Analysis

Letter from America

By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

Dear Gambia,

We heard that you are being challenged by another internal turmoil. Yet, you don’t seem fazed by it all. Just guessing! This is hardly surprising. Political cynicism and intellectual quackery has everything to do with it.

Don’t you think? Just the other day, a daughter of yours, Fatou Jaw-Manneh, wrote an excellent analysis that astutely diagnosed the state of your political health. Her objective analysis will come down as a classic; showcasing deft and depth, exposing the whimsical nature of our people, and revealing the oddity and the callous indecisiveness in a nation manifestly wavering in the discourse to bring sobriety and sanity back into our country. I share her quaintly pointed and shrill exposé, but with one caveat. In the drab and dour reaches of the sub-conscious mind, our psychology is far less ordinary and far too complex to simplify. The ethereal nature of the make-up of the human being lends itself to speculations, second guessing and oversimplification. We all know that. Yet, our desire to understand how our countrymen and women have turned so boorishly passive, has nothing to do with being either didactic or judgmental; rather, our motivation can be explained purely as altruistic, driven by a desire to understand, for the sake of resolving issues and challenges that stand in the way of our freedom and liberty. Dear Gambia, I believe you will understand the depth of our frustration, the scope of our helplessness, and the breadth of our fury. And, I hope you will excuse us if we falter in judgment. It is all for the love of YOU.

We all know that Yahya Jammeh has not remained in power this long for his charm. And certainly not by any abilities; which he woefully lacks. It seems he has put Machiavellian niftiness to good use, and like everyone drunken by power before him, his political future is in doubt, his peace of mind forever lost, and his fall from grace as definite as death. In revisiting the issue of complacency raised by Fatou Jaw-Manneh in her recent Maafanta article only two days ago, I will venture a little further. Although I agree with her general premise and the theory of her exposé, and without being apologetic for the political grind and demeanor of Gambians over the past decade and half, the exasperation she expressed, can to a great degree, be explainable by two words; “Stockholm syndrome.” Stockholm syndrome is a condition of the mind used to describe the coping mechanisms that abused and battered people develop in their effort to rationalize, minimize or deny the existence of any abuse in their lives. The appropriate analogy is the “battered wife syndrome” a condition, which refers to a wife’s inability to distance herself from an abusive marriage; a behavior many battered women often develop. For many, the trauma can be all too real and long lasting. This is the depth of the socio-psychological decadence Gambians find themselves drawn and entrapped into; albeit unwittingly. It does not in any way, shape or form, excuse what seems like the general docility of our fellow countrymen and women in the face of Jammeh’s ubiquitous arrogance of power and his brutal display of evilness. True, there have always been the few with fortitude and courage to stand up and matter, when nefarious machinations, political zealotry and government overreach has threatened human dignity and the rights of man. But, in The Gambia, we cannot find them. Yet! It is this absence of character and moral decency, this drought of exemplary leadership, this deafening silence of the majority, this blight of intellectual power back home, and this suffering of fellow country-men and women that are the sources of our frustrations, our anger and our rage. It is why we remain stubbornly persistent in our quest, and adamant in our determination to find the final solution to the vexing problem of Yahya Jammeh.

Dear Gambia, even as we speak, so far away from home, we can hear the murmuring and grunting of fellow countrymen; sounds of despair brought on by the intolerable weight of Jammeh’s tyranny. Now, we have reached the limits of our tolerance and we need change in our country, so that we can, for the first time in a decade and half, behave like the rest of the world. We want the continuous hiring and firing to end. And we want the ongoing arrests and detentions; the tortures and the murders to stop, so people can go about their lives secure and unafraid. It is an open secret that Jammeh is consumed by the burden of securing his life and the prolongation of his regime’s rule, but Gambians have a different idea. For as long as Jammeh remains in power, there will be attempts to remove him. But Jammeh has convinced himself that prisons are the panacea for his political troubles, and is unmoved by guilt or human emotions to do the right thing. Because of his brutality and overreach, Jammeh cannot any longer rely on our military as the bulwark against aggression from Gambians fed up with his regime. And the ongoing Kangaroo trials of military officers are a mere repetition of past trials, for after the framing and forced disappearances of so many innocent Gambians, we have ceased to believe anything Jammeh says or does. His history of equivocation and divisiveness has left a bad taste in the mouths of Gambians, and today, the tribal divisions he has promoted all these years, is backfiring. The Jolas are realizing that after Jammeh, they have to live with the other tribes, and are making a good faith effort to distance themselves from Jammeh’s tribal politics. In the same vein, since 1994, we lost many opportunities to overthrow a regime that has continually brutalized its citizens, but we will never stop trying until we see the demise of Jammeh’s regime. And today, no other West African nation is maltreating its citizens the way Jammeh’s dictatorship does. With most of Gambia’s educated professionals living in exile in neighboring countries or in Europe and the U.S, or remain jobless and marginalized back home, no one can figure out how Gambia can develop and move forward like the rest of the world. We need real change, BUT, it cannot be another military or another Jola run regime. Yahya Jammeh’s overthrow must, therefore, be followed by the immediate appointment of a civilian care-taker government to stabilize the situation until all of us come home to decide the fate our government and our country. Finally, to our military and security forces, we reassure you of our firm resolve and unbending commitment to have Jammeh removed. And we want him gone NOW. That is the only way we Gambians can ever enjoy a normal, hassle-free life in our beloved country.