Dear Editor,
This matter of replacing the Chief Justice of The Gambia has gone through the wringer. First with the Gambia Bar Association (GBA), social media and the hush-hush private conversations. The focus of this write-up is squarely on the initiator of the storm, the GBA. First, I am not here to defend or glamorise Edrissa MO Faal’s (also known as Pa Edi Faal) qualifications. His peak achievements through decades of practice can defend themselves from the US to Gambia and back.
My contention is the GBA’s knee-jerk response to the selection of Faal as the replacement for outgoing Chief Justice Hassan Jallow, prompting an emergency meeting of the Bar to “unanimously oppose” the decision based on “constitutional” technicalities to be vindictively enforced in this situation, but never subjecting previous chief justices to this rigour.
For us to understand this matter of replacing the chief justice of the Gambia in an honest and beneficial outcome for our beloved Gambia, we must understand the focal point of the matter of law and the constitution. Law is nothing more than the opinion of the ruling class, written in such complex English and other European languages and embedded in a document known as the Constitution, which only a select few, called lawyers, can legally interpret for the rest of us, supposedly.
Every state swears by this constitution and champions its enforcement, rarely with scruples, but in many instances, constitutions are implemented unscrupulously.
In our case, the constitution of the Gambia has been in the gutter for 22 years during the Jammeh era and counting, under the watchful eyes of the Gambia Bar Association. Never had there been a single protest from the Bar Association against the desecration of the constitution, which would have gained our utmost support during that period of escalating uncertainty.
In fact, Decree No 1, which suspended the 1970 constitution and the Ouster Clauses that kept executive actions safe from legal challenges, sounded the death knell of justice in The Gambia.
All 45 decrees or more promulgated were written for the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC – APRC) by you, the lawyers, including members of the Bar Association. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the GBA supported the AFPRC-APRC to protect their “jobs” and never challenged the impositions of the “mercenary judges” over the judiciary at Jammeh’s whims.
When we needed the GBA the most to gather a storm to blow down the 45 decrees promulgated for the military junta, their silence was deafening.
All the trees for you to have blown down grew here for decades, from Jawara’s era through Jammeh’s. None of those trees provided shade for justice and peace but entrenched Jammeh into a tyrant.
You cannot blow down this tree that Pa Edi Faal personifies. So, let it grow. It might create the conditions for the GBA to grow with a front-line fortitude for justice.
Charles Hamilton Houston, Dean of Howard University School of Law, once wrote, “A lawyer is either a social engineer or a parasite on society. A social engineer is a highly skilled, perceptive, and sensitive lawyer who understands the constitution of the United States and knows how to explore its uses in solving the problems of the local community and bettering the conditions of the underprivileged.”
Houston was a pioneer of progressive – activist lawyers in the U.S, in defence of the downtrodden treated badly by the people in power.
Pa Edi Faal joined the ranks of politically conscious lawyers such as William Kunstler, Johnny Cochran, Mutaqee Akbar, and many other “social engineers” who defend against racially and politically charged cases in US court cases. Pa Edi’s experience and achievements will be a reservoir of knowledge for upcoming lawyers who choose the path of political consciousness.
Ousainou Mbenga
USA