By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

A little more than two thousand years ago, as Jesus Christ was being nailed to a Cross and dying, he turned His eyes up towards the Heavens and said: My Lord, my God, why have thou forsaken me? That of course was a rhetorical question, but there is nothing rhetorical about the question of why God seems to have forgotten our dear homeland. Every new day seems to birth one bad news after another, and any hope that things will get better soon, is nowhere in sight, and not by a long shot, it seems. The more entrenched Yahya Jammeh's regime has become, the weaker our institutions of governance have gotten. This converse relationship is ruining our governance system, and it may take years to rebuild people’s sense of freedom, value and worth about themselves and their trust in our government. Our civil service has become so numbed to Jammeh's abuses and misuse of power that the natural will to fight for their rights has receded into the deep, dark recesses of their collective minds. Because dictatorships by their very nature force their subjects to think inwardly and passively to the extent that after a while their proactive, reactive and creative thoughts become moribund, the whole society will fall into disillusionment and dysfunctional state of being. By using the military and security forces to coerce, intimidate, and force compliance, Jammeh is continually blunting and weakening our people's right to think critically and intellectually for themselves. Critical thought and intellectual expression have always been anathema to regimes that sought to gain and maintain power at all costs. In The Prince, a political treatise, Niccolo Machiavelli (1513) sought favor with the ruling Medici family by encouraging and justifying the use of brutal force to gain and keep total power, because he reasoned that all human beings are innately evil and bad. More than five hundred years later, who knew that even African dictators like Yahya Jammeh, will swear by Machiavelli's dictatorial bible, The Prince? Now thirteen years into Jammeh's reign of terror, The Gambia has turned into a political wasteland where dissent is punishable by death, torture and incarceration, where the media could not find a more hostile place to operate, where criticism occurs only behind closed doors and where government censorship of news is a way of life and self censorship has become second nature among the population. These are the brutal realities of The Gambia today, and whether we have the intellectual capacities to realize this or not, our country is crying out loud for salvation. Ours is a ticking time bomb, and sooner or later, our very people who have been humiliated and abused for so long, will explode in a fit of rage in an effort to regain the pride and dignity that Yahya Jammeh took from them. And that is my word for the week.

Weekly News Roundup

The Gambia Journal.News monitored over Gambia Radio and Television Services about the use of government employees to provide labor on government time is disturbing to say the least. To give the readers a sense of how criminal this act is, here in Wisconsin where I live, both Scott Jensen, the former State Assembly Speaker, and a Republican, and Chuck Chavala, the former State Assembly majority leader, a Democrat, are serving years in jail for using simple things as the state government's computers and printing papers among other things for their own and their parties’ political interests. By now, even the dead know that every butut that Jammeh uses anywhere, for anything, is money stolen from our people. But on top of all that Jammeh still has the guts to round up government paid workers to work on (his) farm. This is unprecedented and it is unacceptable. 

Taiwan is again providing lots of money for Yahya Jammeh to supposedly spend on girls’ education. For some reason, Jammeh is not receiving the checks personally this time, but we know that no matter who he designate to get the check, the money will end up on his lap at State House. While this is disturbing, it is the realization that only girls in the Fonis have so far benefited from these infusions of funds into education. The last time such money was allocated by Jammeh to benefit more than 800 girls, every one of them was a resident of the Fonis leaving hundreds of very poor children around the country high and dry. Is that how the head of a government as Yahya Jammeh is supposed to so openly and blatantly discriminate against poor innocent children because they are not of his Jola tribe? I know that decent Jolas from across the Fonis are hurting that Jammeh is doing what he is doing in their name. But there is another dimension to this story: Taiwan is once again propping up Jammeh and enabling him does the evil things he is doing. 

The Gambia's Laughable National “Disassembly” meeting is coming up, and if recent history is any judge, they are going there to dance to Yahya Jammeh's drumbeat, because truth be told, it is Jammeh who sets the agenda for the Assembly. The Bills that are tabled for debate, or better still for rubber stamp, all emanate from Jammeh himself. The Assembly though has a duty to throw in some works of incomprehensible English that will make Geoffrey Chaucer turn in his grave and foggy ideas articulated in a most abysmal manner, but whatever they do, the end result is always predictable. Today, our National Assembly has deteriorated in the quality of its representatives, suffering the same fate as our Civil Service as people on the borderline of illiteracy populate both our National Assembly and Civil Service. What a tragedy?!! 

The Freedom Newspaper.

Everyone is free to express his or her opinion on P.K. Jarju's article about how to get rid of the snake in our midst, Yahya Jammeh. I stand by Mr. Jarju for showing realism in the face people's unwillingness to see and accept reality. I still cannot get my mind around the idea that an evil government that kills, tortures, maims and incarcerates its people deserves nothing less that total annihilation and obliteration from the face of this earth. Everything Jammeh has done in the past thirteen years, the murders, imprisonment, tortures of soldiers, security personnel and civilians and the massacre of twelve innocent school children in 2000, and forty-four Ghanaians in July 2005, are more than enough crimes to earn him a noose around his neck. So, way to go, P. K Jarju.

Edward Singhjateh & murdered victim Sgt.Fafa Nyang

Edward Singhateh’s enrollment in law classes has got many wandering and scratching their heads in wonderment. As for me, it did not faze me one bit. Why? Because recent revelations about the depth and level of Singhateh’s involvement in the murders of innocent Gambians is only now coming to light. Singateh is being outed by some of the people who should know, the very people he served with in the military. If this is not bad news for him, then nothing is. Now, Singateh is a marked man with a chip on his shoulder. And the law degree; God knows he will need it. There are two options open for the Singateh brothers: to plan a fail proof escape route to go back to their mother's homeland of Great Britain; and for Edward to use the law degree he will earn to save himself and his brother, Peter from a lifetime behind bars in Mile 2. 

Four people have been name in the brutal murder of Deyda Hydara. This lesson here is that crimes like this never ever remained concealed forever. There is ample historical evidence that sooner or later, either through guilt or the desire to do the right thing, most people who are privy to such heinous crimes always end up doing the right thing by volunteering information. Now, like the Singateh brothers, these four cowards need to find a new country to go to, because The Gambia will become hotter than the inside of an oven for them. They too will never again enjoy peace in our country for as long as they live. 

Senegambia News.

The recent arrest of two senior Gamtel employees, or better still, the arrest of any state employee on corruption charges, is symptomatic of the cancer of corruption that is so pervasive in the Jammeh led government. Without a doubt, based purely on the level of each nation’s wealth, Jammeh has proven to be the most corrupt person to head a government in Africa, bar none. This is disastrous for a country as poor as ours, which has to depend on foreign assistance for more than fifty percent of its annual budget. In the Civil Service, those who dare put themselves in Jammeh’s firing range are telling themselves if Yahya Jammeh can get away with this massive corruption, why wouldn’t they? And guess what? They are right. If Yahya Jammeh can help himself to our limited financial resources and act like The Gambia belongs to him, what should prevent others from doing the same? Every now and then, this corrupt government would sacrifice some civil servants in the name of cleaning corruption when in reality they are pulling blinders over our faces; or so they think. Our prisons and jails are full of people whose only crime is doing the same think Jammeh is doing; albeit at a lesser rate of severity. This is the height of hypocrisy, but we are seeing right through Jammeh’s skin.  

The Point Newspaper.

The dubious transaction that culminated in the sale of Gamtel/Gamcel to a Lebanese interest, and the reaction of Gambians across the world to it is creating ground swell disapproval that in a true democracy would have the potency to bring the government crashing down. Everything in the way these negotiations were conducted cries out corruption and illegal. To begin with, the decision to sell government interests in any business for the purposes of divesture falls under the preview of The National Assembly. The Assembly alone has the mandate to authorize this sale, by first thoroughly and objectively debating its merits, by among other things determining whether the party or parties interested in the purchase has the history, the record and credibility to live up to the requirements and expectations that our people through our government put on it. That determination cannot, must not, ought not, must never be left to a bunch of selfish politicians and bureaucrats who lack knowledge in the way the government and the bureaucracy ought to function to be effective and accountable to the people. But to the purported buyers of Gamtel/Gamcel, we can now only say to them: go ahead and milk our people dry. That is what you came to do, and Jammeh has given you a license to do despite the widespread protestation from our citizens. Your company, like Yahya Jammeh, is living on borrowed time. And God knows this is not a threat, it is the reality. It is only a matter of time. Only a matter of time. 

The dockworkers decision to call off an imminent strike is disappointing and it speaks to the way and manner this government has consistently worked to make everyone forfeit their rights. The right to strike and to negotiate labor disputes is an inalienable right of any union, and the use of coercion and threats to achieve compliance, as the dockworkers probably experienced while under NIA custody, is uncalled for. Moreover, labor disputes are to be negotiated and settled with the appropriate authorities, in this case, the personnel of the Dept. of Labor, and not a security outfit like the NIA who know nothing about Labor law. Come hell or high water, this could never have happened under the venerable Jallow Union. The Unions in our country must assert their legal right, and not permit themselves to be intimidated by this most corrupt government. 

Foroyaa.

Sierra Leone has just recently set a bar that every African country must emulate and live by. Not long ago, the Nigerian National Assembly voted to deny General Olusegun Obasanjo the mandate to stand for reelection for the third time. This was a brave decision and it has set in motion the willingness in many African countries to deny politicians lifetime rule over their people. When such reforms begin, they spread like wild fires and politicians are unable to stop them. So even looking at it from purely a political angle, Jammeh’s government is doomed, as the winds of change fan across Africa; Jammeh will have no one in Africa to support his continued residency in the seat of power.  

The Gambia Echo.

Yahya Jammeh’s recent acquisition of the property belonging to the ex-president Jawara’s family in Barajally was rude and disrespectable to our elder statesman. Yahya Jammeh consistently demonstrates that with the military and security forces behind him, he acts like a bully, as he uses the power of our military and our security forces, all of who we pay their salaries, to humiliate and abuse our fellow citizens. Today, our entire military and security forces exist only to perpetuate Jammeh’s hold on power, and in that respect, they are not benefiting The Gambia and its people in any way, shape or form. But as if a farm in Kanilai, another in Siffoe, yet another in Boiram, Lower Fulladou, another coming soon in Barajally, and others elsewhere were not enough, Jammeh’s greed has taken him to Nuimi where the very successful Ndure family coco plantation estimated to worth well over fifteen million Dalais, is virtually being taken against the will of the descendants of Alhagie Kebba Ndure the man who built this highly successful enterprise from nothing. It is understood that Jammeh offered five hundred thousand Dalasis of our money to the Ndure family for the plantation. It is also understood that the Ndure family is on the verge of disintegration over this deal that most of the family don’t approve of, and will never approve of. This therefore begs the question: whose interest is Yahya Jammeh serving? The answer is clear; him of course, not The Gambian people from whom he is stealing left, right and center. So much for a government. 

Finally, with regard the standoff at the Yellitenda Crossing, Yahya Jammeh is once again courting trouble with Senegal. While The Gambia is a sovereign nation, we have no right under international law to deny Senegal the right to cross our country to the southern region of their country. If our government does, Senegal has every right under international law to use any means necessary, including military force, to remove any barrier our government may put on them. For Senegal, it is a matter of survival of its people for trade and commerce between its north and southern regions to proceed uninterrupted; certainly not by our government. A simple analogy is Guinea, Conakry, deciding they want to stop waters flowing through the River Gambia because they want to divert the flow elsewhere because they don’t like us Gambians. International law does not permit that, and if Guinea were to do this to us, international sanctions would be imposed and if that failed, a regional or international military intervention would be possible to remove Guinea’s threat to our very survival. By sending soldiers to Farafenni, Yahya Jammeh is once more showing how ignorant he is. The Senegalese Minister of Transportation, Farba Senghore, is right to do what is necessary to ensure that our stupid government does not create unnecessary hardships for the people of Senegal’s north and Southern regions. Every right thinking and sane Gambian is on the side of Senegal on this latest standoff. That is for sure. 

Gainako

The cancellation of a previously planned meeting is rather unfortunate, but truth be told, I for one was skeptical about the possibility of success from the very beginning. My reservations have to do with the knowledge that Gambians are a difficult bunch to organize around an issue of interest to our country. The reasons primarily have to do with the fact that many of us have agendas we work on that are at variance with the general and our national interest. Secondly, the agenda as proposed does not seem to have any relevance, whatsoever, to the pressing issues in our country. The only kind of organization that can succeed in bringing us together is one committed to the removal of Yahya Jammeh by whatever means necessary, including forced removal. Think about that fellows.