Not a good place for a country to be in
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By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor
Take stupid, mix it with ignorance, add dumb, add moron, and flavor it with crazy; what you get is Yahya Jammeh and Mustapha Carayol, and everyone working with Jammeh in a decision-making capacity. Yahya Jammeh has evidently become practiced in the art of subterfuge, and his lack of foresight and reasonableness has begun to permeate the minds of those not yet entirely changed by his provincial thinking. At a time of great social and economic stress, decision-making ought to reflect peoples’ immediate needs; not based on vacuous, undisciplined and self-serving reasoning. The past weeks, Jammeh’s regime peddled a number of news issues under the rubric of development, in reality it epitomized Jammeh’s propensity for dereliction of his responsibilities. Jammeh’s hubris, the result of our acquiescing to his murderous and intimidating nature, only exemplifies his callousness, hedonism, and a psychotic narcissism that equals Mobutu Sese’s deleterious insensitivity and greed. Whatever Yahya Jammeh has done in the name of national development, has an eerie façade of avarice and self-interest. But equally important, his infectious stupidity is percolating in the thinking process of his spineless lackeys, as well as his intellectually debased public officials. But as usual, the news of the week were dominated by the courts’ proceedings, yet there was space to accommodate news that was baffling and flabbergasting to say the least. The news that jumped right out of the pages and screamed for attention includes of course:
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Construction of a new National Assembly
The planned construction of a National Assembly at a cost of $14 million demonstrates that Yahya Jammeh is more interested in creating white elephants, for the purpose of showcasing empty pride, but adding nothing to our battered economy, than in tackling and finding practical solutions to the massive unemployment of our young and not-so-young population. We are in need of jobs for our people, but a new National Assembly will drain the national coffers of funds that could be invested in job creation, education, health care, tackling the rolling black-outs in Brikama and elsewhere, and of course the repairs of our dilapidated roads. Jammeh should visit the neighborhood of Tobacco Road where we both lived in close proximity. A story in one of the papers disclosed that streets there are impassable after a rain. But it did not use to be that way. Right Mr. Jammeh? The allocation of such a huge amount of funds for the National Assembly at a time when the creation of jobs is the overarching need is a bad idea that should be totally scrapped at this juncture. There are other more worthy areas to invest these funds into that can help job creation, boost education or improve health care by ensuring we have safe and good drugs, and not the massive infestation of fake and hazardous Nigeria manufactured drugs that are proved to have killed many people all across West Africa.
Jammeh’s exorbitant dowry
Yahya Jammeh clearly scored a home-run with this one. This is a first in Gambian history and even the combined dowries for Ladies Njeme and Chilel Jawara does not come close to what Jammeh offered to young Alima Sallah’s family. But, the real story here is buried in the aberration of Jammeh’s uncontrollable actions. Where is Yahya Jammeh getting all these millions of dollars he is wasting on stupid give-away when there is so much agony and suffering in the country? Drug abuse is rampant, prostitution has become the bane of our society, jaw-dropping crime and corruption involving so-called senior civil-servants has gone through the roof, and the rate of incarceration, which was unfathomable in Gambia only a decade ago has turned us into one of the few countries in the world to send people to prison for frivolous reasons or for no reason whatsoever. Beyond that, we have asked where Jammeh gets all these millions of dollars he is wasting for the past fifteen years, but we still cannot get an answer from Jammeh. Once he did mention that Allah was his bank, an incredibly stupid suggestion to make. One thing is certain, apart from monies he makes from the sale or facilitating the shipment of illegal drugs from our sea and airport, any other funds that come to him legally, is provided as a loan or grant to our country in the name of all Gambians. And the 8,000,000.00 dalasis and three new vehicles Jammeh has used to buy his new bride Ms Sallah and her family is either dirty drug money, or is looted from our national coffers. At a time when The Gambia is short of basic commodities, it baffles the mind that Jammeh can waste so much money to buy Ms. Sallah and her family. It makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever.
IEC’s Mr. Mustapha Carayol
The other day, IEC’s Chairman, Mr. Mustapha Carayol asked the opposition political parties to help provide financial contributions to run the affairs of his agency, a request that is at once perplexing and ridiculous. The IEC is a state agency in every country on the globe and should, therefore, be entirely funded by the state. But more than that, Mr. Carayol ought to have planned two years ahead of time, by submiting a budget to the state in anticipation of both the presidentail and Assembly election. And if Mr. Carayol needs funding over and above what the state can provide him, he ought to craft grants proposals and seek funding from agencies around the world. But, to ask the opposition to help fund the elections because the “government cannot do it all” qualifies Mr. Carayol as one of the dumbest persons of the month. Everyone is aware that the opposition is comatose and wallowing in their grubby vomit, directionless, and lacking a sense of urgency. So Mr. Carayol ought to give us a break with his ridiculous and dumb request for funding from the opposition. Nice try though, but perhaps the keeper of God’s bank, his boss Mr. Yahya Jammeh could help him out here.
Clearing Jammeh’s farms
It is the time of year again, and all over the country, poor villagers and civil servants are being pressed into free labor on Jammeh’s dozens of farms all around the country. And it is hard to wrap one’s mind around the idea of civil servants in their hundreds, paid by the state, having to work on Jammeh’s farms, on state time, each year. Additionally, villagers all over the country, out of fear of being victimized by chiefs and commissioners, are forced to volunteer time and labor to work on Jammeh’s multiple farms. This is an illegal use of state resources, and an affront to The Gambia and to Gambians. Whenever we believe we have seen it all from Yahya Jammeh, he would come out with a another stunner. This shows how Yahya Jammeh holds Gambian in low esteem. Yahya Jammeh wields so much power, that he could, if he wanted to, order the entire army and security services to work on any one of his farms, and they would comply witout daring to refuse. That is too much power in the hands of one person.
A new Land Commission
This is one of the greatest paradoxes of the week, and it reminds me of an arsonist who torched homes only to come back, extinguish the fire and solve one of the challenging puzzles fire-fighters encounter in the course of their job; determining the cause and origin of the fire. In 1995, I spent two weeks crisscrossing the Kombos, from Nema Village to Gunjur, to investigate land grabbing by Jawara’s officials. It was a serious issue then, and it remains a serious issue now. Our poor villagers, who are easily intimidated by officials of government, cannot seem to get any reprieve from senior civil servants. In addition, it is hard to believe that a plot of land along the coastal region can cost 500,000.00 dalasis. How many Gambians, even those living and working abroad, can afford that amount of money for a piece of land? If our choice real estate is so expensive only foreigners could afford them now that will likely create resentment and an explosive situation years down the road. But for the new Land Commission to be even taken seriously, it must begin with investigating of the numerous properties Yahya Jammeh confiscated from their rightful owners, and move on to all the improperly obtained farmland in his possesses.
Shortages of meat and sugar
The acute shortage of meat, sugar and other commodities is a sign of and the product of more serious economic problems yet to come. Yahya Jammeh’s determination to control the business community and make business decisions for them is screwing the market of basic commodities. The free market is principally governed by the “supply and demand” theory, not by non market actors; and especially not through arbitary and artificial price fixing. It is worth repeating that Jammeh’s numerous business ventures are a hindrance to the general development of our country's business environment, as Jammeh can afford to undercut existing market prices primarily, because he gets free labor and has unlimited access of the resources of the state for the benefit of his business ventures. In addition, Jammeh is also a big importer of goods for which he does not pay taxes or any labor related costs, which often amounts to many million of dollars in just one shipment. A businessman who has overhead expenditures, pays taxes, transportation, labor, pays custom officials for doing their job, and freight, cannot compete with Jammeh’s Kanilai Enterprises, where Jammeh has access to, and advantage of the entire state apparatus and state resources to develop his business. But it gets worst. Now to hear The Gambia is going to import meat from Mauritania is another new first, and frankly, there is something awfully wrong with this picture. I mean, it used to be that it was The Gambia that exported livestock to Mauritania; not the other way round. In another reversal of fortunes for our country, where until recently, more than half of our rural farmers once produced enough harvest to subsist on, and still have a surplus to sell to the local and regional markets, principally Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Mali, now they live on imported rice from Asia. And now, the news headline: “Tropical Country Imports Meat from a Desert Country”, is ridiculous to even contemplate. In my book, what we are experiencing is not development; rather, in its proper context, it is the true definition of economic retrogression. For every single step we move forward, we are regressing three steps. We are never going to get to the proverbial Promised Land at this rate. And that is not a good place for us to be in.
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