From the horrors of our fellow citizens wrongly accused of crimes, arbitrary arrest of citizens in undisclosed locations with lengthy jail terms, forced confessions, citizens losing their lives from regime terrors, the dead among us denied proper burial, showering up citizens with radical statements promoting disunity, taking advantage of the poor or weak, favoring communities against one another, injustice meted out to UDP members, to the wave of condemnation throughout the world it invited, outrage each day in the waning months of the APRC regime era exceeds the outrage of the previous day. This is exactly the governing philosophy that Yaya Jammeh warned against. All those hundreds of little betrayals lead got us to the dysfunction we see all around. That is the news we have for you Yaya Jammeh about the last 20 years. What good news do you have for us — to catch the vision of what the nation can accomplish with those record?
Never have Gambians have to deal with such a surge of such horrors layered one atop another close at hand over the last 20 years or so. How did this situation come about? The APRC has lost credibility to continue to govern Gambians by devouring all the principles it preached against over the course of a long chain of political miscalculation, corruptions, judicial interference, misinforming the public, philosophical betrayals, rhetorical excesses abuse from it leader who has a sudden interest of rewriting historical facts. To make things worse, Yahya Jammeh attempted to mollify Gambians for the damage he has caused to our lives and future by showering some with entitlements for us to continue to appreciate him. Gambians do not believe anymore he has the qualities of passion, feeling of responsibility and a sense of proportion to make careful decisions towards the citizens.
Everything he does now is carried in a very disruptive that leads Gambia to nowhere instead of allowing citizens to —converse, allowing calm deliberation with the nation before implementing big fundamental changes, self-discipline with the nations coffers, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests. Over the past 20 years, or at least since Yahya Jammeh ceased power, his prose style of stirring one crisis —after another. His rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic and he have managed to divide Gambians into different classes of citizens and some people into radical mind-set of blindly following his illegal orders of killings or harming citizens. Citizens with different approach of developing the country —comparisons to bad unpatriotic citizens became a staple.
So I guess now people at once so cynical and so naïve, now know that running a country or a government is a craft, like performing surgery, carpentry or mason. If you don’t possess the skills, don’t do harm to others. The APRC leader does not believe in government and so did not respect its traditions, its disciplines and its craftsmanship. Everything has to be blessed by him. He is the doctor without education, the farmer , the teacher, the law, the religious amir, and the builder. Yaya Jammeh developed a contempt for corruption and tribalism for himself, but it is he who made the most lavish promises imaginable and does the opposite. He has managed to regard political identity as a sort of ethnic identity. Certain positions of interest in the government are only offered to ethnic loyalist of jaw-dropping incompetence and any community — be it the kombos or up country which fails to support him are denied services—which they paid tax for.
Gambians now feel like you and your loyalist are masters at destruction of our society but incompetent at development. Willfully using the levers of power to instill fear in the population in everything you do to produce some tangible respect for you, only results in incremental dislike. Today, the world has witness mercenary judges who do not respect tradition of the court, disregard of Gambians, Laws of the country or precedent and are doing everything to convict Gambians for your satisfaction even in the midst of Ramadan. A scholar once said, “If the birds knows the sweetness of honey in bee’s stomach, they will be certainly nice to them”. So please get to know us better because we all have a stake in the country instead of you constantly over politicizing and undermoralized our society. You build a country out of your citizens, not the other way around.
By Habib ( A Concerned Gambian)
