By Mathew K. Jallow
Around the world, our independence anniversaries have always been celebrated with much fanfare by a majority of Gambians. But, that too now appears to becoming as prehistoric as the dinosaur. This year, February 18th, came and went, and for the first time, the pre-celebration anticipation, was perceptibly lacking in Wisconsin where I live, while elsewhere, reports largely tell of similar disinterest in celebrating the anniversary. Are political events at home impacting the way Diaspora Gambians think and react towards what we perceive as government functions? The answer is clearly yes. This year, more than in any previous one, our national holiday was overshadowed by the horrendous events of the past year, and celebrating independence with Jammeh still at the helm, would, in the rationalization of many fellow citizens, tantamount to legitimizing this murderous, corrupt and incompetent regime. Even the online press community made only a fleeting mention of our 42nd anniversary, a clear indication that the annual occasion has become a meaningless embarrassment to all who cherish their freedoms. It is apparently clear that Jammeh’s regime has sucked the energy and the customary enthusiasm out of our people, and now, the country by and large, is resigned to letting Jammeh do things his way, but with minimal popular support and participation. In my opinion, this year’s independence celebrations ought to have been dedicated to the memory of everyone who was murdered and maimed by this brutal dictatorship, as well as to all those who even as we speak, have languished for months and years in the prison system across our country without the benefit of being charged for any crime. There is no worst way to abuse power than to seize people’s freedoms by killing them or locking them up in prison for no justifiable reason, and without the benefit of due process. If the anniversary comes around again with Jammeh still in the seat, we ought to organize protests everywhere two or three Gambians can gather, from Los Angeles to Tokyo. It does not necessarily have to an elaborate march with banners and posters, but that too does help draw attention to our cause. Without a doubt, it is inappropriate to celebrate Independence Day when, many innocent Gambians continue to fall victims to Yahya Jammeh’s megalomania and blood thirst. We know that the skeletons of many of our compatriots still remain buried in unmarked graves across the land, while others are wasting away in the dirty and filthy hell holes they call prisons, ill-fed, undernourished and often tortured and brutalized by Jammeh’s thugs. What makes this all the more bothersome, is that all this is happening with Abdou Karim Savage, of all people, overseeing the most ineffectual judiciary system in the history of our country. The pitiful judiciary is ridden with corruption and ineptitude, and is on the way to a slow but certain calamitous failure. Jammeh’s death squads, the NIA and the CHIAKAS are everywhere, operating with reckless abandon, roaming the countryside and our streets, spreading fear wherever they go, threatening the peace and tranquility of our country, and leaving behind the seeds of discord that threaten to disintegrate the very fabric of our society. This friends is no government, it is more like a MAFIA organization.
It is happening again. Teachers, the most under appreciated of our civil servants are not being paid, yet again. Isn’t this an all too familiar story? It is. But, just how the government can run out of money to pay civil servants, when farm hands in Yahya Jammeh’s Kanilai farm are standing trial for stealing nearly 20,000 000 Dalasis from the farm? While teachers go hungry and unable to fend for their families, the monster, Yahya Jammeh is awash with our money. How is it fair to deprive people who put in an honest day’s work, the resources they deserve to nourish and sustain their families? Last year, many farmers went a year and more without being paid for the groundnuts that they had clearly given to the buyers, and for months the government seemed not to care about their plight. Rather than being paid cash, the farmers were given receipts. What? It is not surprising that we are facing a cash flow crisis, because Jammeh’s frequent ridiculous traveling between Banjul and his Kanilai village is costing our taxpayers hundreds of thousands of Dalasis each year. If he traveled less and sold off our farm equipments and the other implements he keeps at his Kanilai farm, perhaps then we will have enough money to pay our hard-working teachers and livestock sector workers. The predicament the teachers currently find themselves in, is a window to a much larger problem that points to the fact that The Gambia is going from bad to worst. Not surprisingly, we should never expect good result to come out of the bad situation Jammeh’s regime has created for us. It is not going to happen, and it will never happen. What part of garbage in garbage out, don’t Jammeh and his henchmen understand?
The ground was broken last week to build a power plant in Tujereng, and as is his custom, Yahya Jammeh went into a rambling and condescending tirade to berate and intimidate workers at that new facility. The Daily Observer called the new plant by a long name that made no sense, and it is supposedly the name of Yahya Jammeh’s own mother. This is part of the Jammeh madness of creating cult icons of himself and his mother, but no right thinking Gambian should call the new plant by the name published in the Daily Observer. The new facility will simply be known as the Tujereng Power Plant, and that is what we should call it; end of story. If Jammeh wants to name something after his mother, he should take her back to their village in the Cassamance, and maybe he will find something there to name her after. As far as we are aware, Jammeh’s mother has done nothing for our country or in our country that will qualify naming anything after her. These honors have to earned and not merely given away to anybody. Last year Jammeh again decorated his mother and a Jola bugarabu dancer from Cassamance. He gave them our national medals of honor when we have more deserving Gambian artists to bestow these honors on before any outsider and a few who come readily to mind are Jaliba Kuyateh, Abdel Kabirr (Lie Ngum), Ifangbondi and others too many to mention here. Jammeh’s next crowning moment may perhaps be the renaming of some grand project after his father or perhaps even himself. For sure, Jammeh is dumb enough to think he can do anything without expecting any consequences. He is a living embodiment of all delusional people who have grandiose illusions of themselves. The naming of things and places after himself and or members of his own families, is symptomatic of Yahya Jammeh’s inability to rationalize things as normal human beings do. The naming of the Tujereng Power Plant after his mother is an irrational act, and reveals a lot about Jammeh’s state of mind. But, as work at the power plant begins, we will keep our ears close to the ground for Jammeh’s next act, until then we wish the workers at the Tujereng Power Plant all the best of luck. Stay tuned.
Momodou Sidibeh article on the breakup of NADD, published here was an illuminating analysis. The arguments presented by Mr. Sidibeh, and his rationalization of them, were for the most part right on target, but in my estimation, other contentious issues were also at play. While it is impossible to know for sure what goes on in the minds of people, what they say and do can open window to their thinking. In the now infamous NADD MOU, what was left unsaid and unwritten was perhaps the most important piece of information negotiators needed to ferret out and address head on any possible area of disagreement. In the end, the decision to avoid discussing those areas with inbuilt biases, also became the unraveling of the NADD experiment. Mr. Sidibeh alluded to the fact that in his opinion, NADD was hastily formed. I agree. The formation of NADD and its governing Articles as contained in the MOU, were poorly resourced, hastily crafted, and overall, the whole enterprise reeked of disingenuousness, because apparently, there was a hidden agenda from the get go. The acrimonious exchanges between protagonists on both sides of the political divide are well documented, and many on both sides got their share of berating and name-calling just for having different opinions. During the early days and prior to the formation of NADD, a select group made up their minds to think for us. That was in many ways an insult to the intelligence of the rest of us who were not in on the behind the door discussions that took place in Atlanta and elsewhere. This evidently was a non-starter that was going nowhere fast. Among other things, a decision was made behind closed doors and without proper consultation or input from the vast majority to market and sell Omar Jallow and Halifa Sallah to the public. Initially, neither Ousainou Darboe nor Hamat Bah were given due consideration they deserved to play roles they deserved in this new and emerging political structure. With the emphasis on O.J and Halifa alone, it did not take long before this self-evident connivance and conspiracy was brought to scrutinizing light of a skeptical and suspicious public. Someone could figure out how to try to impose O.J and Halifa on the rest of us, but was not smart enough to anticipate the resistance that could ensue. The hand picking and marketing of O.J. and Halifa without consultation and input from the wider public was a major factor in the unraveling and disintegration of the NADD experiment.
The second point has to do with a phrase in the MOA Clause relating to the principle of “sovereign equality” as defined by the U.N, and subject to all its member states without regard to geographic and population sizes. But, the application of that concept to political parties seeking to form a collaborative effort as in the case of NADD is not only ridiculous, but also downright unfair. If NADD were to succeed, none of the political organizations should by force of any MOA Article, be made to lose their political standing as if they never existed in the first place. No serious political party should agree to negotiate from that position of weakness. As it was, the only parties that had nothing to lose and everything to gain with the MOA as it was written were PPP, PDOIS and NDAM. By giving up their status as the first and second largest opposition parties, UDP and NRP would be obliged to create conditions that “equalized opportunities” for all parties without regard to the fact that some of the other parties did not have any have single representative in the Assembly, while others existed only on paper. That is a form of socialism, and is neither fair nor acceptable. Under no circumstances should UDP and NRP surrender their political power to parties that have no footing and very little traction among the wider voting public. Moreover, UDP and NRP could not be more different from PDOIS philosophically, and the two sides were unlikely to be able to work amicably together for any length of time. Why? Because, the personality conflicts were more likely than not to come to the surface before too long, and add to this the diametrically opposite political agendas of the various parties, especially UDP and NRP on one side and PDOIS on the other. Less someone wonder from what authority I speak, I say to you, I speak as a founding member of the NRP.
The point Mr. Sidibeh made about personality conflicts is true to a degree, but it has nothing to do with Halifa’s presence being a threat to Darboe or Hamat. Halifa as a threat? Uummm? What does Halifa Sallah know that Darboe and Bah don’t know? Wait a minute. I know the answer. NOTHING. What is going on here is that Mr. Sallah is overrated and Darboe and Bah are clearly underrated? The simple reason is that Halifa has spent almost a lifetime trying to cultivate a cult following for him, and this is slowly paying off, judging from the small number of political fanatics for whom Halifa is a small god. These Halifa fanatics are all a brainwashed group who in the event of a Sallah presidency, could easily be transformed and used as killers much like Jammeh’s CHIAKAS, because by virtue of their weak personalities, they are vulnerable to being used and abuse. Halifa Sallah is well aware that there is a small band of largely semi-literate followers who are idolizing him and creating a cult around his personality, yet he is doing nothing to stop it. Everything Halifa Sallah has done to date reminds me of the early days of killers like Fidel Castro, Kwame Nkrumah, and Pol Pot the schoolteacher who charmed his way into the hearts and minds of his people only to become one of the worst mass murderers in history. Anyone who takes the time to read a Constitution the way Sallah did ours, and who is not a teacher, is subject to distrust and suspicion, because more likely than not, it is done for all the wrong reasons. PDOIS is still stuck in the past, the old school out of which I also came from, and I have a thirty-year-old Che Guevara tattoo on my arm to prove it. Besides, many Yundum College classmates still call me Mao Tse Tung for a reason, but I have long ago rejected that 70s political ideology as nothing more than chasing utopia. We do not need a devil like Jammeh, but by the same token, we do not want a would-be mother Theresa as Halifa Sallah has tried so hard over two decades to project himself. We will do better with leaders who are normal, regular human beings, able to make simple mistakes and be willing to correct them. Halifa Sallah has worn the exact same type of dress, the exact same type of hair-do, and remain stuck with the same socialist ideology since the 1970s, and in my book there is something seriously wrong with that picture. Psychologists would analyze this as a character flaw, because it clearly shows inflexibility, rigidity, and lack of the spirit of give and take among other things. Besides, am I the only one who notices the fact that first PDOIS and now NADD is a one-man show? Jammeh wishes he had the same iron grip on The Gambia the same way Halifa Sallah has on first PDOIS and now NADD. But, coming back to the issue of NADD, in any way one looks at it, NADD was a victim of the circumstances that created it, and the blame for its disintegration has to be placed squarely at the feet of the many disingenuous would-be kingmakers whose blunder resulted to the cloud of distrust and acrimony hanging over us.
A few weeks ago, Yahya Jammeh, in trying to justify his meddling in the affairs of the Senegalese region of Cassamance, narrated some historical inaccuracies relating to the purported political relationships that existed between Senegal and Gambia way back in history. The only problem is that he was lying through his teeth, making up the history, however, Jammeh was clearly on to something: dreaming of a Jola hegemony that stretches all the way to Guinea-Bissau. But, it appears that will forever remain a mere dream in his head. The Jolas are mere 3.7 percent of the Senegalese population, and with more than half of the Cassamance territory in the hands of the Fulas, how Jammeh will create a Jola hegemony with Cassamance as the coveted prize, when all the Jolas in the whole wide world are far less than the Fulas in Cassamance alone, is beyond my comprehension. To achieve his goal, Jammeh would have to beat the Fulas in Cassamance to submit to his grand idea, and that for Jammeh will forever remain an IMPOSSIBLE feat for him to accomplish. The Cassamance Fulas do not want to cede from Senegal, and nothing in the whole wide world will make them do it. So, just keep on dreaming, Mr. Yahya Jammeh.
Before anyone begins to accuse me of tribalism, I will say this, there isn’t a bone of tribalism in my body. I love the Jolas, matter of fact they are my favorite people to hang around with. Ask all my Jola friends in Nema Jola Kunda and elsewhere. We are all clear on one thing Yahya Jammeh and his actions do not represent what the ordinary Jola person stands for. I know the Jolas as extremely sociable and industrious.
Editor’s Note: The views expressed here are exclusively those of the author.