Governments, Commissions of Enquiry and Justice

Recently, we heard that the government is planning to set up a coroner’s inquest into the death of Late Bambay Kamara and 28 others in 1992. The reason given is the need for the families of those killed to know the truth. This is a good reason, and one could argue that not only the families of these people need to know the truth; the whole nation needs to know the truth. There has been widespread speculation about the real motive behind this move, but I will not even mention some of the reasons being advanced by the speculators. However, one wonders whether these 29 people are the only set of people whose families need to know the truth about whether or not they received a fair trial.
Sometime in 1997, during the AFRC interregnum, a number of people were publicly executed by firing squad. One of them was in fact a cripple and could not walk. These people were accused of being armed robbers. Did they receive a fair trial? The execution was caught on video tape. Is government going to set up a coroner’s inquest into the death of these people? Or do their families not deserve to know whether they received a fair trial?
This brings me to another enquiry, the Semega Jammeh Commission of Enquiry into the use of donor funds. This commission has been going on for quite a while now and the public does not know whether it has finished its work. If it has finished its work, I wonder whether it has been worth the amount of money spent on it. But over and above that, there is the issue of whether the government will accept the recommendations of the commission, or will do like the NPRC did in many cases with their commissions of enquiry. They at times ignored the recommendations of the commission and drew their own conclusions, based on which they imposed penalties on people. In fact, they published only the government White Paper on the commissions’ reports without publishing the report at the same time, which the Constitution stipulates.
Prior to the NPRC Commissions of Enquiry, there were the commissions set up by Siaka Stevens after he was restored to power in 1968. The White Papers issued as a result of these commissions and the NPRC commissions saw many people losing their property, and it took a Commission set up by former President Tejan Kabba to unravel right and wrong among these seizures which resulted in some people being able to reclaim their property. This is why the SLPP and the APC both now occupy the offices they are using. Perhaps because he had suffered as a result of a Commission of Enquiry, although his property had been returned to him long before the review commission he set up, Tejan Kabbah was sensitive to the potential for injustice and the use by governments of commission reports to get at perceived enemies.
So, the public is waiting to see what the outcome of the Semega Jammeh commission will be. Will the government publish the report alongside its White Paper and simply accept the recommendations of the commission? Or will it ignore the recommendations and impose its own views on the report?
In fact, I wonder who will write the White Paper for this commission. Usually, it is the Attorney General and Minister of Justice that writes it and gets Cabinet approval prior to its release. But in this case, the Attorney General was the one who led the “prosecution.” I have put this word in quotes because his role was not exactly the same as a prosecutor in a criminal trial, but for those of us who are laymen, it looked almost exactly the same, in that he was the one posing questions to the witnesses. Having played that role, can he be expected to write an impartial White Paper without putting his own views into it? The public is waiting to see.
We are also waiting to see whether a coroner’s inquest will only be held into the death of Bambay Kamara and others, or whether other families, like those executed by the AFRC will be given the same privilege?
Government spokespersons have said repeatedly that they are not targeting anyone by setting up the inquest. I sincerely hope so because we do not want this country to revert to a state where there is rampant bitterness and enmity with potential for violent conflict.
I hope we have learnt lessons from the war this country went through and will not make the same mistakes.
By Musa Kamara