Yaya Jammeh, a rock-ribbed divisive dictator who rules Gambia with a clench fist accordingly, with mysterious spiritual ideology and brilliantly fooled many of his platoon of armed guards, professing of having a third eye and forfeited himself with deceptive psychological powers which many would fell on his sword. It’s difficult to fathom his incestuous relationship with religious leaders who glorifies his sins and shortcomings as never to be mentioned in the parlors, his transgressions against the Gambian citizens makes other known dictators around the world crimes seem trivial and he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks except his trophy wife. His dependence on spiritual adviser has ruin our economy, continue to witch hunt people, and sadly has brought with it a reign of terror— anyone who doesn’t adhere to praising Yaya Jammeh or is viewed as a threat to his power — have been rounded up in jail or exterminated. This continues to be a nagging concern for all Gambians.

He is strangely reticent about the everyday hardships that bedevil the lives of the poor Gambians — particularly women and youths, lacks similar sympathy for our struggling farmers, and opposition members according to him are meant to be killed or jailed for treason. What baffles most Gambians is— he throws Gambia’s national wallet opens to musicians, foreigners, and his undeserving friends for admiration whiles he does the bare minimum for Gambians. Oddly enough, it is very troubling for 22years, this man whom was entrusted with safeguarding the life of the former Gambian president, took over the country by the barrel of the gun with an ego of self-entitlement to everything and he is very well known for his unanimous calumnious statements despite staining our country with his albatross scandals. He continues peddling his narrow minded political aims which does not fit Gambia, whiles tapping the empathy and sorrow of many unsuspecting Gambians as a crybaby victim of anathema, sadly with a bold straight face despite all of the tortures, extrajudicial killings and breaking our Central bank broad daylight.

As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”. Gambians are fatigue by the rancor lately between Yaya Jammeh and the civilians, they are more fatigued by endless court proceedings, and rightly disdained about his use of excessive force against our women and elderly men. We are further confused by the bad tone set by his administration, especially with his laundry list of numerous executive orders that impose policies against our will. The fact is that, the ramifications of his policies, whether with good or bad intentions, their consequences will be around with us to deal with for a long time. Yaya Jammeh does confessed to crimes during overheated crusades of bad news especially when he is cornered, but does not admit any wrong doing, rather— wants his surrogates defending his character, or flatly denying charges for him. Well, now he has more explaining to do because many of his actions has an odor about it that won’t be easily perfumed.

The man who took over Gambia with the naive belief that rampant corruption, breaking the barriers of tribalism in work place, extending privilege to all, reignited dozens of conspiracy theories in Gambian minds about the first republic and he vowed all what was needed was to trust him with a fresh start to lead Gambia to prosperous nation the west would be coming to seek jobs as maids. Okay that was funny! It is hard to comprehend today and it is equally troubling that those were words of Yaya Jammeh. He tapped danced all over everything he accused of PPP and become extraordinarily skilled now in looting nations resources, seizing properties, stubbornly devotion to his thorny agenda policies, reshaping the nation to match his vision, blaming colonialism for all our problems, very oppressive, our economy is in a free fall, Gambia is stained with blood prints, human rights problems continue to fester and made Gambia very isolated regime. After what Gambians went through for twenty-two years, words are not enough to thrill us anymore. What worries most Gambians is election is around the corner but Yaya Jammeh isn’t deterred by the failing economy, he isn’t bordered by the hardship around the country, he is more resolute on terrorizing Gambians, more lethal, continues his arresting spree of Gambia and endangers people of all political persuasions.

Here is the answer from him though hard to swallow. According to Yaya Jammeh’s internal numbers which he shared with the country months ago during his tour in May 2016, there are over one million Gambians and eight hundred thousand foreigners in “his” country. So you do the math and ask yourself if his social re-engineering is a success. Let’s recap 1994 to date events that is worthy of the nation to remember. When Gambian journalists started asking questions that he seemingly had no clear answers, he started burning media houses such as radio one FM and independent newspaper, killing journalist like Ebrima Chief manner and Deida hydara etc. When Koro Ceesay questioned the junta about stealing from government coffers, they beat him to death and burnt him off in his car. When patriot military personnel were concerned about their reputations being ruined by bandits like Yaya Jammeh, he exterminated them all and lied about coup in November 11th. After the commissions of inquiry, he set- up exonerated first republic of any wrong doings he accused them of, he shields the records and justice Algahly mysteriously died. Fast forward to 2016, when Solo Sandeng ask for reformed, he beat him to death and they buried him “like a dog” according to lawyer Darboe. When Lawyer Darboe and his executives asked for his body, he was given 3 years in jail sentence. When Tina Faal got fed up and left the APRC party, she was accused and kidnapped at mile 2 prison. When the youth asked for jobs, he showed them the high seas for backway travelling. So when he asks for our vote this time, we shall not be fool again. So does Gambia deserve another five more years of this hell? You be the judge.

By Habib ( A Concerned Gambian)

The conviction of Fanta Darboe and rest of tortured women by a very unprofessional unelected judge Nigerian mercenary judge without empathy, using false narrative regardless of the facts whiles dismissing Yaya bah case, is certainly unusual, puts our high court at nadir and undermines the Constitution of The Gambia. This pretty much created unnecessary confusion, and it merits attention of Gambians and world at large. It couldn’t come at a worse time for the country when UDP youth wing leader was killed for merely asking about electoral reform for the most important election year calendar in our era. The conviction calls into question whether the high court now presided by mercenary judges is really serving its purpose as independent branch of government.

In an examination of Fatou Darboe Jawara’s case, despite a clear nexus that she was not part of the protest according to several accounts, one could conclude the mercenary judge — Justice Dada flawed reasoning was dictated to her by her overreaching or unjustified pursuit of conviction against her. Her actions of playing semantic games of the legal language as reasoning to exonerate Mr. bah, whiles scolding of defense team, disrespecting a veteran senior lawyer Ousainou Darboe, disgracefully convicting innocent and tortured vulnerable victims, makes us questioned her independence, judicial craftsmanship, more so her judicial temperament because she is a kind of a bully on the bench. While in her statement of trying to command public respect as a thoughtful mercenary judge soaring above unfairness, her actions revealed otherwise given- her disrespectful statements against our elderly citizens. It does not give us confidence about her ability to serve on any bench because she is just another mercenary rubber stamp judge for regime, whose efforts are to terrorize Gambians.

 
It is time for the radical mercenary judges without empathy towards Gambians in our courts- most of whom in a matter of fact their credentials appear not to be in order; to stop abdicating their role and take seriously their duty of preserving our liberties by interpreting existing law, rather than making policy choices of conviction whiles terrorizing us in our own country and soliciting our dollars. Gambian people are very good people but there should be a limit to our generosity by spending our tax dalasis prudently instead of hiring these mercenary judges who continue to draw a long line of battles for our citizens to encounter. The county should stop wasting resources on these people whom Gambian lives and wellbeing means nothing. The action of these mercenary judges has only recently made waves in news but they have been systematically terrorizing, tarnishing the images of decent citizens, destroying Gambian families for longtime.

 
A suspiciously high number of her decisions, beginning most notably with Taranger FM’s MD case, even further, to April 14th/16 event protestors, justice Dada — an evildoer who does not care about tortured vulnerable women, thus far is one of the worst unproductive legal mercenary judge Gambia ever had. She is notorious for orchestrating offensive language on her victims as she did with Ousainou Darboe, unsatisfactory reasoning, allowing cooked evidence, altering defense reports, tarnished our high courts image. so, what are we supposed to believe — live pictures showing UDP executives holding their hands whiles walking in lockstep or foolproof method of using service men coached by mercenary DDP, who only have a vested interest in making an embarrassment out of our elders by lying about stones being hauled at buildings which does not exist.

 
Gambians have a simple question for her and her fellow colleagues: Given her Judgment against tortured women and innocent Gambians, can she be fair to all Gambians? Also without a clear condemnation of the violence against our women and her determination to jail them, one can draw a conclusion about her distasteful judgment stemmed primarily from her jealousy of Gambian women.

By Habib ( A Concerned Gambian )

The concern of our founders worst fears for our nation falling in the lurches of dictatorship, is where we are at this moment in history. And, yet to make matters worse, our nation continues to dishonor their memory and here we are with the worst form of deadly dictatorship of staggering proportions that grip our nation. As Surreal as it may be, it is even more disheartening that our nation’s trouble is caused by a free rider con man whom was given a chance in life with unconditional love and the best from us. The truth is simple but it’s too complicated to adequately process because he has turn out to be the enemy of the people, destroyed our society, a danger to our beliefs and employing fear to distract and divide us. The plethora of dictatorship has weakened Gambia so much to its knees and now the country is incapable of sustaining itself, Jammeh and his buddies have become an unparalleled burden on our economy, they continue to disregard our personal liberties, peddling negative atmosphere of political manipulation, and even fail to defend our principles for first time in history after independence.

We’re not sure what is causing us more despair — the slaughter of people, unfortunate act of violence by the regime, injustices to our citizens, lack of unity on the ground or whether we are still under military rule because most of our institutions and foreign embassies staffed by military personnel. We all hope that all these draws more attention to where it can help bring about change. Right now, we find ourselves yet at crossroads because Gambia is now full of dark-sad stories. Our questions are still unanswered by the regime. So many people have mysteriously disappeared, our sisters are sold out as domestic slaves in Arab counties, our dead are denied burial and instead used as rituals for devilish satanic acts. It would be easy to pretend all is well in Gambia or we shrug off horror events but death without decent burial of our civilians have been too prevalent and it is morally wrong. There may have been scores of Gambians who met their untimely death in such fashion. We will not apologies for standing up for our fellow Gambians even though we find it difficult that—some still lionize Yaya Jammeh with cautionary misleading tales regardless of all what he has done to our people.

For many years, the pleas of human rights groups and concerned Gambians about the regime consistently fell on deaf ears. But attitudes are clearly changing towards regime as a result of never ending—pausing cycle of bad news. Public discourse about recent events of injustices against our fellow citizens elicited strong emotional reactions, driving the national conversation about regime change. Ultimately, our love for our country got further strengthen by recent injustices against our mothers and helped renewed our nationalistic fervor which in turn helped spur actions to see the regime become history soon. In just the last few months, more specifically, we’ve witnessed the shift to Gambian interest to our fellow countrymen because—matters that Yaya Jammeh thought would have gone unnoticed or Gambians would have little actual interest become issues debated with furious passion.

Lastly, Complicated problems require multiple solutions because a dictator will never sign for his warrant. We acknowledge some of unfortunate events that lead to loss of lives place parameters for us to be much sympathetic and sensitive on our discussion of how to achieve our ultimate goal because —most of the respected leaders in the struggle are very principled on certain things. We need all-hands-on-deck approach to untangle the clutches of dictatorship. Gambian Diasporia and other right activist have done brilliant Job exposing regime and advocating for regime change. Gambians have been greatly enlightened by online mediums as never before and are now living witnesses of the effects of dictatorship which have seep into every aspect of our lives. The APRC regime is well aware of this. Hence we see an unprecedented disturbing trend of increased censorship, obsessive control of information, other restrictions of the internet and disgraced former junta leaders — now suddenly redeemed apostles with fluffy rhetoric, coming out to reinvigorate a dying brutal regime. We have one word for the apostles of the regime “There you go again”.

That said, we cannot continue to delude ourselves from admitting the obvious that we need a united front to take on this dictator as an alternative, simply because we know that he will steal the election. There is a noteworthy commendable initiative by the party youths to prevail on their leadership for a coalition. We shall honor the legacy of our fallen heroes such as solo Sandeng and many more who desire to see Gambia free by doing our part as citizens, to come out and vote for opposition in large numbers. We need to have overwhelming majority in parliament to impeach Yaya Jammeh in case he steals the election and we win the popular vote by God’s grace. Let me ask you my respected fellow Gambian. If you are tired of the killings, dreadful humanitarian catastrophe, flat wages since 1994, lack of medicines, meaningless visions 20XX, roads still ruining our donkey carts, our taxes wasted, attaya prices skyrocketing, our children failing their exams, our youths dying on back way, our sister sold as slaves, a leader who can’t deliver for his people but scares them, prolonged stagnation of failed vision dreams, disrespecting our elders, NIA knocking your doors midnight and lots more horrors. Please come out to attend opposition rallies and vote for change we believe in. Do it for our tortured women, for Solo Sandeng, for the sisters who died in slavery, for our infants fed to crocodiles as ritual sacrifice, for the grieving mother of the child whom the convoy killed, for the victims of tribalism, for the boy with good grades but can’t afford tuition, for the people wrongly prisoned and for your own future. Yes, we can Gambia. Come out all and let us bring back the beautiful smiling coast shining again and wipe the tears of Gambia to prevent another 5 years of monumental human disaster. Gambia counts of you!

By habib ( A Concerned Gambian)

Governing a country requires more than a slogan and so does educating our children requires more than rhetoric of free education. The education department and the regime had their work cut out for them because those very rhetoric’s were put into practice in the recent 2016 WASSCE results calendar year. Suffice it to say, less than 450 students out of whole country passed all subjects. According to WAEC, out of 11,659 candidates who registered for the exam, only 444 obtained credit in five subjects and above, including English and math’s. 1,871 candidates obtained only one credit, and 1,100 two credits. Unquestionably, building many schools is a great initiative and positive step by the regime. Review, refinement and rationalization of our education sector are undoubtedly required. While teachers cannot shoulder all the blame for the range of deficiencies shown on the WASSCE results, the regime need to put in new measurement standards in place to make our school more accountable.

Furthermore, hiring unqualified personnel’s or having departments lead by incompetent people who display more than the profound ignorance that we’ve all come to expect from them instead of accomplishing our education system’s desired end. That end, of course is, it failed our children and the education system is getting progressively worst as a result of many things but most notably, disengaging the intellectual diasporian as bad citizens, wasting talent and a massive brain drain. Yet again, this exposes the educational apartheid that has plagued our beloved country. Unfortunately, when you do not acknowledge the PPP government contributions to Gambian life, and continue to distort history by fanning resentment, minimizing the sacrifices of people to burnish your own legacy with false tales by being arrogantly dismissive, blaming everything on colonial rule, becoming less forthright about your mistakes, pillorying decent people as criminals, the end results are the facts catch with you.

The regime could have ceased on PPP short comings and allowing Gambian intellectuals to come up with a blue print solution to pressing problems for current education crisis, strengthened teachers training programs to equip them with the required skills, and career advance structure development in order to help meet the demands of the country’s vision and the dynamic global skills market. Every chance Yaya Jammeh gets to pushes our country forward, he resorts to deeply pessimistic vision where he is always appealing to the worst in people to turn against each other, and turning away from the rest of the world. The APRC platform fails to offer a single idea to address the education crisis because only one man has all the solutions — Yaya Jammeh. We need honesty and transparency in priotizing our education for our children’s future. Anytime there is grant to help prospective students access to best education, the funds are squandered, the regime does comply with regulations to meet specific educational standards, would resist such measures coming from opposition and instead provide egregious misrepresentations.

Moving forward, while it is certainly important to revamp our education system, teacher’s salary must increase to match the high living cost. One can only shudder at the thought of teachers not able to educate our children due to lack of resources, limited knowledge of the curriculum and limited access to teaching materials which are needed to empower students with both skills and analytical tools. These are the basic rights of every Gambian that the country has to provide its citizens with quality life. it is hard to conceive what all those children’s whom the system failed at a time of stalled growth, stringent visa processing requirements, rising unemployment and offering too little relevant preparation for 21st-century life to complete with other African children.

By Habib ( A Concerned Gambian)

It has been a tumultuous year for Gambians this year. It is impossible for any Gambian to say their heart is filled with serenity and peace at this point when news for our dear motherland is of violence, killings, persecution of women, our youths dying on risking backway journey and not so banging WAESSE reports. Back home, our country is tense and full of pageantry drama from mercenary Nigerian judges fostering with our laws to earn a conviction of our elders. They fail to understand our culture and that we are all connected as a family one way or the other. Closer to us in Europe and those in America, those heroes involved in December 30th are serving their sentences. It’s so bad that many diasporian just tuned themselves out of Gambia because of the depressing news, continuous heartbreaking events that paused us to reflect, pray and shed tears. This is not the time for us turning our face away.

APRC regime have created an atmosphere where most people take nothing seriously except trading their bright future with endless partying, which is unfortunately accepted as the norm in our era. Instead of harnessing the talents of Gambians, building on those positive dynamics which make Gambia unique, and striving to alleviate most Gambians out of poverty, regime is busy doing what it does best and as a result, the country has fallen into or deeper into poverty. If you doubt this, let’s harken back to when he first took office and ask yourself the question. Are we better off now? It seems majority of Gambians and the world have enough of Yaya Jammeh and collectively holding their breath whiles praying for him just away with everything he has stolen for the violence to end. And all of these events are happening among a time of political and economic uncertainty right before elections in this coming December.

APRC regime – wrapped up themselves in their imaginary Gambia of Jammehbia and now have become expert in window dressing the truth to titillate the curious. They have created an atmosphere of decisiveness so bad that the chances of hope and prosperity seems to be slim for majority of Gambians instead of lifting the spirit of Gambians. Concern for our fellow men and women now requires a litmus test so as to speak of your catered ideas and beliefs before pointing you to a particular direction. Many who took the risk of working for the regime go to work each day not certain they will return home at the end of the shift. Those who assume leadership positions are hoodwinking the population about truth, exploiting our women instead of steering young dynamic Gambians from so much hateful partisan rhetoric instead of giving them clearer people of our nation being in chaos.

The usual political finger-pointing began with everyone except Yaya Jammeh whom is the author of this mess. We are appalled by what we perceive as injustice when our service men went in the wrong side of history, to fabricate lies and assist the state in jailing our elders whiles they brutalize those whom they should serve. Meanwhile, Yaya Jammeh is still confusing mutual respect and words of wisdom with Violence and incomprehensible hatred. We need healing and that begins the day when Yaya Jammeh gives us his back and heads to wherever, for us to have peace. You walked into our statehouse with your gun in 1994 and fooled us. Please leave with them. We need peace for our deal mother land.

by habib ( A Concerned Gambian)

Dear Editor

This is your new investigator in Gambia.

Your Network is the most reliable medium that informs Gambians and the world in general about events happening in the Gambia. Hence we all rely on you for information even from within the Gambia. Keep up the good job.

You must be aware that Gambian president organised a colloquium as part of events in the commemorations of the so-called July 22nd. My investigations revealed that 6 million dalasis was budgeted for the event.

I want to use your medium to ask the following questions as part of my investigations trying to uncover huge corruption scandal with regards to how the funds were spent:

1. How was this budget of 6 million dalasi for the colloquium spent?

2. Why was the procurement office headed by Isata Jawara under immense pressure from Solicitor General Sankareh and her boss Fatima Singhateh?

3.While Asata seems to be trying to get to the bottom, who is currently helping her if indeed this is her intention.

These pertinent questions need answers.

From the Investigator

In my opinion, there are two main reasons why there is still no grand alliance of Gambian opposition parties in spite of the fact that everyone knows that a coalition of all the opposition parties will most certainly defeat Jammeh this year. Since PPP/OJ Jallow have long declared their non-participation in the presidential elections, they are not an obstacle to a coalition formation and therefore not part of this analysis.

And in order to keep the blog post short, simple and easy to understand as always (for the sake of my secondary school readers including my daughter) I will discuss only one of the obstacles today and the second one will follow tomorrow God willing.

In my opinion, one of the two obstacles to a coalition formation is a group of five opposition parties/leaders (I will refer to them as the Small 5 or S5 for short). I know, you know, and even they themselves know with 100% certainty that they have ABSULUTELY NO CHANCE of winning the December 2016 presidential elections. It is therefore baffling that these people are still hanging around and congesting the political arena thereby making a coalition formation very difficult and complicated.

To start with who are these group of S5? They are the GDPD, GMC, NCP, NRP, and Boy Serrer (Mr. Joseph Joof, our new independent presidential aspirant). While some of these parties/leaders cannot even participate in the presidential elections, others have shown absolutely no interest, faith, plans, programmes, or commitment to the presidential elections or to a coalition formation. I will talk about them one after the other.

The leaders of the GDPD and GMC (Honourable Gomez and Fatty respective) cannot participate in the elections because of a constitutional clause that presidential candidates have to ordinarily reside in the Gambia for a number of years prior to the elections. These two gentlemen are currently living outside Gambia. I do believe that if their safety/security was guaranteed in The Gambia and if there were electoral reforms, these gentlemen would have been on the ground working towards their presidential ambitions. However, the opposite is the case and there is no electoral reform (and there will be no electoral reforms prior to the elections in Dec). These two should not have been on that list of presidential contestants in the first place.

Now to the NRP/Hamat Bah. In the 2011 presidential elections, Ahmad Bah came last with only 11% even though he had the support/alliance of a number of parties. Therefore, what chance does Bah has in winning the presidency if there is no coalition? The answer is zero. Furthermore, from 2011 to date, what interest, activities or commitment has Bah shown towards the 2016 presidential elections or towards a coalition formation? Has anyone seen or heard Hamat Bah on a national platform, in a video or interview discussing national issues or mobilizing people against Jammeh? As for me, the only video I have seen of Hamat Bah discussing an “important” issue is the one in which he was saying that when elected into office, he will deal with any gays/lesbians that have escaped the wrath of Jammeh. This man has no interest or plans to become president.

Now to the NCP. Apart from a tiny newspaper report/press release of the resuscitation of the NCP and the naming of its leaders, has anyone seen or heard of any manifesto, a rally or statements on politics, coalition formation and other national issues by the NCP? In my research about the new NCP, I could not find on google more than three images of its leader Dr. Bojang. And as we all know, we are living in a new generation of science, technology and social media in which if an aspiring presidential candidate cannot make a good impression on twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other online platforms, s/he cannot win the hearts and minds of our youths and women. And any politician who cannot win the hearts and minds of the youths and women, s/he cannot win the presidency. It is that simple. So Dr. Bojang is really not serious, ready or even prepared to replace Jammeh.

And now to my tribal cousin, Mr. Joseph Joof. It is probably a Jola marabout who told Mr. Joof that he would be president in March 2017 but a Fula marabout would definitely have told him otherwise. On Mr. Joof’s first radio interview since the announcement of his presidential intention, the first person who called him to ask questions pushed him against the wall so fast and so hard that he had to fire back at her in self-defence by calling her “misguided” and “stupid”. (By the way I fully understand and can relate with Mr. Joof’s situation because I was once a victim of the same lady who called. This lady totally scared and terrorized the devils in me when she was my high school head girl and was not happy with my mixing business (photography) with education. She is an Iron Lady of the highest pedigree). But as a presidential aspirant, if Mr. Joof could be so easily rattled by a lady through a mere telephone, I really wonder how he would react as a Commander-in-Chief of the Gambia Armed Forces if his Generals and Police Commissioners disagree with him and try to push him to a corner.

So clearly, the group of S5 are either unable to participate in the elections (the GDPD and GMC) or they are not ready, serious, prepared and committed in replacing Jammeh. Therefore, a question that is worthy of asking is why are they on the list of this year’s presidential contestants? Could they be simply hanging around the boxing ring out of hope that a miracle would happen for there to be a coalition so that they and their party executives can have a free/easy ride into government positions of the Third Republic? Anyway whatever their reasons are, the Gambia is in a serious political emergency and we cannot afford any more time wasting, hypocrisy and selfishness.

Therefore, the best thing that this group of S5 can do for themselves and for the suffering/oppressed people of the Gambia is for them to UNCONDITIONALLY withdraw their presidential candidatures in order to make it easier for the remaining three parties to come together to form a coalition. The very presence of their names on that IEC list is pure hindrance and a big obstacle to the coalition efforts. They should therefore follow the footsteps of OJ Jallow and Sheikh Seedia Bayo and immediately announce their unconditional withdrawal from the presidential race thereby reducing the congestion and the mess in which our opposition parties are in at the moment. The logic here is very simple, it is very much easier for three people to reach an agreement on a complex political issue such as coalition formation than nine people.

In conclusion, my believe is that there would be no coalition based on my judgement of the current state of affairs of our opposition parties. However, if the group of S5 immediately withdraw their respective candidatures, then there will be a 50% chance of a coalition. The other 50% obstacle will be the subject of my next blog God willing. Until then, long live the Republic of the Gambia and her beautiful people!!!!
Author Gano
Posted on August 9, 2016