As if cowardly and selfishly compromising its fundamental principles, and further sacrificing the interest of the public by, among others, passing out-of-place laws that satisfy individualist political interests are not enough, our legislative arm of the government has no doubt become very unbecoming.

For goodness sake, this supposed august body we call the National Assembly of The Gambia does not only surrender to the executive, but could not as well draw a line between what should be rendered unto state and what should be rendered on personal activities of the president of the republic.

Here, we are referring to the undue involvement of National Assembly members in ventures of the head of state that are personal in every respect.

We now have a NAM overseeing the Kanilai farms and another NAM serving as his assistant. Again, as if that is not enough, the speaker of the parliament was featured Wednesday on GRTS on the president’s Jurunku farm with some voluntary workers.

With such apparent compromising behavior of the speaker and the National Assembly, we wonder how the legislature can efficiently exercise its oversight functions without fear or favour.

For now, it is clear that upholding the principle of checks and balances among our three arms of government is a far away aspiration in The Gambia.
 
No wonder, the reputable House that should attract a wide public participation, as has infact been the case in the past, is no longer attracting the interest of even those who are obliged to attend proceedings at the parliament.

Too bad that they could not help the situation and all they had to do, is to keep ranting at the four corners of the chambers that the public this and that and ministers this and that.

The truth is no one would waste his or her valuable time to listen to: “This bill is a non-controversial bill; we should not belabor on it” and that sort of a thing.

Even the cabinet ministers, who would wish the president of the republic and his government to be praised at all times, would find it useless to attend sittings.

What is there for them to attend and take note when no bill looks controversial in the eyes National Assembly and when adjournment debates, which offer NAMs the opportunity to raise issues affecting their constituencies and the public at large, are marred by ‘Babili Mansa this, Babili Mansa that.

Infact, one of the NAMs was recently quoted as saying that there has been 100 percent increment on this year’s budgetary allocation to agriculture, the mainstay of the country’s as if that NAM has not read the estimates to see that the increment is an insignificant one percent.