Gambia: ACCOUNTABILITY IS NOT PROSECUTION OR REVENGE

Companies hire Auditors and Compliance officers, and have them do their functions NOT because they do not trust their employees or want to divide their businesses and employees. The primary function of auditors and auditing is to ensure that  financial records are accurate (free from errors and fraud). A Compliance officer ensures that businesses/individuals are compliant with national and international laws and regulations, professional and business standards. These are checks and balance instruments. That is why governments have Auditors General's offices.

Any public servant should expect that your position and responsibilities have a degree of expectation attached to them. And those responsibilities can only be passed fit if your executed functions measured up to the carved expectations. THAT PROCESS IS CALLED ACCOUNTABILITY! It does not in any way means Prosecution, Vengeance, Retribution or Exoneration, nor does it disregard the presumption of innocence.

Therefore, it is very troubling to think that asking for public servants to tell the taxpayers how they ran a public office and performed the functions they're paid for, especially when chances are that someone else could succeed you in that position, to be Divisive, Retributive or Unconciliatory. I'm assuming even if we were not coming out of murderous dictatorship, that would be a standard benchmark in any administration or country.

Gambia and Gambians are all in for Reconciliation. But to admit that we need reconciliation is admitting that wrongs were done that divided us. And we must know the truth about these possible wrongs to be able to reconcile and move forward. That does not mean people have to be prosecuted and certainly not persecuted. Let's not confuse the two. Most importantly, this was the front and center of the change agenda all these years. Not just to remove Yaya Jammeh but a change and cleansing of a SYSTEM.

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First published December 27, 2016