When President Adama Barrow told Gambians at the Meet the People Tour that “There is no hospital in the world where you can get everything for free… even in America hospitals are more expensive than anywhere else,” he was not making a policy argument, he was making a confession of failure.
No one, at any time, told the President that America has free hospitals. No one demanded “free everything.” Yet he built a straw-man argument in order to knock it down. This is a classic diversion tactic, inventing a false premise to justify poor performance and evade responsibility. It is misleading, dishonest, and unworthy of the presidency.
The President is not elected to make excuses. He is elected to deliver rights. The 1997 Constitution and international treaties that the Gambia has ratified, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), obligate the government to ensure the highest attainable standard of healthcare. This is a legal duty, not a favor.
No government measures its performance against the failures of other countries. Responsible states compare themselves to standards, progress, and best practice, and not the lowest bar they can find to hide behind. Whether or not hospitals are free anywhere is irrelevant. The real question is, do Gambians receive quality healthcare, are hospitals well-equipped, well-staffed, accessible, and safe, and are citizens protected from preventable deaths, and is public money being used to improve health outcomes?
The answer, under President Barrow, is no. The Gambia is not poor; it is the government that is wasteful and corrupt. The country receives huge taxes collected from citizens, huge loans and grants contracted in our name while billions of dalasi are allocated to the national budget every year. Yet our hospitals either lack or have inadequate drugs, equipment, ambulances, blood supply, specialist care, and dignified maternity services, among other shortcomings. Why?
Because public funds are not invested in the public. They are consumed by the comfort of the elite through wasteful foreign trips, outrageous allowances, expensive vehicles and fuel, inflated contracts, rent, perks, and privileges for officials while billions in audit queries face zero accountability.
The Auditor General reports it every year. Citizens live in it every day. The President ignores it every time. We even spend millions on the so-called ‘Meet the People Tour’ itself, yet citizens return home from those same meetings to hospitals without medicine.
America does not have free hospitals, but it has functioning hospitals. No serious person compares the Gambia to the United States in wealth. But when the President uses America to justify failure, then we must complete the comparison.
For example, there are no free hospitals in America, but they have high-quality care. Healthcare is expensive in America but there is functional emergency response. They have advanced maternal and infant survival rates with cutting-edge medical infrastructure.
In the Gambia under Barrow on the other hand, there are no free hospitals, yet quality is poor and expensive, with a dysfunctional emergency response while basic drugs often run out of stock. Above all, maternal and infant mortality rates are high. So, if America is the President’s benchmark, he has already defeated his own argument.
From independence to today, Gambians have endured preventable deaths, deteriorating hospitals, chaotic referrals, lack of advanced medical equipment, and an overburdened, underpaid health workforce. As taxes rise and loans expand, life worsens. Instead of fixing the system, the President provides deflection, excuses, and blame instead of direction, solutions, and above all, leadership.
The time has come for the people to reject this Politics of Deception. Gambians must stop normalizing dishonesty in public leadership. Falsehoods must not be applauded. Citizens must not clap for propaganda. Public meetings must not become lecture halls for deception.
If leaders come to the people with false claims, the people should challenge them openly, or reject the narrative, or just walk out of the room. President Barrow’s statement was not a policy explanation but an attempt to escape accountability. The problem in The Gambia is not that hospitals are not free. The problem is that leadership is not accountable, governance is not competent, and public resources are not respected but looted. Gambians deserve more than excuses. Gambians deserve results.
For The Gambia, Our Homeland
