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By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor
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When Dr. Isatou Touray and I first met in the early 1980s, she was rising within the ranks of the Department of Community Development. Still full of energy, her swagger was an embodiment of youthful exuberance, and the promise of a future so full of hope. Then as now, her passion in practical terms has translated into lifting barriers to economic opportunity for the poor and underprivileged in our society. Her commitment to the causes of the poor, has bound her to the work she loves and relishes doing. On the personal level, Dr. Touray is approachable, different in every aspect from most Gambian women whose value-system centers primarily around a false notion of class, and based on an economic and materialistic judgment; a severe form of Napoleon complex that is responsible for the creation of corrosive social barriers in Gambian society and culture. What Dr. Touray cherishes more than anything else is being the advocate voice for the voiceless; those in society too powerless to speak for themselves. Dr. Touray’s life-time has been dedicated to causes larger than her self-interest, and she revels in the sheer satisfaction she derives from being a bridge to social uplifting and economic opportunity for the disadvantaged in our society. In the intervening years since she left the Department of Community Development, Dr. Touray has plunged herself into a cause she is so passionate about; a cause that has cultural and religious dimensions, and this has not endeared her to an influential segment of Gambian society; the dogmatic Islamic clerics who are opposed to her culture altering education and advocacy against female genital mutilation of pre-teenage girls. This life-altering cultural practice serves no useful practical purpose other than satisfy the insecurities of the dominant male’s egoistic need to control the female gender. Last week, when Dr. Touray was arrested by a paranoid regime, which sees enemies lurking everywhere, her case smelled of pre-emptive vindictiveness against a non-existent threat. Dr. Touray’s upright and exemplary life in the service of the poor in our society is beyond reproach and she has distinguished herself from a vast majority of Gambian women preoccupied with their singular self-interests. In Yahya Jammeh’s world, the recent move to arrest Dr. Touray and her co-worker Mrs. Amie Bojang-Sissoho, has all the hallmarks of a regime in the process of manufacturing a new and different class of target group to intimidate and see what he can get away with. Sometime last year, I suggested the military overthrow Yahya Jammeh and install Dr. Touray as the interim head of state, and with me, over a period of two years, supervise and oversee the freest and fairest election on the African continent. How much thought Yahya Jammeh gave to that proposal and how it has factored into his perception of Dr. Touray may never be known, but what is certain beyond the shadow of doubt is that Yahya Jammeh is navigating into a new and different territory, to victimize, intimidate and harass, and if history is any judge, he will likely get away with this as he did in many other instances before. And as international pressure mounts against Yahya Jammeh’s regime for this unprovoked act of intimidation, Dr. Isatou Touray and Mrs. Amie Bojang-Sissoho can rest assured that the world is united behind them. For they have joined the ranks of all those who have fallen victim to Jammeh’s insecure regime in the wider struggle for the heart and soul of our country. But one thing is irrefutable; Yahya Jammeh is a dead man walking and his regime too will, like many others before him, surely come to a miserable end.
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