"Sir Dawda and his team in the first republic understood the practical effect of resource limitations, and thus, for the most part, endeavored to limit the activities and associated costs of government to what was possible and rational", says a Gambian commentator as he lambasts president Yahya Jammeh and his regime for their reprehensible acts of banditry in ruining the country's economy through higher taxation, wasteful spending and gross human rights violations.

By Karamba Touray, Florida, USA.

From the very first days when a limited number of Gambians in the colony of Banjul were granted the opportunity to elect some members of the city council, leading politicians of the time such as E F Small, ran almost exclusively on cutting the tax burden on the rate payers who were then their only constituency. It proved to be a winning policy position and thus began a long tradition of moderation in both the scope and level of taxation across the entire political spectrum. The one thing conservative establishment types such as the merchants, property owners and tradesmen seemed to share with their opponents on the political left such as unions and their patrons was their often shared aversion to high taxes.

The generation that succeeded Mr Small, to their eternal credit - more or less, hued to the same line and kept the overall tax burden low, despite the temptation to want to use government to attend to the very acute needs of a poor country.

Sir Dawda understood the practical effect of resource limitations. He and his team in the first republic endeavored to limit the activities and associated costs of government to what was possible and rational. Nothing illustrates this point to me more than a couple of conversations I had with two distinct people who served at different times and at different positions in the administration of the first Republic.

A few years ago, I called Assan Musa Camara to chat with him about his long distinguished career in public service with a special emphasis on the very early years. Afterall, as a senior cabinet officer in the first government Sir Dawda put together immediately following our independence, he was part of a handful of men who were told they had to run their new country with no expectation of any budgetary subsidies from the British treasury. That meant they had to raise all the resources themselves to run the nascent government they have just been handed. With only tentative links outside the country and even fewer friends willing or able to help, Sir Dawda and his aides prepared a budget of a million Pounds to finance their first government. They did not rush to hike taxes but instead embarked on spending cuts.They froze expenditures such as purchase of vehicles, government buildings, froze hiring and imposed austerity measures on the entire bureaucracy. By the end of the fiscal year, these good men ran the Gambia on a million Pound budget, and Mr Camara told me they even managed a small surplus. And when I asked why he thought they were able to run the country on what had to be a meagre sum even by the standards of the early 1960s. His answer was as profound as it was inspiring. He said "We quickly understood that survivability and ultimate viability meant The Gambia always had strive to live within it means". The evidence suggests that school of thought was generally adhered to throughout the first republic as both taxes and the country's overall debt burden remained relatively low up until 1994.

The other gentleman I spoke to was a career civil servant familiar with the establishment of GRTS. When the proposal first came up, consistent with how most significant issues were approached, the Jawara regime set up a task force to look into how a TV station was to be set up and maintained, and also settle the underlying turf war that was brewing between Gamtel - the lead agency expected to fund the enterprise, and the ministry of information and broadcasting, whose staff from Radio Gambia and the Film Unit were expected to form the core of what would become GRTS. The task force came up with a set of recommendations that accomodated both sides, and the cabinet gave tentative approval to clear the way for enabling legislation and budgetary allocation to follow. The IMF, as part of it's ongoing programs with the Gambia government and the disclosure requirements entailed, came across the TV proposal and how Gamtel was expected to foot the bill. They recommended against the proposal as envisaged by government on grounds that it would saddle Gamtel with significant capital and operational costs that would adversely affect Gamtel's own medium and long term goals. The Jawara regime then asked the task force to go back to the drawing board and weigh the IMF analysis and then recommend a way forward. This was in the summer of 1994, and the coup happened before the task force could report back to the government.

Yahya Jammeh and his cronies quickly abandoned anything that looked like reasoned analysis and fast tracked the TV project, draining several hundred million Dalasis from Gamtel; stripping it of it's remaining valuable assets and fraudulently auctioning it off to fly-by night investors and effectively destroying a venerable institution.

Since the hallmark of the current regime, apart from it's atrocious record in the way it treats its own citizens, is to spend literally whatever amount the tyrant fancies, the nation, businesses and the people are drowning under huge debts and high taxes.

Who remembers the expensive AU summit on which Yahya Jammeh blew several hundred million dalasis of the Gambian people's money or the tens of millions he spends every year on himself and his family flying around the globe on the people's dime? A friend of mine recalled meeting Sir Dawda on one of his last trips to Washington, DC as president. There he was in a modest hotel room with two aides and a few members of his security detail, shirt sleeve rolled and going over briefing papers before a planned meeting with the US President. When time for dinner came he ordered a simple room service dinner and that was it. He conducted the Gambian people's business and then caught his commercial flight back to Banjul. He was modest and prudent in the way he approached his job and never forgot that the Gambia, and by extension it's people, had to leave within their means.

Over the last fifteen years, The Gambia has borrowed several times more than the Jawara regime had in it's entire history and every category of taxes have gone up nearly every year in the same time period. Today a gallon of gasoline in the Gambia is nearly $6 with a significant portion of that being taxes that the government levies on petroleum products. This then drives up the cost of everything and sharply curtails the buying power of nearly the entire population as they face high prices and reduced or lost incomes.

Nothing illustrates the ruinous effects of the tax burden on both the small business and the everyday folks that rely on it for their livelihood than the case of a friend who runs a small store and has about seven employees. The government requires him to pay an annual fee of about D50,000; his custom and port duties typically run at over 25% of invoice. He is also required to pay income and social security taxes for the seven folks that work for him. If he adds his commercial space rental costs with utilities and all the taxes and fees imposed on him, he can barely break even. Additionally, all of his employees who commute to the store spend nearly a third of their incomes on transportation alone because of the exhorbitant cost of gasoline has forced commercial drivers to charge more to move people.

With a more moderate taxation regime, this store owner tells me he could probably open three more stores and end up hiring about fifty people and those employees would have increased buying power, and that is how you create prosperity.

This entrepeneur like many Gambians who love business and have great potential to succeed, are thoroughly stiffled by a government only interested in sloganeering and wasting the people's resources on foolishness. They want to tax the woman who brings a few sprigs of mint to her neighborhood market to trade so that she can buy a bar of soap to wash children's clothes. They want to tax a small neighborhood tailor who probably sews a few haftans or marinyerrs a month to buy small conveniences like an occasional loaf of bread or a few cups of sugar to take to his family. And if he fails to pay the ever increasing taxes, he risks forfeiture of the old Singer Machine he probably had for twenty years. And what has the Gambian taxpayer gotten for the near confiscatory taxes he has been paying for the last fifteen years? An overfed President who routinely fritters away their money on ego trips, endless festivals and a predatory security apparatus that routinely abducts, tortures, dissappear and murder citizens.

In the meantime, every category of violent crime from murder, rape to armed robbery has skyrocketed and resource allocation to the vital areas like education, agriculture and health continue to decline.

The Gambia governmentt has become too expensive, too intrusive, and does too little to benefit its people. Far too many of our citizens live in mortal fear of their government depriving them of their liberties and increasingly their livelihoods through an onerous taxation regime that hobbles anyone who tries to engage in even minimal street corner commerce.

The only category of business people who seem to want things just the wa they are, tend to be the handful of people who have grown adept at corruptly steering state contracts to either themselves directly or to proxies, avoiding the taxes and fees imposed on those who lack the access or inclination to grovel at the feet of the President and his cronies. Some have even dabbled at partnering with the President in his insatiable greed to take over nearly every facet of commerce only to be ultimately cashiered and stripped of their ill gotten assets. Some have evolved what they believe to be a pretty good strategy of putting up an elaborate pretense of love and loyalty to Yahya Jammeh by stoking his ego with ballroom galas complete with the tyrant perched up on high table like a croaking frog and assuring him of their iron clad committment to vision 2020, silicon valley fantasy or being like Singapore.

Obviously, they aren't convinced of the lies the President keeps repeating, but it does serve their selfish purposes and enables them to maintain access which is what translates into a slice of what the government is literally squeezing from legitimate small businessmen and the population as a whole through excessive taxes and fees.

The road to building a prosperous Gambia lies in the ability of its citizens to participate fully in the free enterprise system. It would require a small and efficient government, low taxes, fidelity to the rule of law and the nurturing of what comes naturally to our people, i.e buying and selling of goods and services. To have those who are trying to create wealth weighted down by municipal and central government predatory policies that seemed to bell about hiking and collecting taxes that are then wasted on vanity, will only deepen the problems regular folks face. That is why it is important for all of us to try to change the situation, because if you think you can conceed the political grounds to this mad man and his cronies, and yet pursue your ambitions in your chosen vocation, all available evidence suggest you would be unlikely to reach your potential under current circumstances. You will always do better in a Gambia that is managed by folks who legitimately sought and got your mandate, respect you, value you and your dreams and potential, and most importantly would not encumber your drive to succeed with high taxes and bureaucratic inertia.