Man of The Year Noise: Suwaebou Conateh’s Crime Against Yahya Jammeh’s Haters
By Bubacarr Sankanu, Cologne, Germany
I was too busy and could not have promptly responded to the myopic hoopla that greeted Suwaebou Conateh’s recognition of President Yahya A. J. J. Jammeh as “Man of the Year 2007.” After a second thought, I decided to belatedly sacrifice some valuable minutes here. One of the reasons why Islam is suffering from negative global publicity is that the petrodollar fundamentalists have hijacked discourse and are busy suppressing innocent women and, destroying life and property in the name of a Great Religion, which teaches love, peace, tolerance and moderation. Fanatics who see them as “weak Muslims” are technically marginalized into one corner by the Western media houses competing over sensational breaking news on “Islamic terror”. The others are dismissed as moderate Muslim elites.
If nonentities are allowed to monopolize opinion making with their insatiable lust for negativity, they will skid The Gambia into chaos just like the religious fundamentalists. For, there are noisemaking pessimists who interpret everything negatively including the day their own mothers gave birth to them.
Despite my well-calculated economic decision to exclude The Gambia from my entrepreneurial commitments, I see it as my patriotic duty to, from time to time, step in and help strengthen the voices of moderation in the interest of our beloved Mother Gambia whenever politics and freedom of expression move towards misinformation, pettiness, character assassinations, hypocrisy, exaggerations and hatred. I do not need to lick the boots of Jammeh’s haters to succeed in life and I do not have to lobby for a job or contract from President Jammeh to realize my life dreams. Even if I should work in government till retirement, I will not save enough to match the turnover of my investment in a single movie venture. But if our Gambian Peoples seriously ask for the content of my brain, I will deliver what is expected of me in The Service of The Republic of The Gambia before returning to my private activities; independent of the gossips of both the pro and anti Jammeh camps. Freedom of speech or fantasy is not a license for human destruction. The Gambia comes first and I cannot cross my fingers and watch our Nation being pushed into a dark hole by retrogressive prophets of chaos.
Now Suwaebou Conateh a veteran Gambian journalist has, through his publication “The Gambia News and Report Magazine”, crowned President Jammeh “Man of the Year 2007”. Is this the end of the world? Is it illegal? We live in a free world. Any Jack or Jill is free to honour any Dick, Tom or Harry for whatever reason under the sun and who cares? Not Sankanu! Some people are saying Conateh compromised the ethics of journalism by honouring President Jammeh. I am not going to usurp respected authorities in professional ethics by judging, supporting or condemning Suwaebou over his freedom of choice. I am a proud Liberal Democrat and an Enlightened Student of Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804). Left to me, Conateh is free to even crown, retrospectively, Kukoi Samba Sanyang as “Man of the Year 1981” if he so desires! The self-proclaimed dictators of morality would be free to judge whether his coronation of a Marxist révolutionnaire would be right or wrong.
Journalism or not, the subject of ethics is relative. A government media employee would like to obey the rules of the government to at least keep his/her job. There are private media practitioners who would not criticise their sponsors and advertisers for fear of loss of advert revenue. Inside the boardrooms of the media conglomerates in the U.S. and Europe, from Wilhelm Randolph Hearst’s Corporation to Bertelsmann of Germany, to name a few, there are daily conflicts of interests between directors who want more ratings and revenue and editors who want professional independence. Whether government clamp down or advertiser interest, the Fourth Estate finds itself in a constant balancing act between the devil and the deep sea. Before someone condemns another person, he/she should first look at him/herself on the mirror in the name of fairness. People who scavenge on their fellow human beings just to get cheap 15-minute attention make me vomit!
Either out of stupidity, minimal exposure, low education, ignorance or narrow-mindedness, some people believe that anytime a person is honoured, he/she must have lived the life of an angel. A recipient of an award is often someone whose action/work corresponds with the agenda, definition or interest of the institution or person behind the award programme, be it positive or negative. Controversy is often part of it, be it in sports (Olympics, Football World Cup), showbiz (Oscar, Golden Globe), politics (national honours, diplomatic passports, jobs, contracts), academia (degrees, diplomas), and you name it. People will always complain. Sudanese millionaire Mo Ibrahim recently honoured the former President of Mozambique Joachim Chissano. It is clear that Chissano was a Communist rebel leader who led a bloody civil war in his country. His son was implicated in the gruesome murder of Journalist Carlos Cardoso on the 22nd November 2002. Cardoso was investigating massive corruption by the President Chissano’s clan. Yet Chissano practised good governance according to Mo Ibrahim’s former Presidents’ award scheme!
In fact, many people parading themselves with colourful titles are having skeletons in their cupboards. People with good functioning memories can remember the cash-for-honour deals in the U.K. through which rich Britons in exchange for titles and awards bribed former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labour Party. Suwaebou Conateh named our Vice President Isatou Njie Saidy person of the year yet her role in the April 2000 massacre of innocent school children eroded her local and international public value. The only serious job awaiting her after leaving Jammeh’s Government is that of an exhausted grandmother complaining about her stubborn grandchildren. The space of this paper is not enough for me to list the cases in which people bragging with titles like Sir, Excellency, Eminence, Doctor, Professor, Expert, General, Ambassador, Holy Father, Chief, Alhagie, Alhaja, “Shiriffo”, Marabout, etc, are more questionable in their characters than Maria Magdalena, the biblical sex worker.
For civic education purposes, I would like to shed some light on the story behind one of the world’s most celebrated awards, the Nobel Peace Prize. The promoter, Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was a son of a powerful Swedish arms dealer. His father sold weapons to the Russian Tsar. At the time of his death he was bankrupt and young Alfred inherited the debt. Out of destitution, Alfred, during his study of chemistry, started experimenting with dangerous substance called “nitroglycerine” discovered by his Italian school friend in Paris Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888). The substance would be used in explosives. In one of the experiments Alfred’s own brother lost his life when the house he was using as a makeshift laboratory exploded under the pressure of the nitroglycerine. He upgraded and later patented it under the name “dynamite”. Alfred subsequently made a fortune out of his explosive invention. He paid off his family debt and became fabulously wealthy. Many people lost their lives while using or transporting the dynamite, as the safety standards at the time were not perfect.
Calls to ban Alfred Nobel’s invention fell on deaf ears, as the factories were hungry for raw materials from the mineral mines that needed explosives to operate. The industrial revolution was just taking off. When Alfred Nobel wanted to expand his business, he published job vacancies for multilingual private secretaries. One of the successful applicants was Ms. Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) who happened to be active in the campaign to ban Alfred Nobel’s dynamite.
Suttner later resigned her secretarial job to organize lectures across Europe on the dangers of explosives. Alfred was very much impressed by Suttner’s bravery and self-less commitment to peace. He subsequently invested heavily into further development of the dynamite to make the explosives safer. Today largely demolition experts, miners, film stunts, security forces and other licensed users, use explosives. Only when terrorists, gangsters and careless people lay hand on them, innocent civilians get hurt. Alfred Nobel remained childless and before he died he willed a substantial amount of his money for use in honouring men and women who contributed to the good of humankind. The first woman to win this Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 was no other than peace activist Madame Bertha von Suttner!
Though Alfred Nobel deserves his respectful place in history, his award programmes are a product of his guilty conscience; he got rich while people lost their lives through his explosives. It is important to note that the serious award committee does not emphasise on the human weaknesses, gender, race or nationalities of its nominees and the winners are not perfect supermen and women. Recently, Günter Grass the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 confessed to having been a member of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS, a special elite hit squad more lethal than Musa Jammeh, Bombardeh and all other Gambian solders reported to be part of President Jammeh’s “killing machines”. Albert Einstein, another celebrated winner of the Noble Prize in Physics could not resist women. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. Rabin, like Ariel Sharon, Shimon Perez and General Moshe Dayan started their careers as solders of the Israeli Defence Force. They fought bloody wars against the Palestinians before leading Israeli politics. Martin Luther King Junior, another winner of the Noble Peace Prize, was bugged round the clock by the notorious FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover uncovering details of his private human weaknesses that could dismantle his legendry public image when published by headlines-hungry parasites. I wish all the people without sin safe journey to Paradise!
The award programmes are at times controversial but not petty. It is when people try to gain recognition through unnatural and illegitimate means they are stripped off their honours. A good example is in the sports field where sportsmen and women are increasingly using performance-enhancing drugs (doping) to win awards. We see it in the churches where decorated paedophile priests are caught pants down. It is happening in the academic world where researchers cook up their findings and students sleep with their professors just to get the coveted honours. My dear, all that glitters is not gold. In our own profession, it is no secret that some of the most critical people against Jammeh’s regime have done worse things. Hiring incompetent girl friends as secretaries or reporters, used their media houses to lure and seduce innocent women, mostly betraying them and only marrying them to avoid scandal.
Time Magazine recently named outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin “Man of the Year 2007” and Putin committed more atrocities than Yahya Jammeh. As a Law graduate and former spy of the KGB foreign operations in Dresden, East Germany, Putin is on the record for saying that when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, he and his team of intelligence officers destroyed sensitive evidence by throwing them into the fire until the furnace exploded! The poisoning of Litvinenko was a kindergarten game as the KGB or its successor, FSB, can get to any human being on the planet targeted for elimination or arrest, to quote an intelligence analyst. When some readers complained to “Time Magazine” like the way some are doing to Suwaebou Conateh, Time made it clear that the award was not an endorsement of Vladimir Putin’s human rights balance sheet but a reflection on the role he played in changing Russia.
I personally agree with the choice of “Time Magazine.” Of all the Presidents alive today, Vladimir Putin is my pragmatic role model! He is at least restoring the pride of Russia and strengthening its position on the global stage. He has produced more millionaires than his predecessor Boris Yeltsin who was hijacked by a few oligarchs and mafias. Despite criticisms, Putin’s programme of managed “Russianised” democracy has proven to be an effective mean of saving the Russian Federation from total collapse. He created a relatively stable political environment for wealth creation. He also returned most of the strategic public enterprises that were dubiously privatized under Yeltsin to state control and business in Russia is just booming. See you at the 2014 Olympic Games in Soshi! If Putin is accused of human rights abuses, then he is not the only President in the world making life difficult for opponents. Are the detainees of Guantanamo Bay enjoying their rights according to the concerned Geneva Convention? Is President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal throwing parties for his critics? And if you think Yahya Jammeh is oppressive find out more about President Afeworki of Eritrea!
Suwaebou was brave enough to give his reasons for calling Jammeh Man of the Year 2007 without hiding behind fake avatar. People are free to agree and disagree with him but no human being has the exclusive Goddamned birthright to dictate to Suwaebou what he should or not do. In fact, I can say Jammeh’s haters contributed to this recognition! Jammeh deserves to be called the “media man of the year 2007” for there was not a single day in the last 12 months without a “Breaking Rumour” about President Jammeh’s latest boxer shorts or the hot pants of his irresistible mistresses. Besides the HIV/AIDS media frenzy, Jammeh dominated the headlines of both the government and the private media online and offline, at home and abroad. Some commentators may argue that Jammeh is a public citizen but there are some noisemakers that are parasitically clinging on Jammeh’s magnetic name to attract cheap attention. They are not better that the pro-government propaganda activists.
The self appointed liberators of supposedly suppressed Gambians are not better than the people accepting Jammeh’s job offers. Like the praise singers, the critics are wasting too much energy on Jammeh and thus pushing serious dialogue into oblivion. I once reminded readers that The Gambia is more than just Yahya Jammeh and there are other serious national issues that deserve attention, provocation, exposure and debate. The current online debates on the colonial legacy of tribalism and the challenges of PDOIS are indirectly responding to my reminder. I am thankful to the gatekeepers and the patriotic fellow Gambians involved, actively or passively, without character assassinations.
I stand by my earlier argument that it is still too early to accuse President Jammeh of practising tribalism. I am Sarahuleh. In Dollars I trust, not tribal politics and I see Dollar signs, not tribal marks; you laugh! The joke aside, I can confirm that some members of Jammeh’s Jola ethnic group are occupying certain prominent positions in our home Government. But if we seriously look the current Legislature, Judiciary and Executive under Jammeh we will still recognize members of all major ethnic groups like Mandinka, Wollof or Fula in key posts. The Jolas cannot be held responsible for President Jammeh’s agenda of power monopolization. I therefore request the serious debaters to replace the destructive term “Jolanization” with “Jammehnization!” I do not see tribalism as a serious problem in The Gambia today. The biggest problem at home is brain drain. President Jammeh’s pool of competent human capital is drying away at a terrifying rate similar to that of global warming. To keep his Government working he is left with the option of recycling deadwoods and odd people from all the ethnic groups he can lay hands on. This explains the appointments of the likes of Lamin Waa Juwara, Gibou Jagne, and Alieu Mboge formerly of the NTC as well as the promotion of half-baked people into important positions. This “fogga jaiye” or second hand human resource policy might surprise analysts who once heard President Jammeh loudly saying he has 1.5 million Gambians to choose from in running his Government!
However, checking and balancing the performance of The Gambia Government goes beyond “Yahya Jammeh this and Yahya Jammeh that.” The demoralized nurses at say, Basse Health Centre, are also Gambians with insightful stories to tell. Sex tourism is a serious problem that is being denied, as it does not suit the image of a “perfect” African Muslim Society. The problem won’t go away as long as The Gambia remains a tourist destination. But talking about it will help the authorities concerned in finding alternative income generating activities for the disadvantaged boys and girls selling themselves to sexually-frustrated tourists looking for exotic flesh! People can also talk about their life experiences to help inspire the younger media consumers who are being misinformed and confused with rubbish from the global Information Super Junkyard!
We have religious hypocrisy at home but the cowardly Dr. Know-alls would wait until disaster happens before they launch their blame game. We are faced with other problems like brain-drain as mentioned above, illegal migration, domestic violence, skin bleaching, high costs of living, low safety for long-term investment, human rights abuses, weak morale for public sector employees, teenage pregnancy, frustrated farmers, Casamance and so on. We need to discuss how to seriously diversify our economy in a highly competitive and globalizing marketplace. So far only four sectors namely, construction/real estate, tourism, telecommunication and banking/insurance are benefiting from Jammeh’s System. Our national agricultural output is basically focusing on the activities of President Jammeh’s network of farms. All the other sectors are simply struggling. It did not surprise me when sometime last year the President of The Gambia Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Bai Matarr Drammeh, diplomatically appealed for more investment/attention to the social sector.
I am a stakeholder of the creative economy and I can better operate in a socio-political environment that accepts intellectual freedom through which people can question taboos or battle ideas without fear or favour. The political framework of Jammeh’s Gambia is yet to recognise critical rationalism and I have to stay away from The Gambia for now. For example, I have just produced a very critical movie against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa with too much blood and shocking images. Distributing it in The Gambia could place Jammeh’s Government and me on collision course since Jammeh is on the records for denouncing campaigns against FGM. So until he comes out with a sound anti-FGM programme, I won’t allow my investment to be dumped inside River Gambia as there are other profitable markets waiting. Sorry, I am a realistic capitalist of the Chicago school of thought and Mother Theresa is yet to tell me why I should be dishing away free fish to people just to attract cheap publicity instead of showing them how to fish placidly!
Building schools and universities is one thing. Allowing the professors and students to rationally question the dogma/status quo is another matter. Prosperity can be attained when the hurdles created by taboos and dictatorships are challenged. The promoters of President Jammeh’s “Gambia Silicon Valley of Africa” dream should wake up from their slumber and see the reality that a knowledge-based economy needs intellectuals and creative freedom to function well. The world-renowned U.S. Silicon Valley in California they are trying to copy was able to conquer our world thanks to the creative freedom of the pioneering students. The official U.S. politics represented by federal talent promoters like the DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) pumps billions of Dollars into innovation without dictating the political, religious or ethnic orientation of its beneficiaries. If you have the brain, you will receive the wherewithal. Private venture capitalists (investors) are also queuing to have business lunch with young people with brilliant ideas from creative pools of Boston, Seattle, California, Tel Aviv, RWTH Aachen of Germany, the Max Plank-Gesellschaft of Germany, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft of Germany, CERN of Switzerland, Singapore, etc.
Though China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other G20 Nations are stimulating a New Global Economic Order, analysts of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, concluded that only countries with highest intellectual properties (patents) would eventually control the world. Bill Gates of Microsoft added that in years to come people would not be identified by their national passports but by the contents of their brains. Hollywood and the U.S. Space and atomic bomb programmes grew with the inputs of German talents from the Peenemünde innovative cluster that either escaped Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship or were relocated to the U.S. as World War II booty. If President Jammeh cannot allow the University of the Gambia and its sister tertiary institutions to grow into respectable Citadels of liberation from mental slavery, he should just restructure them into an APRC conformist “University of Yahya A. J. J. Jammeh” producing lousy Yai Compins and brain-washed militants. As the saying goes, you cannot eat your cake and have it. I was thinking of availing myself to the University of the Gambia as a Visiting Lecturer of Law, Film or Mass Communications but Jammeh’s langage présidentielle at the last convocation ceremony has made me drop the patriotic gesture. I will come back to this subject at later date.
My people, brave men prevent national disasters by finding solutions to problems without destroying each other; let us battle ideas in peace without tribal or religious marks! If people are tired of Jammeh they should go and convince the Gambian voters. This is how serious, responsible and concerned democrats act. I swear by the amazing beauty of my sweet Fatoumatta Jahumpa Ceesay (FJC) that our Gambian voters are not the ignorant psychopaths being made of them. No noisemaker should underestimate the intelligence of our fellow Gambians on the ground. I am yet to hear reports of voters being handcuffed or blind folded into the ballot booths and forced to vote for Jammeh at gunpoint. If voters choose to sell their votes for basic necessities of life, it shows the weakness of our democracy. Our voters have experienced how politicians hardly keep their campaign promises once elected into public office and to them it is “normal to make them pay in advance”. The solutions are not insults, lies, rumours or military coups but more political awareness campaigns on the principles of electioneering. Our voters are good learners. Even in state of emergency our people can effect political change. Critics should not forget how Gambians at home rejected the proposed 4-year transition plan of the defunct Armed Forces Provincial Ruling Council (AFPRC) at time when political activities were banned. They openly spoke for “Presidential term limits” but some smart bastards changed the relevant sections hours before the Referendum making it impossible for voters to reflect and vote “no” on the changed draft of what became the 1997 Constitution. That’s politics. If the anti-Jammeh advocates of change cannot present convincing alternative(s) to Yahya Jammeh’s System, they should not expect Angel Gabriel to drive Jammeh out of office on their behalf.
Those who cannot wait for the next presidential election in 2011 or 2012 can fight for early elections by going to court to ask the Supreme Court to compel the Jammeh Government and the Independent Electoral Commission into holding early elections. They can also lobby the UN, ECOWAS and the AU to have Jammeh removed like Charles Taylor if they have the guts to act on what they preach! Where there is an honest will, there is a clear way. The Gambia is not a “Second Life virtual reality state” and change cannot take place in a Cybernetic game console by lonely keyboard tigers hiding behind fabricated names in say, Labrador. Can anyone tell me how many Gambian voters have access to 24-hour affordable Internet connection and electricity supply? How many local kingmakers at home are literate in English, the preferred language of the regime change activists?
Our Constitution makes its clear that for one to participate in elections one has to spend at least five (5) years in The Gambia. I wonder how many people complaining are patriotic, brave and selfless enough to spend 5 years under the hot boiling Gambian sun to canvass voter support or market their opposition candidates. It has been a while since I last heard of the U.S. based supporters of the opposition NADD alliance. Democratic change requires consistent sacrifice and if Jammeh opponents are serious they should not be afraid of facing Jammeh’s “Almighty dictatorship” on the ground. After all, the opposition politicians in Sierra Leone, Kenya and the ANC supporters of Jacob Zuma in South Africa challenged their mighty establishments like real men with balls! Martin Luther King (MLK) and his fellow Civil Rights activists were not just complaining comfortably in their clubs. Barack Obama’s generation is currently benefiting from MLK’s sacrifice. Please let people stop trading insults and start learning how exchanging productive ideas towards the consolidation of our weak Gambian democracy.
People are free to fantasise and gossip about Jammeh’s Gambia to, among others, back up their asylum applications since Jammeh’s human rights records provide the basis for it. But they should stop gossiping that they are fighting to free Gambians from dictatorship. Anyway, the asylum officers in U.S. and Europe rely on firsthand reports from their embassies and consulates in The Gambia more than second hand rumours. No fool can tell me for example that the U.S. Embassy in Banjul is ignorant of the realities of Jammeh’s rule and that the rumourmongers are more credible. Every country has the sovereign right to decide which type of people to allow (visa) entry and stay into its territory, be it the UK, The Gambia, you name it. People should not always allow their emotions to override their sense of reasoning.
However, justice for the victims of human rights abuses under Jammeh, from Ousman Koro Ceesay to the next detainee, can be delivered if their families take the lead by going to court or by formally asking for help locally or internationally. The dependants of Idris Deby’s victims in Chad and the family of Thomas Sankara from Burkina Faso followed this civilized procedure and are getting all the backings of serious rights groups. The Ghanaian Government is doing the same thing by going to the ECOWAS Court to seek redress for the unexplained killing of its nationals. The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council are not rumour mongering clubs that entertain sensational garbage from populist third or fourth parties idling in Utopia. There are rules and procedures to follow and speculative rumour mongering is not part of them. We must place the Due Process of the Law above impunity at all time and at all places.
As the Germans say “wer glaubt wird selig”; he who believes (in the entire pro and anti government junk) will become a saint! The obsessive madness for the removal of Jammeh and the daily rumours on his activities are making him more important than he really is. The person insulting Yahya Jammeh every second is not better than Effry Mbye, Jammeh’s lead “Jaliba” (praise singer) for they are both wasting their calories in trying to impose their upside-down bat mentality on exhausted audience. The way people get tired of hearing praises of Jammeh is in the same way they get fed up with the marathon demonizing of Jammeh!
Before the bombing the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, Osama Bin Ladin was nobody. However, the very moment former U.S. President Clinton called him the “Most Wanted Enemy” of the United States, he made him the Robin Hood of all those who are tired of America’s geopolitical double standards. This was a big promotion or propaganda boost for Bin Laden’s image. Not a single day passes without outgoing U.S. President Bush or any other top U.S. Government official mentioning Bin Laden’s name. And the longer it takes to silence Bin Laden; the more he becomes a fairytale legend in the eyes of his growing global Al-Qaeda terrorist sympathisers. There are people naming their sons for him. We should not be surprised when some self-proclaimed local marabouts and religious scholars start calling Bin Laden Saint or “woliyo”. Every correct Muslim knows Bin Laden does not have the authority to speak for Muslims and he has brought a lot of bad publicly especially, to Muslim communities living in the West under blanket prejudice. However, the obsessive media attention and the failure of the world’s most powerful army to catch him or blow up his terror empire are helping him receive honours from some fanatics! One man’s honour (award) is another man’s disgrace. As a moderate Muslim, I feel proud to hear Bin Laden’s son calling on his father to give up violence and to look for other peaceful means of achieving his objectives. It is a moral booster for all the people speaking against the collective punishment of Muslims over the bloody Bin Ladinism.
Jammeh’s supporters should understand that not everybody can love Jammeh and Jammeh’s haters should accept the bitter truth that not everyone can hate Jammeh no matter how they intensively demonise him. In fact, the relentless propagation of anti-Jammeh messages and rumours (negative campaigning) gives Jammeh more sympathy as in the example of Bin Laden above. We therefore need sincere love, tolerance, common sense and moderation. That simplistic “good versus evil” approach to the challenges of our country would only traumatise our society. I fully understand that Jammeh is a mortal human being with strengths and weaknesses (for hot women as well) and I do not expect him to be replaced by a Saint as our next President. The current personality cult will evaporate once Jammeh leaves office. The praise singers of former President Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara also glorified him like a demi-god with supposed supernatural powers and today the truth has prevailed. Why didn’t President Jawara use his celebrated supernatural powers to prevent the July 22nd coup from happening?
When I called Jammeh “President-King” some Internet dreamers insulted me but recent political developments have proven me right once again. Look, my time is too valuable to waste lying on the Internet. The Gambia is a small country and whatever crime Jammeh is committing, he is committing it directly or indirectly with the help of the immediate or distant relatives of some of the fanatics antagonising him. They will only complain against Jammeh when they are demoted or fired. Cowards! I have no respect for hypocrites who see nothing, say nothing and hear nothing like the proverbial three monkeys but would open their big mouths once they fall from grace.
People are born with their mouths wide open and they are free to smear my name again. Whether they like or not, I will always respect the will of the Gambian people. If Gambians vote for a donkey as President, I will proudly recognize it as “my lovely President, Its Excellency (I.E.) The Donkey”. If they dig out Saddam Hussein’s body and vote it President, I will still respect their democratic madness! For I believe in giving democratic evolution a fair practical chance with all its inherent deficiencies. Calls for military coups against bad boy Yahya Jammeh are in my opinion cowardly escapism tactics from political responsibility. Recently, Nigeria’s undisputed kingmaker General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida said that military coups are out of fashion and Africans want leaders who can be accountable to them; leaders they can appoint and sack through the ballot box. The last Nigerian presidential election of April 2006 was not perfect. There were people who started shouting for another coup but Babangida and company stopped them. The Nigerian courts and other democratic institutions are being given the chance to help consolidate constitutionalism by admitting petitions against alleged electoral malpractices.
In the same respect, Jammeh’s opponents at home and abroad have not yet exhausted the democratic options for a non-violent change from Jammeh’s presidential monarchy in The Gambia. The decision of the UDP/NRP to go to court over the Local Government Amendment is a good democratic exercise regardless of the verdict. We need to invest time and energy in order to produce a productive Gambianized Democracy, as it can never be a one-off exercise. To me Yahya Jammeh is boxing himself into irrelevance in and out of Africa and if he does not change his style, he will eventually kick himself out power. For, he is unnecessarily creating many enemies for himself locally and internationally with his open tirades against nations and people whose views differ from his.
Whatever, Suwaebou Conateh might have “committed a crime” against Jammeh’s haters with his award. If I were him I would flare their temper by additionally honouring Jammeh as “Man of The Year in the Media 2007” and then invite them to kiss my buttocks with pleasure!”
Belated happy New Year 2008 to all especially, to the addicted consumers of junk material!
Bubacarr Sankanu
Bubacarr@gmx.net