Opinion

For The Gambia Our Homeland

By Foday Samateh, New York

I am no Jonathan Swift with a Modest Proposal for my nation’s oppressor. However, at the alarming rate perplexing events unfold; lights will go out on hope quite soon. Some disillusioned Gambian will have to face the disconsolate reality, pay homage to that renowned writer’s enduring supreme irony and, with all its resonating sarcasm, suggest to the petty dictator the most callous ways of hacking and dismembering the nation.

All disenchanted Gambians must register their disquieting consternation to the leaders of opposition parties for failing to bridge narrow divides and mount a formidable united front to defeat the petty dictator in the forthcoming 2011 presidential elections. Given the historic significance of this election, the most important election considering the worsening peculiar circumstances, the stalemate over a consensus candidate will go down as sad commentary in cautionary tales of missing the opportunity of a lifetime.

By the weights and measures of democracy, everyone knows who should be the flag bearer of the opposition parties. Let me say it plain. That candidate is Lawyer Ousainou Darboe of UDP. I don’t know of any single supporter of PDOIS (I am one of them though I am no socialist) who will not be calling on all the other parties to rally behind Hon. Sidia Jatta or Mr. Halifa Sallah had any of them been in Darboe’s position of enjoying by far the largest mass support among the opposition leaders. Some PDOIS brethren accused Darboe of acting with affected air of entitlement. Would they level the same accusations had Hon. Jatta or Mr. Sallah led the largest opposition party and on the strength of that enviable status conducted himself the presumptive nominee? More important, would the two PDOIS stalwarts pretend they weren’t entitled to lead the opposition and act like political midgets? I thought we support the party that introduced “intellectual honesty” into the political discourse.

I had never been a supporter of Mr. Darboe and UDP. The few people who still remember will bear me out that in the previous election cycle I went plenty on record serving Mr. Darboe with one swift political indictment after another. My beef with him in 2006 elections was his failure to act like a national leader. He joined NADD by signing unto the famous Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) but when the time came for leadership selection as designed by the agreement, he realized that he wasn’t going to win the unanimous consent required to avoid a primary challenge. Instead of pressing forth to a primary as the next stage in the process, he left NADD with stiff lips like a school girl walking out on her friends she suspected of conspiring to steal her sports star boyfriend. Everyone knows the end of that saga. The opposition parties split into two factions, their supporters who had been clamoring for a united front came down with voter apathy and Yahya Jammeh clobbered them in the polls.

In this election cycle, Mr. Darboe is refusing to entertain any suggestion of a primary. By all means he should for reasons highlighted above. Given the share of mass support each opposition leader enjoys in the country, he is entitled to insist on being the flag bearer. Nothing is undemocratic about it. The fact that even as he reaches out to the others he stands firmly his ground on the question of leadership makes him the leader he never proved to be.

Beyond the solitary question of flag bearer, he must unconditionally put all  other cards on the table. He needs to make three major concessions to demonstrate that he is willing to make real sacrifices for the nation in the interest of alliance. He needs to unilaterally announce that if elected president on the united opposition ticket, he will serve only one term of five years to end our national nightmare. He needs to publicly give all the assurances that the key positions in the transition government from vice president, foreign minister, justice minister, finance minister, interior minister and others will be given to alliance partners at a unity conference. He needs to also publicly declare that the Shadow Cabinet of the Alliance will come up with a comprehensive bill of democratic reforms as the campaign platform. These reforms must include: writing a new Constitution to ensure full and proper Separation of Powers and term limit for the President, realigning the state institutions in conformity with open and transparent government, and restructuring the economy. The policy and institutional reform aspects of the 2006 MoU and Agenda 2011 are great starting points and he needs to say so to reassure fellow opposition leaders that he is reaching out in good faith and not taking them for a ride. He also needs to caution his supporters to cease and desist from using crude and gratuitous language in reference to his fellow opposition leaders. If he will insist on being the leader he must act like one both publicly and privately.

Mr. Darboe’s own record of dealing with fellow opposition leaders has come home to roost. In previous National Assembly elections, Mr. Sallah called for tactical alliance among the opposition parties to win more seats for a strong challenge to the ruling APRC in the legislature. In one instance at least, UPD left Hon. Jatta to his own resources against the ruling APRC opponent but kept throwing a spoiler at Mr. Sallah thus giving sense-defying advantage to Yahya Jammeh’s candidate. Had Darboe made high-minded investment in graciousness in the past, the opposition would have a bigger voice with Mr. Sallah in the National Assembly and he would have much easier time convincing PDOIS that he is a reliable national leader and not a petty partisan. He has never condemned or renounced all the lies and fictitious innuendoes that kept erupting out of UDP circles to discredit PDOIS and particularly, Mr. Sallah.

Hamat Bah of NRP delivered a New Year message to the nation and, with all the irony lost on him, pointed accusing fingers at PDOIS while inveighing against the hatred (he claimed) among the opposition. Has Mr. Bah ever stopped to wonder if this hatred he mentioned is produced by the unhealthy verbal gas spewed into the political environment? God knows, he is no angel when it comes to name calling and he needs to quit already. He needs to refrain from throwing around impolitic language mischaracterizing others who have spent more time and made more sacrifice on behalf of our country than about anyone else in politics. He had done more than his fair share of polluting the political atmosphere and increasing its global temperature with condescending and disparaging remarks, especially about PDOIS after he followed Darboe out of NADD five years ago. He ridiculed PDOIS as an insignificant party that failed to make any mark on the political landscape after twenty years in existence. He boasted that Darboe’s UPD and his NRP together had the numbers without needing the other opposition parties to defeat Yahya Jammeh. Well, facts are facts and they are always stubborn things. The election results turned out to be more than sobering. They were therapeutic of highfalutin self-delusion.

Mr. Bah also announced in his New Year message that he will be a presidential candidate in the upcoming election and won’t be joining any alliance. He repeated it three times to make sure no Doubting Thomas remained unconvinced. Frankly, I don’t buy the reasons he gave. The dire conditions the country was in when he joined Darboe five years ago have only got worse. If there has ever been any need for strong alliance, it is now. If a two-party coalition couldn’t beat Yahya Jammeh what chance does each individual party has? Isn’t that the whole purpose of calling for a united front of all the opposition parties? Since Mr. Bah couldn’t give us any reason why he will no longer work with Darboe, he can’t sell us any excuse (which has nothing to do with the UDP leader) why he is running on his own. Striking out solo will only help hand over another landslide to the petty dictator who is on his way to becoming king and the sole sovereign of The Gambia. We need less division and more unity to end our national nightmare.

In staking out the PDOIS position regarding opposition alliance, Hon. Jatta charged that, “Some leaders are not interested in historical legacy.” I am quite glad that he is. I would also like to count Mr. Darboe and others in the opposition among those who are interested in historical legacy. In spite of policy differences, all opposition figures are working to achieve what we deserve — a free and democratic Gambia. The people who are not interested in historical legacy are on the other side dining with the petty dictator and pumping his juvenile ego with Earth-size flatteries and sky-high mendacities. My second observation about historical legacy is that even this finest of image-conscious principles cannot take rigid precedence over addressing unbearable realities through imperfect solutions. As President Obama keeps asking the Professional Left of his Democratic Party: Do you want to spend all your time fighting from a purist standpoint for 100% of what you believe in with very little hope of achieving anything but self-lauding emotional satisfaction, or do you make necessary compromise to accomplish a good part of your agenda? 

Let us go on an imaginary time travel to historical legacy and look back in a futuristic quiet moment of retirement and judge the wisdom of the decisions made in this election given the available choices. In the first choice, the opposition parties fail to come together and, as every indication predicts, none of them succeeds in defeating the petty dictator at the polls. On the heels of the elections, he consolidates more power; The Gambian people lose more of what remains of their freedoms; they live in a state cloudier with fear; and, I suspect, the quack crowns himself king in fulfillment of his phantasmagoric self-actualization. In the second choice, the opposition parties come together and nominate Mr. Darboe; he wins the election by a squeaker; the petty dictator is forced out of power in no small measure to international pressure; civil rights and liberties, and political and press freedoms are restored; Mr. Darboe proves himself flawed president (no surprise); breaks promises to the alliance and the country (say after pledging not to  runs for a second term he changes his mind since no law will bar him); but his presidency ends our national nightmare and we become a normal country again. Which is a better choice for our country: continuation of the madness of Yahya Jammeh or less than ideal beginning in Mr. Darboe? Which historical legacy will feel better to live with in retirement?

My critics will say back to me that those are not the only choices. Very respectfully, I see the situation rather differently. Some of them will still be quick to dismiss me and point out that there will be another election in five years. Again very respectfully, I say to them not when we lose that right to a crown. Even when that worst case but likely scenario never materializes, I will still urge my critics to study the timeline of the petty dictator’s reign. With every election he grabs more power and amasses more wealth to keep the country in his greasy, kleptocratic palms. So he will have even more resources at his disposal in 2016 if there is any election. Will the opposition parties come together then to defeat him when he is sure to be even more powerful and wealthier or will they further defer their hopes to 2021?

I read Mr. Sallah’s Agenda 2011 and kept saying to myself what a masterpiece! In a sense, I couldn’t help making circumstantial comparisons to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Every condemnation of the status quo is, in accuracy and degree, perfect strike of the rhetorical sledgehammer. Every policy item is a veteran physician’s prescription to a patient on the brink of terminal illness. The decrying of politics of patronage, the judgment rendered on the coup mentality of Yahya Jammeh’s reign, the need for a new Constitutional arrangement and order in which judges and National Assembly members are not handcuffed to jail without the due process, the need for the public/private sector partnerships for investments into the economy to create jobs and lower the tax burden on the people, the call for professional national security forces that are not instruments of intimidation and repression of some paranoiac Head of state, the need to remove anti-market hurdles to farming and trade, and lot more, are exactly what the doctor ordered for the sick nation.

All these time-tested brilliant reform and policy proposals will never come about as long as Yahya Jammeh has the keys to the State House. Removing him becomes indispensable to implementing the policies and reforms, as Mr. Sallah states in the Agenda. On this pivotal question of changing the guards at the State House is to my mind the only part the visionary document seems not surefooted. His opinion of other opposition leaders comes across rather easily in the Agenda, and it is not flattering by any stretch. He believes they are engaged in the politics of patronage like Yahya Jammeh, albeit on a smaller scale proportional to their means.

My reading sensed that Mr. Sallah has dropped enough hints in the Agenda about making up his mind for a second presidential run or at least he is seriously considering the idea to bring the change he envisions for The Gambia. That is an unparalleled noble and patriotic aspiration. In a normal time, nothing should stop him from exercising his constitutional rights to make his case to the people. Some people employing different set of analyses will argue for the fact that our country is muddling through abnormal times, he needs to declare his candidacy for 2011.

I maintain the view that no single opposition party can defeat Yahya Jammeh. I wish to be wrong. I will be the happiest person to look in the mirror and laugh in joy at my own expense if any opposition party defeats the petty dictator on election night. However, I’m not alone in reaching the sad conclusion. Mr. Sallah states as much in the Agenda and goes on to speculate about the promises of an independent presidential candidate free of partisan labels and affiliations as the best antidote to voter apathy to inspire most opposition supporters and peel off the ruling party’s base, and thus defeat the petty dictator. He gives series of analyses about the current electoral mood and landscape and constructs a trend to substantiate his thesis for a different kind of presidential candidate. One can infer without effort that Mr. Sallah’s convictions in this rosy outlook are one of the reasons PDOIS is calling for a primary among the State House aspirants of the opposition parties.

The data Mr. Sallah has provided is based on a very narrow sample and the situations are incongruent to the office under discussion. The stakes in the presidential election far outweigh those in a National Assembly or local council elections. Yahya Jammeh doesn’t care hoots about how many council seats his APRC wins beyond mere electoral bragging rights but he sure will be terrified by any real possibility of the voters giving him the boots. He will do everything in his power to cling to his power.

My arguments regarding Mr. Jatta’s principled stand for historical legacy will also apply to Mr. Sallah’s principled propositions in Agenda 2011. To critics who point out that PDOIS is taking a long slog to bring meaningful political change, Mr. Sallah expresses satisfaction in the document that the world is catching up on their fundamental argument that sovereignty resides in the people. The lamentable irony is that the longer he and his indefatigable colleagues speak and write about democracy the farther the petty dictator pushes the country away from orbit of the rule of law. Without any intention of making light of his serious work, I take my leave with the following: The Gambia’s agenda in 2011 is to pick between two imperfect but very different choices. Continuation of Yahya Jammeh’s madness or non-ideal beginning in Mr. Darboe only Foroyaa can put it aptly: History is recording, and this is how matters stand.

 Editor’s Note: The views expressed are entirely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of The Gambia Echo newspaper, LLC.