You said he is an educated-illiterate. But how is that possible? How can one be educated and still be illiterate?

“But how could he not understand this simple equation? People want to live according to their natural will. Forcing people to do things they don’t like is equal to unhappiness and resentment. The absolute power now rests with the supreme leader and that is not how it should be.  At first it was not like that.  It is the legislative branch that should decide what can or cannot be done by the citizen.  But even the legislative branch should also be driven by the interest of the people, and the people should know their rights under the law and should know how the three branches of their government work and question them when they try to stray from the common interest of the people.

This is call transparency and accountability and that is why the three branches of the government should be independent of each other and yet work together for betterment of the country. It is illegal for the president of the country to be the only one that decides what the executive, legislative and the judiciary branches of the government do. This leads to corruption, injustice and negligence of the duties of ruling the country justly, you see. The common people should be the ones to decide how things happen. But how could he not understand this simple equation?”

And who is this educated-illiterate that you are talking about? Some of these people have doctorate titles from some institutions out there, you see. ““Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all” Aristotle told us. Ifyour so called doctors do not have the heart to work for the society rather than their pockets, then their education is only that of the mind. They only become intelligent devils. So it is not the tittle that matters, but the integrity of the person that holds the title. If his education that got him these fancy titles cannot inspire him to stand up for justice and do what is right for the good of the entire society, then it is not an education of the heart and hence might be classified as illiterate.

“He would foolhardily sweat the little water in his body, in fake solidarity rallies even when he knew that most of the things the shrouded-leader does is contrary to the common interest of the people.  He must be illiterate, not to know that the country barely survives without a foreign donor’s sponsorship and remittances from his imaginary enemies that live abroad. Yet while dining with some economic prostitutes from the Middle East, he is romanced into believing that everything is well with the economy.  How could he deceive his own people that he claimed are behind him, about the poorly planned two-lane highways laid in the urban towns? Some of which were laid high above people’s houses leaving them to the mercy of flooding. Even a good illiterate knows that the money for these roads was a loan or at best a donation from the very organization he chastised for wanting to recolonize his country.  But then again he would block traffic on these roads in a disguise for national security, instilling unnecessary fear amongst the people he claimed to protect.  How could he not figure out a better way than stiffing traffic in these already congested roads? Have you not also seen the police man sweating in the baking sun at the traffic junction directing vehicles? What happen to the “vision-2020” traffic lights mounted at these junctions? Perhaps the oil wells we heard about have not started flowing yet. Apparently they are still on a CD in some office hoping they never come out for the good of the country.  In the wake of low oil prices in the world, you would think that gas prices would go down in your country as it was in other countries, but instead his country men and women, whom he claimed are always behind him were compensated for this low oil prices by a rising electricity bills, and yet he calls himself a patriot.”

But how could you call him an educated-illiterate when he built more schools for our children to be better educated? How can you say he is an educated fool when he gave up his integrity toserve the interest of the country’s leader? How can you say that he is an educated ignoramus when he sweats in the steaming swamps of the president’s rice fields, helping him to realize his dream of a new Dubai of Africa? Don’t you appreciate the new national assembly building he built and the best airport terminal in the sub region? He brainstormed and came up with the monthly national set-setal to keep the country as clean and healthy as the top ten on Forbes’ list and yet you call him a functional-illiterate. What about the “back-to-the-land” campaign from which people “grow what they eat and eat what they grow”?

 “You must be late my friend, not to realize that it’s now called “Vision-2016” (The myopic vision that is supposed to see the end of rice importation into the country. I hope this vision was not devised in the new national assembly building you mentioned). And in case you missed it, his new dream for you is for the country to surpass Qatar and Japan as the world economic powers by the year 2015. Or maybe 2025 sound better. And mind you, my friend, the women of your country are the target group for this sudden ascension to mightiness as evident in their theme for 2015 international women’s day; “Vision 2016, Gambian Women Can Make It Happen!”

“Don’t you see a trend here my friend? It’s just the same old wine in a new wine skin. Check your dates and you will realize that the next presidential election is closer than you may think. Apparently you can credit him for some competency in that regard. He is taking advantage of the ignorance of your people to achieve his political goals. Do you really think he cares about your religion as he pretends? If he does then why did he force thousands of your of your people against their religious will to worship god on the day he choose, when there is supposed to be “no compulsion in religion”? Hardly will any expert tell you it’s impossible for the country to be food self-sufficient, but seriously even with your honorary PhD you should know it’s unrealistic to achieve such a big initiative so suddenly when the conditions necessary are not all in his control. Unless if the almighty God that belongs to him alone becomes the very rice farmer.”

But you also said “he does not think well before he acts and that is why his economic policies are pulling the country to her knees. How can one person be in charge of every business in thecountry? Not even the selling of chickens is spared. And I said he wants to make business easier and cheaper for the people and the best way to do that is to own the businesses himself. Then you said “that is a way of an economic fool who does not know how the real economies work.” I said he does not have good advisers to tell him a better way of doing things, and you said, “That is because his ill-literacy makes him too arrogant to listen to anyone and the few that tried to help him are used and then betrayed.” Then you also said “those few are also fools because they are no strangers to how his systems work.”

“If he is not also an educated fool, he could have talked the supreme leader from some of the things he does by pointing out areas of priorities to him.  He could have told him that his economic policies are handicapping the country’s progress. Which sane leader in this day and age would ban importation of goods based on a mere projection that enough will be produced? Did he sign a pact with the angel of rain or maybe there is some kind of Indian engineering happening on the shores of our mighty Gambia River (the one the queens of England still wish they own). Killing competition in this generation is a way of indirectly laying the groundwork for mediocrity.  He could advise the supreme leader not to become the supreme law that decideswho becomes what and what happens to whom.”

I said he cannot be an educated fool when he is interested in the progress of the country which is why he sacrifices his life, pride and integrity to work for the government and the people.  But you asked “how comes then he bashed away the freedom of those who dare speak to inform their countrymen about how the government works so that they can hold their government accountable for its actions? Because his ill-literacy taught him that such people are menaces to the power that he thinks belongs to him alone. Oh…how can you say he is not an educated buffoon when he makes it a crime for his people to even say that life is hard in the country? He might as well be stripped of his PhD since he cannot even devise a better way of protecting his citizens without killing them in taxis with weapons. A Chinese philosopher once told us that “Weapons are the tools of violence; all decent men detest them. Weapons are the tools of fear; a decent man will avoid them except in the direst necessity and, if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint.” Now you tell me, does your so called ‘security’ forces knows any other way than using weapons when dealing with your people. You see, my friend, “when you don’t trust people, you make them untrustworthy.””

I again said he must not be an educated-illiterate because he creates a three-day weekend for the civil servant, a genuine gesture from someone who cares about the people and also tries to cut down the government’s expenditure. He is considerate to the majority of his countrymen that’s why he gives them a day off on their holy day. Who else is capable of that but an educated wise man?

“But still he must be an autocrat, to make such changes without first consulting the people he represents. He must be some kind of an educated jester to not consider the impact of his decisions and actions and how they will affect the living conditions of the people who make him who he is. How many of our youth are forcing themselves through the dry deserts of Africa to the unstable Libya of Qadafi’s aftermath, hoping to still be alive when the unfortunate opportunity comes for them to cross the deadly seas to Europe. And you still think this has nothing to do with his misguided priorities (like printing new money) and failed policies that are forcing the countries youth into the dangerous wilderness of the mighty seas of terror.

 “How can you not blame him when he does anything he is asked to do, putting aside his integrity and forgetting his oaths of office to work for the people of the country? Isn’t it your definition of Patriotism to let foreigner be in charge of deciding who is a citizen of your country by issuing Passports to whomever they desire.” No that is not patriotism I said. “Then he must be a fool not to know that in this world of heartless opportunist, some ill-minded people can take advantage of such a thing and commit stupid crimes in the name of his country.  Did that ever crosses your mind? Do you ever wonder why it’s cheaper to call other countries in your region much more than your country? Do you not wonder why when you call your family from abroad you call ends up on someone else’s phone? You think that is just computer misbehavior correct? Apparently there is a lot you really don’t know about your country and the people who run it. Whether your call goes through to your relative or not, as long as it’s terminated in your country, the call terminator (who is no longer Gamtel) gets paid. The government you think is working for you is in fact selling your country piecemeal to the one with the best promise of gratuity and yet you said he is not an educated-illiterate.

“My friend “those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act,” and by extension if they fail to act in the right way, and in the best interest of the society, then their education does not make them any better than an illiterate.”

Recently the online Gambian community has been set afire by the disappearance of a young lady who posted a video of a traffic officer abusing a schoolgirl. While it is not a 100% certain where she is, suspicion has fallen on the State, with reports that she received threatening calls after posting the video, and her phone has become unreachable since.

I write this not from a political point of view – I am neither running for office nor do I have a political party. I write in the spirit of Gambia, the motherland, and the covenant that came into being when we agreed to come together as a nation, setting aside tribal divisions and sharing one thing in common: that we are all waa Gambia. I write because all we the citizens have are our words: the State and its leader have commandeered the army and other security services – institutions that should answer to no masters but the People and our constitution – in order to exert its will forcefully on us.

I write because though we all have an interest in the advancement of our nation, we have under the threat of violence been made to understand in no uncertain terms that we may speak only words of approval for the government, even in cases where it backtracks on its own decisions: white is good, we are told one day, and all who speak of black are enemies of the nation; white is evil and black is good, we are told the next, and all who speak of white are traitors who wish to destroy the country. I write because we have become a nation of scared whisperers, our national dream become one of escape abroad, our youth interested in nothing but leaving, fleeing, ready to put their own lives at risk even as the borders that lead into Europe become ever more tightly closed.

I write because Gambia is all we have, for better or worse, the one thing we all own as our birthright, no matter what else we may or may not possess.

Sadly the young lady’s case is not an exception. Since ’94 the country has become increasingly militarized, the whole nation become a giant barracks, with a leader who is answerable to no one, and whose decisions and actions are final and absolute. To effect his will he uses a collection of sticks and carrots afforded him by the power we have placed in his hands, in order that he might head our national project, not as an emperor or monarch but as the captain of Team Gambia: not above us looking down but on the same field, amongst us, helping us to become the best team we can be.

The first stick is the stick of fear and self-preservation. In the past two decades we have come to be conditioned to believe that there is an intelligence agent around every corner, listening and waiting for us to speak out of turn, so that we may be dragged off to receive our due punishment, gone missing while our families search day and night, grown increasingly desperate. The President openly boasts about his “five star hotel”, referring to the Mile 2 prisons, which is in such a deplorable condition inspectors from the international community were denied entry to it, and we hear horror stories of people picking cockroaches out of their food, and sick prisoners having no access to a prison doctor. This threat is directed not at criminals – rapists and murderers and all the other members of that underclass who deserve imprisonment – but at anyone who voices the least dissent or disapproval. And so cowed have we become as a people that the audience to this proclamation will laugh and applaud, as if imprisonment and torture and mistreatment of their fellow citizens are the funniest things ever.

The second stick is the stick of division. Like children in a house with a violent and brutal parent, when one child suffers his wrath we keep our sympathies to ourselves, keeping our distance from the marked child so that we might not fall into the same situation. The political process – which is integral to a democracy and for creating the marketplace of ideas from which we choose the best for the nation – has become so poisoned that it is impossible to have a proper conversation. Gambia – a land known for our peace, our hospitality, our sense of community and overcoming the odds together despite our great poverty and lack of resources – has become so sharply divided we turn against each other, become mortal enemies merely because we hold different political opinions.

In any functioning democracy a supporter of the ruling party should be able to have a fruitful conversation with an opposition party supporter, each making arguments for the merits of their separate parties, disagreeing vehemently, and then, after the conversation, be able to carry on as neighbor with neighbor, friend with friend, all of us one big family. Instead merely to support even a single opposition policy – or speak once against a ruling party one – is to mark yourself as a pariah, shunned by both friends and family as if you are the carrier of a highly infectious disease, one with no cure other than “repenting” and throwing your full throated support behind the current regime. And despite the fact that a country is a complex system that one man cannot even hold all of in his head, despite the fact that the government implements both good and bad policies, like any other government, we are not allowed to walk any kind of middle ground, to laud the good policies and criticize the bad ones. The only form of engagement allowed is wholehearted and full praise – anything else is marked as a betrayal, one which the executive takes personally and reacts to vindictively with the full power of the State. It has become common to see people paraded on national TV to “apologize”, humiliated before the whole country in order to set an example. This, we are being told over and over, is the price that ANYONE except the President himself will have to pay for saying anything against the Government, even if they have the best of intentions.

The third stick is the stick of propaganda and a kind of forced mass delusion. In five years, we are told repeatedly, we will become an economic superpower. Never mind that we have almost no resources and negligible international influence, never mind that we cannot even supply the whole country with electric power, and the parts we DO manage to supply have to play a game of musical chairs with NAWEC, with frequent power cuts become so normal we have learnt to sigh and just make sure our devices are charged when they come back on. Never mind that we are near the very bottom of just the African countries GDP table – not even counting international – with all our immediate neighbors ranking above us, and a third of the population living below the international poverty line. In the meantime we are forbidden from remarking on the very real problems we face – from the dysfunctional ferries to the need for a better health care system to the high illiteracy rate – in pursuit of this pipe dream, as if merely giving voice to wishful thinking and repeating it over and over will somehow harden it into fact.

And while these sticks are used to drive us from behind, a carrot is dangled in front of us, saying: obey and praise and tow the party line, and you will be rewarded with positions and wealth and power. All the privileges and perks that we have delegated the State to assign have become just one large bag of goodies placed under the control of the Executive, with ministers and other high government officers hired and fired and rehired, sent to prison under “economic crime” charges, government positions become a game of Russian roulette.

And the worst thing about all of this is not the arrests or the torture, not the abuse of power by the Executive or the suppression of any kind of dissenting opinion. The worst thing is that we have come to subscribe wholesale to this narrative: that things being this way is normal, that people who speak up deserve what they get in return, that the executive has the right to do anything it wants, and this is its prerogative and we just have to accept it and live with it. That what is due on to Caesar must be rendered unto Caesar.

But Caesar was a tyrant and Rome an empire, and Jesus, when he spoke these words, spoke from a position of religious authority and in reference to the relationship between religion and the state. We live in a much different time and our political system is a much different one.

I see people who agitate for change online, who loudly proclaim that the President must go. But the problems we face go much deeper than this: we have left our government vulnerable to being at any point taken over and held hostage by anyone we happen to elect. We have the three branches only for show – it is commonly known and accepted that the President alone wields all the power of the State, his decisions overriding anyone else’s. The checks and balances we have in place are completely ignored by the executive when it suits whoever is in charge, and this will continue to be true no matter who we have in charge, now or in the future.

And in a way we are all complicit in this state of affairs, no matter what side we support.

I would defend anybody’s right to support the ruling party, even if I find myself disagreeing with what they say, or decide to throw my own weight behind another party instead. But I ask these supporters: is this really the kind of Gambia you want? Where we can never ever give voice to any kind of dissenting opinion?

Think back on history – a mere three decades ago supporting the PPP was the safest option, ensuring that you were behind the party in power with all the perks that that entails. And now: who dares walk down Kairaba Avenue with a PPP shirt on, loudly proclaiming that the previous regime was a better one? Who can hold a PPP rally without risking imprisonment or worse? No party will be in power forever – those who lead now will fall out of favor when the next regime replaces them, the next party comes into power. And when that happens and you are in the minority, will you think it is fair to be hounded and persecuted the way minority opposition supporters currently are? Even a mother, who loves her child more than anyone, will not spend her every moment applauding every single thing the child does – it is universally agreed that this would be a very bad thing for the child, leaving it with no sense of right and wrong, and absolutely no feedback to prepare it for its entrance into the world. As a religious country it is taken as given that only God is perfect and always right – surely, if you truly believe in the party you support, apart from voting for it in elections it is also your primary responsibility – even as it was for the mother with the child – to work hard to make it a better party? And the only way to do this is to be ready to listen to opposing viewpoints, to get out of the ruling party bubble – where everyone largely agrees with you – and look in the mirror that those who are not part of your party hold up to you, that you might better see yourself.

And on the other side, we are not really helping the situation when we decide to walk down the same route, answering hassteh with hassteh, saaga with saaga, branding all APRC supporters as traitors and dumb and greedy right from the get-go.

For one thing, by going the personal route of insulting the President, his family, and everyone connected to him, we are making it far too easy to have our very valid points dismissed as just a bunch of people abroad who have “no home training”. We could write a book about everything wrong with the motherland, and have firm ground to stand on, but if we have a single saaga ndey in it, a single insult aimed at anyone, the whole book will be dismissed and all focus placed on that single insult on that single page.

For another, it turns off all the people in the middle who may have reservations about the government and not be willing to support the ruling party, but also are not exactly enthused by the endless bevy of personal attacks and invective hurled at people on the ruling party side.

All the people we admire for having achieved change through peaceful protest – from Mandela to MLK – only succeeded because they realized one thing: the greatest risk involved in bringing about change is that we may, if we are not careful, become the same as that which we seek to change, the beauty and purity that we start out with gradually evolving into the very ugliness we set out to erase in the first place.

If we speak of democracy as the greatest good and what Gambia lacks we must be even more democratic than we wish for the country to be; if we speak against the government bringing force and violence to the table we must respond with calmness and show by example that it IS possible to make our arguments without descending to that level; if ruling party supporters brand anyone who opposes as a traitor and calls us names we must realize that this charged language is merely a trap in which those who use it have fallen, and by responding in kind instead of sticking to the issues we are falling into the same trap, ensuring that we never make any progress. I strongly believe that the only way to achieve the change we seek is to police ourselves, to insist on dignity and respect in all our dealings even with – ESPECIALLY WITH – people we disagree with completely and have no common ground with. This is only fitting, for in the end the motherland is a land of dignity and self-pride, of sutura and Jaama and the barrkeh of a people who are God fearing and filled with the spirit of community and neighborliness and what our Bantu brothers and sisters call Ubuntu (and what the Olof capture in the saying “nit nitaaye garabam”).

In the end the way of violence is a single way, overrun by weeds and rocks and potholes; the way of words and peaceful protest is many ways, inexhaustible as long as there are Gambians willing to stand up for truth and for justice. As individuals we may be arrested and tortured, we may be placed under duress and humiliated and even have our lives placed in danger, in order to break our individual spirits, but the spirit of Gambia is eternal and will never be broken. The ones who lead us may choose force in order to compel us to their will because it is expedient and silences dissent immediately, but love and respect cannot be compelled in a body – only fear can. And those who rule through fear will leave no legacy, after their passing all traces of them will be washed away, as if they never were, their names mentioned only with the shaking of heads and a frown as we remember all the harm they did.

We have no guns – all we have are our words and speech. But that is enough, if we only use them wisely.

(Apologize in advance for not being as active in comments – having strained hand issues – should actually not be typing but had to get this out. I’ve made it public so feel free to share)

Pa Samba Jow, the spokesman for the Democratic Union of Gambian Activists in the Diaspora, said his organization wishes the attempted coup would have been successful. Jow said Gambians want to get rid of Jammeh, who his group accuses of abrogating the rights and freedoms of Gambians for 20 years with impunity.

“I think, for this time, it was a genuine attempt to definitely get rid of this regime that has abrogated the rights of Gambians for over 20 years. I think the regime has denied Gambians all avenues, legally and constitutionally, to change the manner of their government. People are left with no other choice but to try to end it by any means necessary,” he said.

Jow described the alleged coup plotters as freedom fighters who, he said, are determined to restore democracy to The Gambia.

Jammeh came to power in a coup in 1994. His government has been heavily criticized abroad for what Amnesty International called its iron fisted repression and widespread human rights violations.

In its 2013 Human Rights Report, the U.S. State Department said The Gambia’s most serious human rights problems included government interference with the electoral process, harassment and abuse of its critics, and torture, arrest, detention, and sometimes enforced disappearance of citizens.

The rights group Civil Society Associations Gambia criticized President Obama for hosting Jammeh at the White House during the U.S.-Africa summit in August, which drew dozens of African heads of state to the U.S. capital.

Jow said everything has gone wrong under Jammeh.

“When Jammeh came to power, the reason he claimed was corruption and overstay in power by the previous regime. Jammeh made the claim that he will never introduce dictatorship in the country, that nobody will ever rule the country for more than 10 years. As we speak, he’s been in power for 20 years. As we speak, Yahyah Jammeh, who came to power a poor man, is now one of the richest people in the country, if not the whole of Africa,” Jow said.

The African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have both frowned on coups.

Jow said that had the alleged coup succeeded, the AU and ECOWAS would have no choice but to support the restoration of democracy in The Gambia.

“Gambians have not been accorded any opportunity to change the manner of their government in a peaceful, democratic way. What is important is for sure that the international community support the Gambian people and to install the restoration of democracy and to make sure that nobody in the history of that country takes the government of the people from the back of the people,” Jow said.

Jow said the Gambian media is under constant attack under Jammeh and that the government does not allow for the free exercise of democratic rights.

The French News Agency quoted an unnamed military officer as saying three suspects were killed in the violence, including the alleged ringleader, whom the officer described as an army deserter.

A US State Department spokesman said the United States strongly condemns any attempt to seize power through extra constitutional means.

Source: VOA

More information is coming in regarding the apparent failed military operation in the Gambia to topple the Jammeh administration. Reliable sources from the corridors of the State House in Banjul has it that the commander of the State Guard Captain Musa Savage may have been the man who betrayed the arm attackers and killed them upon their arrival at the State House to launch their operations.

The source further alleged that the arm attackers had an agreement with some senior members of the arm forces in the Gambia to back them when they launch their operations. The source went further to indicate that the freedom fighters were in constant contact with Captain Savage who agreed to be part of the coup. However, knowing when the attack is planned and the logistics behind the operations, Captain Savage had a change of mind and decided to launch his counter attack.

Essentially when the arm men entered Banjul Mr. Savage already planned his plot and waited for them to arrive. Upon arrival with their weapons to launch their attack on the State House the opportunistic Savage who was once fired and disgraced from the State House by President Jammeh, Savage immediately launched an attack on the three man contingent who arrived at the State House. The source further added that Savage shut former Captain Lamin Sanneh who had a good idea of where the armory is located at the State House. Sanneh was unexpectedly attacked at open point range by Savage who was there to welcome them. Sanneh’s company immediately attempted to retreat and fight back but were both gunned down.

The report added that Savage alerted the military check point at the Denton Bridge who were also on alert when the arm attackers arrived. A serious gunfight ensured for a good number of hours around the Denton Bridge and the State House and several men were left death and some captured. Our reliable source ask a question that made the source very credible. The source ask how comes not a single guard at the State House was killed or injured if the arm attackers came with their weapons to launch an attacked? He/she said the reason for that is because the arm attackers were expecting to have a good reception at the State House without firing shots but instead were betrayed. This is essentially how the plot to capture the State House was foiled our source added.

The report also indicated that some soldiers were assigned to the airport, the national television and the two army barracks. However, information had licked prior to the operation and those soldiers on the ground were asked to stand down alleged our military source. This essentially explains why a highly trained and experience contingent of former soldiers some having served in the US army – the best army in the world had a tactical error in launching their operation. “In fact if everything had gone as planned and there were no betrayals this would have been a bloodless takeover” as it was perfectly planned barring any betrayals. The attackers were reportedly in the Gambia several days and were looking to capture some senior security personnel before the launch of the operation.

The latest report from Banjul is that Yahya Jammeh has sneaked into the country through the airport in Banjul escorted by armed men from Chad. He reportedly did not do the usual guard of honour and was rushed in a separate unmarked car into Banjul. The question that many people are asking are… now that Jammeh is back in town the blood bath, arrest, detention, firing and possible killings will begin in earnest. There is expected to be a rounding up of senior security personnel and some government officials who allegedly may be involved in this failed operation. Going by the failed 2006 coup attempt even civilians are likely to be implicated and the fall out begins as soon as the President obtained his briefing.

Some analysts has it that Captain Savage who initially agreed to be part of the military takeover may have just paved the way for his own demise. That Jammeh is likely to initially reward him but turnaround shortly after to get rid of Savage in the most brutal manner. Gambians are now bracing for the worst as Jammeh has always vowed to kill citizens involved in arm struggle against him. The Gambian army may have committed the worst mistake in history by allowing a brutal dictator like Yahya Jammeh to return to oppress his people after a missed opportunity to end impunity and restore sanity in the country. The first casualties will be soldiers and other security personnel who will pay price. In the meantime, our team’s condolences goes out to the victims of the unfortunate attack. The peaceful Gambia we all know should never have reached this stage of bloodshed only if one man would not have taken control of everything in the country. The diplomatic fall out with Senegal is also likely to erupt at the earliest possible time.

On the potholed streets and alleyways of Greater Banjul, it’s a macabre scene repeated many times; young men with limited education driving around in regime issued, gas guzzling vehicles, doing Yahya Jammeh’s dirty work; arresting, incarcerating, torturing, maiming and murdering innocent Gambians and non-Gambians alike.

But, just last week, a rare appearance on Freedom Radio by one of such young men, Ousman Bojang, provided Gambians with information no one, hitherto, knew existed, and clearly confirmed the deleterious nature of Yahya Jammeh’s AFPRC military regime. But, Ousman Bojang also gave subliminal clues as to the fidelity of most Jolas to the concept of one nation in which all Gambians thrive, unseparated from the broader Gambian family by mortifying ignorance or the dangerous attraction to the unsustainable tribal bigotry.

As repository of state secrets, Ousman Bojang’s extrication from the stranglehold of an artificial social construct that pits Jolas against Gambia’s majority tribes is an undeniable affirmation of Yahya Jammeh’s ideological isolation on the issue of tribal separation. Certainly the significance of Ousman Bojang’s revelations is not lost on Gambians, more importantly; he simply reechoed the challenges that confront Gambians and justified the national obligation to forcefully remove Yahya Jammeh’s toxic regime from power.

But of all the vexing Ousman Bojang revelations about Yahya Jammeh’s divisive tyranny and acrimonious pro-Jola sentiments, one stands out above all the others as extremely Rwandasque in character and indoctrination. Yahya Jammeh’s creation of a Jola army, out of the public glare, hit the airwaves like a ton of bricks. Yahya Jammeh’s regime’s formation of a secret Jola army, paid for by the Gambian people, and designed to enforce his stay in power despite popular opposition, is more a confirmation of his morbid fear for his own life than a stubborn desire to remain in power.

But now, with all the egregious crimes committed on behalf of, and on orders of Yahya Jammeh, the reality of a mass popular uprising is not without basis, and seems more likely as Gambians reach the extreme level of their tolerance. And last week, that reality was echoed in more instances than one. To begin, I never thought Sedia Bayo and I would agree on anything centered on the Gambia’s political struggles; until now. In spite of my reservations about his qualifications and ability to head an organization of any repute in the struggle, our ideas for uprooting Yahya Jammeh and restore civility and rule of law in Gambia are strikingly similar. Simply put; Sedia Bayo has impressed me with his proposal for an urgent nationwide resistance movement to put an end to Yahya Jammeh’s anachronistic military regime.

The similarities of Sedia Bayo’s and my views in moving the stalled national struggle forward is increasingly and rapidly gaining momentum, at home and abroad. The meeting last week of opposition leaders and their call for resistance to the regime’s perennial impunity, in sync with what the public wanted to have happened, was a hopeful sign. Years of online media exposure of the hair-raising human rights violations in Gambia have left Yahya Jammeh’s military regime completely weakened, shunned and virtually isolated by ECOWAS and the vast majority of African leaders.

But despite the frequent flares of violence against the Gambian people, and Yahya Jammeh’s intermittent ranting and raving against the west; most notably the EU, and the US and UK governments, Yahya Jammeh is simply hiding his fear of losing power, and terrified of what will happen to him. What is also certain is Yahya Jammeh’s constants efforts to create distraction from the real economic hardship facing Gambia. To this effect, Yahya Jammeh’s new drumbeat over gays and lesbians is a smokescreen and a political distraction, from beginning to end.

Unfortunately, like the three months witch-hunting exercise around the country in 2009, this too, could cost lives. Already, a quiet, but massive social disruption is taking shape as some of Gambian gays and lesbians head for the hills across the border into Senegal, or descend further into deafening obscurity in a society where their existence is held in contempt by a bigoted minority.

The vigorous debate over gays and lesbians rights in the west, over the past two years, gave Yahya Jammeh an opportunity to exploit the issue and draw attention to himself. Increasingly, Yahya Jammeh wants to cast himself as an anti-western rebel, a position that has endeared him with nations that practice strict Sharia codes, as well as benefit from badly needed financial sponsorship.

By challenging western values on homosexuality, and deflecting attention from an economy on the borderline of ruin, Yahya Jammeh, will also temporarily mute the ongoing frustrations over Gambia’s denial of access to UN Rapporteurs sent to separate fact from fiction in the Gambia’s less than stellar human rights record. And Gambians, who unenthusiastically participated in a lackluster demonstration against gays and lesbians sanctioned by the state and designed to impress financiers from the Middle East, would rather have protested the murders, executions, mass incarcerations, exorbitant cost of food and services, never ending hiring and firing, relentless arrests and detentions of innocent Gambians and the tyranny of the Jola minority.

And with some gay men recently paraded on national television and put on trial, the Gambia has once again been plunged into another ideologically divisive non-issue by a regime that never failed to manipulate unsuspecting Gambians and creating philosophical acrimonies and deep social and cultural polarization in Gambian society.

A blogger who spoke for all Gambians recently contextualized Yahya Jammeh’s ridiculous anti-gay and lesbian circus as; “Gambia does not have a gay and lesbian problem; Gambia has a Yahya Jammeh problem.”

The degree of ridiculousness of the gay and lesbian debate in Gambia is matched only by their corresponding invisibility in Gambian society. The public expressions of homosexuality and other manifestations of crossing the gender divide are such a taboo in Gambian society that only gays and lesbians with distinguishable feminine and masculine characteristics and behaviors will risk ridicule and social ostracization in a society where their obscurity is enforced by society.

The social norms and religious dogma in Gambia prohibit the public expression of homosexuality, and for Yahya Jammeh to make it an issue, only aggravates gays and lesbians self-imposed exile into total obscurity, and away from prying eyes of homophobic zealots in the payroll of the regime. As a people joined by a common desire to bring about political change, Gambians have reached the end of the road; the limits of their endurance and the boundary of their tolerance. The diaspora dissident movement; the online media and civil society organizations have laid the foundation for Yahya Jammeh’s forcible removal, but the diaspora cannot do it alone.

The active participation and leadership of the political establishment and the Gambian people is both necessary and inevitable to move from the point of desire to the point of real political change.

The diaspora, therefore, calls on the political parties and the Gambian people to be more vocal, more engaged and more pragmatic in the determination to see political change through mass, popular nationwide demonstrations. Yahya Jammeh may have his Jola army, but he has to know that for every Jola youth he can rely on for defense, there are ninety-three Mandinka, Fula, Wollof and other tribal youth. To put it another way, the Jola population on the entire planet equals the total Fula population in Gambia alone. Any Jola army Yahya Jammeh stands up for support will face a glaring numerical disadvantage, and a fight it cannot win.

Today, fear of getting entangled with the regime has paralyzed the political opposition and public into inaction and inconsequentiality. This morbid fear that has permeated Gambian society has its roots in the gruesome murder of Koro Ceesay, the 2000 student massacre and the November 1994 military executions, but it does not justify abandoning the responsibility of holding the regime to account. But as it is, political activity has deescalated to near complete silence, which has allowed the regime to ban protests and demonstrations, despite being constitutionally guaranteed and beyond the prevue of the regime to ban.

In addition, the diaspora movement may have inadvertently given Gambians a sense it has the answers, but that is far from reality. The fact is; real power resides in the people and the opposition.

In order to succeed, Gambians must converge together the combined civilian and political opposition into a monolithic force for change. If we do, we can never lose the price of freeing Gambia from the clutches of a Casamance-born tyrant; Yahya Jammeh. Together, we have to make Gambia the next Burkina Faso. The time for balangbaa is now. We owe it to ourselves and to posterity.

Following the expulsion of the Gambia from AGOA and other U.S. Trade benefits, The Government of the Republic of The Gambia says it congratulates the Government of The United States of America for the removal of The Gambia from the list of eligible sub-Saharan African countries under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

According to a press release from the Office of the President, the Jammeh Administration says the Gambia “has never benefited” from AGOA in the first place, “since a US Presidential Proclamation designated the country as a beneficiary sub-Saharan African country on March, 28 2003.”

“Furthermore, in light of remarks in interviews and statements in the local media made by the Charge d’Affaire of the US embassy in Banjul, it has now become unequivocally clear that the Government of the United States has no good intentions for the people of The Gambia,” the Gambia Government stated.

The release concluded by saying, “consequently and bound by an unshakeable faith in the Almighty Allah alone, it should be clear that the dignified people of The Gambia will not succumb to outside pressures of any kind nor from any source, for, the well-being of her people remains paramount for the Government of The Gambia.”

On December 23, the United States President, Barack Obama issued a proclamation that excluded the Gambia and South Sudan from AGOA and other U.S. Trade Acts. Guinea Bissau is the newest nation added to the list of beneficiaries.

Most political analyst say that Jammeh is being childish once again not being concerned about Gambian businesses that benefited from AGOA but instead showing sarcasm saying it “congratulates” the Obama Administration. Observers agree this goes on to prove that Jammeh do not care about Gambians and the well-being of the people of the nation.