THE BETRAYAL – SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE?

Author Lawyer Imran Darboe © Askanwi

By Imran Darboe

The irony of our Gambian reality is a daily frustration for many. We live with it, complain about it, sometimes joke about it, but every now and then, a moment occurs that cuts deep and sobers you. This was my experience while driving through the busy streets in the lead-up to Eid. The town was alive with motion, people rushing about, burdened with last-minute preparations for the festival marking the end of Ramadan.

Faces went past me, some animated with excitement, others weighed down by stress, fatigue, hunger, or uncertainty. But even in the midst of this frenzy, a few people stood out. A woman sat in a wheelchair near the roadside while her less than 8-year-old son begged from car to car. A blind man stood dangerously close to the edge of the pavement, nudged repeatedly by a sea of impatient and oblivious passersby.

And then, a man with no legs, balanced on a skateboard. His hands, wrapped in socks instead of gloves, were the only paddles propelling him forward. He glided through the crowd with effort and familiarity. His voice was raspy, his tone flat, so monotonous that it was obviously part of his muscle memory. He wasn’t performing poverty; he was living it. That legless man, and those like him, filled me with sorrow – but more than that, with shame.

You see, I am a lawyer. I belong to that class of people who pontificate about the social contract and the rule of law. We often take for granted that rhetoric inscribed in our Constitution: “Sovereignty belongs to the people, and all power exercised by the State is derived from this sovereignty.” It’s a beautiful idea. But if sovereignty truly belongs to the people, then why did they look so wretched? If what I was taught is true, - that the people, in forming a state, surrendered some of their freedoms in return for protection and access to the collective good, then what explanation was there for this man, a sovereign citizen, reduced to crawling through the dust, while his supposed servant, the President of the Republic, rolls by in a brand-new, V12 Toyota Land Cruiser, air-conditioned and chauffeur-driven, flanked by twenty-five others just like it? (I counted them myself a day before) and it’s more than just a moral contradiction. It’s a betrayal.

And it’s not just the President either. The National Assembly Member who is supposed to represent that wheelchair-bound woman (whose child runs from car to car, begging on her behalf), the blind man swaying near the highway, the man on the skateboard, this representative is paid a salary twenty times higher than that of an average police officer. He is granted a clothing allowance and a sitting allowance for attending to work, his salary should already cover. He has the power to carve out land for himself and probably secure funding for a mini mansion, while his constituents trudge along the road, wondering how they can do something for their children on Eid, despite also living each day in fear of eviction for late rent.

So, isn’t it sad, infuriating even, that while the disabled sovereign rolls in the sun on a makeshift board, the NAM rolls through traffic in his dark-tinted SUV, insulated from the heat and hustle, proud of his privilege and blind to the suffering he’s meant to alleviate?

What is worse is how we in these privileged positions justify it. We lean on the law, pointing to allowances, entitlements, and benefits sanctioned by legislation. We argue that these perks are legal, that they’re part of the package. But this dogmatic reliance on legal frameworks (many of which are as colonial as it could get) is not only self-serving but dangerously dishonest.

These laws were designed not to serve the sovereign, but to protect those in the castle. The legal system, despite the promises we propagate, has often served as a mechanism for legitimizing inequality and vampirism. And so, while we cling to the aesthetics of development—launching white elephant projects, cutting ribbons, building monuments to our egos, the poor are left behind. We attend endless workshops debating what names to call them – persons with disabilities, people living with disabilities, or differently abled individuals. All these debates about nomenclature that seem to me more about easing our own conscience with sterile names that don’t remind us of their plights, than about affirming their dignity.

At the very least, shouldn’t persons with disabilities in this country be entitled to basic welfare support? Shouldn't a person with no legs have a proper wheelchair? Shouldn’t a blind man have support so his child doesn't have to beg? If the State can purchase nearly 100 luxury vehicles for a three-day summit, surely it can afford a few hundred assistive devices and welfare grants for the truly vulnerable. If a NAM deserves a clothing allowance, why not a dignity allowance for those whose lives are a struggle under the sun and the pitying gaze of strangers?

The bigger tragedy is not just in what’s been denied, but in how shamelessly we pretend otherwise. How we dine, drive, and deliberate as if our luxury isn’t subsidized by the suffering of others. This, to me, is the great betrayal. Too many of us in positions of privilege have either bought into the myth of meritocracy or become calloused by apathy.

We forget, or ignore, the fact that every position of influence, every salary, every trip, every contract, is a product of public trust. We, the privileged, are failing. Sometimes out of greed, sometimes neglect. In both cases, we betray the very trust that allows society to function. And a society that betrays its trust, that dulls its conscience, eventually forgets its own humanity. We become, to borrow an old metaphor, the vampires in the castle – feeding off the lives of the very people we swore to protect. And when a society becomes one where those entrusted to nurture it instead suck its lifeblood, the consequences are predictable. Crime rises. Trust erodes. Morality decays. And eventually, chaos finds its way in.

As I drove through the crowded streets with my own preoccupations of Eid, these were the thoughts swirling in my mind as I drove on, the man with no legs faded into my rearview mirror, but not from my memory. I pray he stays etched there, a permanent thorn in my conscience. And I pray too that I, and all of us in roles of service, are protected from the allure of unearned and excess privilege, from the blindness of ego, and from becoming one more vampire in the castle. who drain the life from the wretched of the earth.