gathered here for the opening salvos of Election 2026 and to celebrate the widely acknowledged vision that is the NUP.
Mr Deputy Chairperson, distinguished members of the audience, members, and supporters of the NUP, I take for granted that no celebration may be considered complete if done in isolation of recognising the Party’s architects, and more crucially, its expanding crop of sustainers. As a project in progress, I now petition this gathering to applaud NUP for maintaining its pride of place among the great parties of this country.
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When I accepted the invitation to lead the NUP as Party Leader, Secretary General, and 2026 flag bearer, I did so for the primary purpose of engaging the mind of Gambia on a crucial matter of timeless significance to humanity in general, and to Gambians in particular.
I take no issue with the proposition that a full, vibrant, and complete community must have its myriad constituents such as its scholars, entertainers, other artists, sports personalities, blue- and white-collar workers, farmers, informers and agitators like the media, even its myriad of habitual offenders against generally accepted social and legal norms.
I also accept the proposition that no society can even begin to approach completeness in the absence of explicit rules which are understood by, and applicable to all without distinction. Stated differently, I accept the contention that no society can meaningfully endure in a climate where lawlessness pervades the spirit of its public life. And this notwithstanding the existence of all other requisite components for a full, vibrant, and complete community!
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At this stage, there are no prizes for guessing the transiting theme to governance under law. As a concept, the rule of law is one of those political and governance principles whose ostensible embrace, by dictator and democrat alike, makes it susceptible to perverse interpretation and the confusion naturally attendant to that abuse.
I shall not waste your valuable time by engaging in an academic discussion of what constitutes the rule of law. Suffice to say that as the sanctity and the dignity of the person is directly implicated, the rule of law is a practical freedom and human rights concept open to objective validation, and as such, virtually any observer is capable of deciphering its presence or otherwise in a jurisdiction.
Mr Deputy Chairperson, distinguished members of the audience, I am happy to state that some of the thinkers who considered the concept argue that a cardinal element of the rule of law stands for the proposition that no person should be “punishable except for a distinct breach of the law established in an ordinary manner before the ordinary courts of the land”.
As the doctrine is substantive in nature, the point cannot be overemphasised that the rule of law is not about the promulgating process of law adhering to the formalistic niceties of bringing legislation to the statute books.
On the same close reasoning, another cornerstone theses of the concept states that no person is above the law, that “every person whatever be his/her mark or condition, is subject to the ordinary law of the realm and amenable to the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals”.
I contend that the assumption in the foregoing is the clear suggestion that for the rule of law to obtain in a jurisdiction, there must be a separation of power in its public life. Simply put, the entity that promulgates a law should not at the same time interpret and enforce that law as that is tantamount to inventing a formula for arbitrariness and abuse.
I accept that there is nothing to stop us from discussing the rule of law in the abstract, in a pure academic context, so to speak. From where we stand as a nation, the immediate and extended audience should gain some appreciation of the genius, and fantastic wonder of a principle responsible for the existence of a tremendous human and material development gap between societies populated by the same human species.
For a dramatic demonstration of the rule of law, I suggest we foray into a systemic challenge to, and vindication of, the concept in the United States, that trail blazer jurisdiction of the all-encompassing principle of the sanctity of the human person.
For the discernible observer of modern international affairs – and we have many in this immediate audience and beyond – the United States has a complicated record.
I accept the partial validity of any such observation.
For present purposes, I am happy to confine my excitement to dilating on the critical significance of the rule of law in public life.
Without question, societies may be substituted for individuals in the contention of Italy’s Renaissance luminary and humanist philosopher, Pico della Mirandola, to the effect that the human, placed at the centre of the universe had the power “to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish … or to be reborn into the higher forms which are divine”.
I challenge you to juxtapose any Western liberal democracy, against the predominant proportion of African countries, and decide whether you observe the same level of respect to the dignity of the human person when considered in the domestic context.
I return to the United States and the matter of a Florida woman, and her ordinary family for a classic amplification of the positive magic of the rule of law. At the centre of the Terri Schiavo (Mrs Schiavo) controversy was a severely brain damaged woman whose husband went to the Florida State courts to have her feeding tube removed on the grounds she would not have liked to live in the indignity of what is known as a ‘persistent vegetative state’. The courts agreed with the husband notwithstanding the strong protestation of Mrs Schiavo’s parents against removing her feeding tube on the hopeful grounds she could recover.
In defiance, and for the purpose of legislatively staying a Florida State District Judge’s order, and have the feeding tube reinserted, then Governor Bush of Florida engineered and shepherded what came to be known as “Terri’s Law” through the Florida Legislature. On a legal challenge, the Florida Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional and had it vacated. The US Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of the State of Florida, and Governor Bush, with all his ostensible power and influence was decisively defeated.
As if the legal position was not adequately amplified at the State level, the monumental and bottomless system that is the US federal machine sprung into action at both legislative and executive levels. In line with his right wing social values, then President George Bush – the Governor’s elder brother – signed a Congressional bill transferring jurisdiction from the Florida State system, to the federal judiciary, i.e., to a US District Court in Florida.
Accepting the logic and the thinking of the State courts, the Federal court ruled against reinserting Mrs Schiavo’s feeding tube, and upon appeal, the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower Court. Without comment, and for the second time, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the matter.
In the final analysis, the feeding tube was removed, and Mrs Schiavo died within weeks.
Mr Deputy Chairperson, distinguished guests, gentlemen and ladies, as the United States is a secular society, I urge that you relegate your religious views on the matter to the recesses of your mind, and consider this heart wrenching case on the principles undergirding the rule of law in a modern democracy. As a justiciable dispute, the Schiavo matter fell squarely within the competence of the courts to hear and decide.
In the performance of its constitutionally assigned function, the judiciary at both levels of the American federal system withstood the combined overbearing pressure of state and federal legislative and executive power and upheld the rule of law. And to think that those decisions originated in single judges conclusively confirms the inherent magic of the rule of law.
More poignantly, state and federal politicians at both executive and legislative levels graciously accepted defeat and moved on. They fought a good and intense fight, but when all was over, they embraced the result by characterising it as a victory for the American system.
In full agreement, I say glory to the principle of the rule of law!
I submit to you, gentlemen and ladies, that adherence to the rule of law is the foundation upon which nations survive or collapse. No matter what its resources, a nation that fails to embrace the rule of law has its foundations anchored in quicksand. Under even the most ideal of conditions, it must ultimately collapse under the slightest test.
I contend that the racism and its attendant odds notwithstanding, our fellow citizens chose Europe, and America, for the compelling attraction that except for the vagaries of random criminal activity, there is no issue of being victims of state orchestrated disappearances, killings, unlawful detentions, and frozen economic opportunities for merely having the “temerity” to freely articulate their thoughts.
The overriding objective of the 2026 Presidential elections must mean that the nation elects a builder, not a person who views No. 1 Marina Parade as a place for sumptuous meals in the shade of the cool breezes of the blue Atlantic waters.
Governance must be the key and in its elements, we are talking accountability and transparency. Without open government, the foundation of our republic crumbles.
The Gambia must compete against the great democracies of the world to attract real investors, not the criminal variety adept at working the levers of state and the great corridors of power to make quick millions and disappear from our shores with the connivance of shortermist public servants. We must preserve the sovereign assets of our nation. We must remain open for business but alert to the dangers of corruption and paper-based criminality.
Government is a service, not an avenue for plunder of public resources by the fiduciaries of the people. When we go to the polls in 2026, and you stand before that array of aspirers, I urge that you remind yourself that No. 1 Marina Parade represents a nation’s hope that the principal tenant of that temporary home must be wise to the ways of the world with a competence that exceeds those of the nation builders of the great democracies of the world.
In this age of instant communication in the global village we live in, do not allow partisanship of any coloration to cloud your thinking when you consider who to vote for in a theatre you are a permanent part of. In other words, a better, open, transparent and humane Gambia must remain your greatest aspiration and project when you vote for President in 2026.
Regardless of geographic location, and notwithstanding opportunity, the timeless issue for us as Gambians must of necessity address the question of how we order our public affairs along the lines of live and let live. There is no need to dilate on the proposition that no meaningful and durable security is possible in any public environment devoid of the oxygen of the rule of law. In the absence of security and the business certainty that comes with it, our dear Gambia will continue to be left behind in the stupefying pace of global economic events. In that eventuality, it amounts to mere hallucination to contemplate survival, much less the development of our dear country.
If that is a fate too harsh for you to contemplate, I urge that you join the NUP and play your role in the emancipation of The Gambia from stagnancy.
Signed: Dr Lamin J Darbo
Party Leader, Secretary General and Standard Bearer
National Unity Party (NUP)
