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E.U Ambassador Says
“CORRUPTION REAL SERIOUS CHALLENGE IN GAMBIA”
Demands Barrow Gov’t to Establish National Anti-Corruption Commission
European Union Ambassador in The Gambia Attila Lajos told forGambia News that corruption is a serious challenge in the Gambia today. The Ambassador cites Rwanda as a role model for an anti-corruption crusade. We continue to serialize the interview with Mr. Lajos below—nothing, in sentences and mechanics abridged.
forGambia: Now, African governments are notorious for corruption. There is no question about that. We may try to be diplomatic about making statements to that effect. But not just in West Africa—that’s just many Third World countries. In The Gambian context, what’s your assessment of government level corruption, diversion of public funds to other places different from where they’re meant to be. You’ve been in The Gambia for quite a while. If you’re going to do a quick assessment of what I was just asking, what would be your response to that?
AMBASSADOR: I think corruption is real serious challenge in the Gambia. At the same time let me add because when you introduced the question, you narrowed it down to African governments. Corruption is an issue worldwide. There is no country immune of corruption. The question is not that. The question is whether the government, the authorities of the country are doing well or something about it. And this is where, also, I believe that there is room for improvement in terms of corruption in the Gambia because remember, the country was spoilt during the past twenty-two years. The country was corrupted and the culture of corruption was widespread in the country. And to change that, it does not go by itself. There got to be a very strong campaign against corruption at every level and this campaign should be led by the government. That’s why we are encouraging the government, in fact demanding the government to establish the national anti-corruption commission independently working to help, you know, investigating all the possible potential cases including any international donor support or funded projects, whatever, and not only the government spending, because it is an issue Gambia needs. If we look around in Africa and if we look at examples of countries where development is really impressive—everybody talks about Rwanda, for example, we shall not forget one of the reasons why they succeed is because they were extremely firm on anti-corruption campaign and active measures. So, I think The Gambia will have to also follow that.
forGambia: So, what do you think the E.U would do in the next coming years, let’s say two years from today or a year from today. If you guys observe that, well we’ve been trying to help the best way we can but it looks like nothing comes out of our positive endeavors in The Gambia. We’ve been pumping money. It could be in the form of cash or kind. What will the E.U do when you guys sit back at the round table to do your assessments?
AMBASSADOR: Well, I think I can’t say with full confidence that we could not do this or that. We will, actually, because of simple reasons. The current model financial framework of the E.U is coming to an end as we speak—more than that, the legal instrument not reached. The E.U collaborates with many African, Caribbean, and Pacific states. The so-called Cotonou agreement is actually coming to an end next February. So, we’re already in the stage of the so-called post Cotonou planning. There are already series of negotiations on-going on union level between E.U and the African Union whereby the two sides are defining how this collaboration should continue in the future. So, rest assured that there will really be a mechanism in place whereby the E.U can continue the collaboration and partnership with the African countries. The reason I’m saying this is because we’re already in this preprogramming negotiation phase and sometime, later this year towards the end of this year we’re planning the post-Cotonou days of political and development cooperation with Gambia and this is time when we indeed look at what we have done so far—what are the areas where the E.U intention and the E.U intervention served a European interest at the same time a Gambian interest and was successful and those are the areas where we’ll be happy to continue in the future. No, we do this stock-taking. We’ll also look at areas where we might have done interventions, offered project assistance, and perhaps for some reason, it wasn’t that successful or is no longer needed or other donor partners may be engaging in that field or they’re better place to engage in that field. Consequently, E.U may decide not to do certain type of intervention in certain sectors in the future. But this thinking already started in general terms. But it will be starting sometime towards the end of this year in terms of very specific sectors like which sector should be the one we believe that the full E.U intervention, there is a good chance to have a breakthrough to really have an impact for the benefit of the population. So, it’s really the name of the game in the coming days. So, there is also an opportunity where we’ll have to look at what is the progress made by this new Gambia in the past two-an-a-half years and we’d decide consequently how to go about it in the future. So, there is no such thing like you can take E.U support for granted. We can’t promise that. We never promise that because E.U support is actually E.U taxpayer money. We got to do in a transparent manner and we got to ensure that what we do is meaningful.
