Observer’s Editorials from Fantasyland

          

 By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

 

Associate Editor, Mathew K. Jallow  

As I recuperate from a surgery for an ailment that back home could have easily sent me to the early graveyard, I began to ponder what I might have missed in the home news. My condition, I can assure our readership, had nothing to do with that world-renowned buffoon, Yahya Jammeh’s claim to recently acquired “supernatural black magic” powers. If in due course I feel that there is a compelling public interest and a need to know on the ground of health education, I will write a full account of my experiences and ordeal of my surgery. Until then I am committed to my recovery and the battle for the liberation of our country.

After my release from the hospital, I could not wait to access the Internet for news about what has transpired at home while I was away. Needless to say, I methodically went through all the online papers before reading our local home papers, The Point and The Observer. For the most part, The Gambia Echo and The Freedom Newspaper were as unrepentant and hard hitting as ever, and other online papers also did marvelous jobs in what they did best. On the whole, the substance of the papers had not degraded; rather, the Diaspora media has remained committed to the struggle to free our country.

 

Swaebou Conateh and Pap Saine

That could not be said of the media back home, however, where The Daily Observer and to some extent, The Point have stooped low to compromise the integrity of the Gambian media. However, I could not anticipate the successive parade of editorials in the Daily Observer devoted entirely to singing the praises of Yahya Jammeh. But first, I must register my disgust, displeasure and disappointment over the nominations of and acceptance of awards in journalism by Swaebou Conateh and Pap Saine from Yahya Jammeh at a time when the media is muzzled and intimidated by Jammeh. Mr. Conateh has turned himself into Jammeh’s ping-pong ball to use as showcase of his regime’s relations with the media in general. In allowing this to happen, Mr. Conateh has gained something from the regime, but in the process, he has lost the honor accorded him by media practitioners at home and abroad. At a time when the murder of Deyda Hydara remains an unsolved case, at a time when the journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh is still missing and feared dead and at a time several journalists have this year alone fled for their lives, both Swaebou Conateh and Pap Saine have no business allowing their good names to be used by a regime that is doing so much damage to our country.

 

Kanilai Calling

The Daily Observer carried two editorials that screamed about the need to answer to Yahya Jammeh’s call for help on his farms in Kanilai. This to me was unprecedented, given the fact everyone who goes to Kanilai will provide free slave labor on “Jammeh’s supposed farms.” Over the past several years, communities across the country, have upon the initiatives of District Chiefs and Governors, cultivated and harvested farms for Jammeh in their different localities from one end of the country to the other. The Daily Observer, by these cowardly editorials, is helping Jammeh turn our countrymen into Jammeh’s slaves. Why should anyone spend a minute helping on “Jammeh’s farms” rather than spend it on something to benefit and advance themselves and their families?

 

5 Patriotic Gambians

Letters to The Daily Observer commenting on The July 22 Coup mentioned five brave young men who led the coup that brought Jammeh to power. But, the letters without exception, concentrated on speaking no ill, seeing no evil and hearing nothing bad about Jammeh. They paint rosy pictures about what they call the “July Revolution” and fail to mention where and what happened to the other four coup makers. If The Daily Observer has any guts, they must tell the public what happened to Sadibou Hydara, Sanna Sabally and Edward Singateh? Where are they now?

 

The Youth and Murders

An Observer editorial decries the spates of murders and the rise of crime among the youth in the country as if this is at all surprising? Haven’t the morons at The Observer figured out that crime cannot just stop because we wish away; rather, every government makes concerted efforts at creating jobs and giving hope to the young as the only way to deal with the vexing issues of crime. Instead, what we have is a regime that is perpetually in the business of celebrating itself by throwing parties and festivals even as the country is rotting from inside out. For the Observer to equate rising crime rate and the suffering of our jobless youth to the “disrespect to authority” is an insult to our young people who have no guidance and no hope for a better tomorrow.

 

Amie Kolley

In a letter that could pass as an editorial, one Amie Kolleh speaks of how proud she is of Yahya Jammeh, describing him a “Man of God”, a “gift of the Almighty” and one who brought us “happiness, respect, peace, love and development.” For starters, I believe many of the letters praise-singing Jammeh are fictitious and planted by Jammeh henchmen both at the Daily Observer and elsewhere, rather than by ordinary Gambians. The fictitious propaganda letters are meant to act as counter-balance to the criticism from the very effective online media. But, if by magic Amie Kolleh really exists, she maybe writing about The Gambia that exists only in her fertile imagination, in a universe far removed from ours.

Finally, Ambassador Barry Wells must be commended for attending the sham trial of our comrade Fatou Jaw-Manneh. This will give him a sense of the Kangaroo nature of Jaw-Manneh’s particular trial, but of other held before and now in the entirely corrupt and inept judicial system of our country. As we wait to hear her fate, we remain convinced that anything other than an acquittal will tantamount to miscarriage of justice. We too are waiting and listening.