My attention has been drawn to a newspaper article on the Tuesday, 29

th

October 2019 edition of the Standard

Newspaper, which quoted Ahmed Mai Fatty as saying that ‘’we [referring to the people of The Gambia] are yet

to defeat some ways of the dictatorship’’. Nothing is farther from the truth and current realities of the country.

Such comments are not only misleading but also an acute misrepresentation of the significant progress

registered in the country in the area of the promotion and guaranteeing of the fundamental freedoms and

democratic rights of all and sundry in The Gambia.

Granted, we do not expect the 22-year system entrenched by the former regime to be completely overturned

overnight; however, to suggest, even the slightest, that dictatorship exists in any shape or form in this country,

at this particular point in time will be disingenuous and constitutive of a monumental exaggeration devised to

caricature the gains so far registered by the Barrow government in consonance with The Gambian people. The

comments serve no purpose than to cause alarm, trauma, and panic by drawing a false equivalence between

President Barrow’s progress and the horrors tinpot dictator Jammeh unleashed on innocent citizens and non-

citizens alike under his 22 years of dictatorship. As a trained lawyer, Mai Fatty ought to know that words

matter, and as a responsible leader, he needs to exercise caution and maximum restraint in his public language.

Consequently, I thought it prudent despite being on holidays to reassure the general public that, under President

Adama Barrow, the days of dictatorship are long gone. We are a progressive government determination to

deliver a Gambia where all people can reach their fullest potentials and enjoy their inherent and inalienable

rights under the full protection of the law and state. This is what motivated the establishment of the National

Human Rights Commission, the Constitutional Review Commission, the reforms programme underway, among

others