By Momodou Ndow
After rejecting the Junta’s offer to be their Attorney General a few times, Fafa Mbye finally accepted their offer to serve with the persuasion of some elders yukor sopa toropp! But his acceptance came with some conditions, which he outlined in two MOU’s he wrote. They were between himself and the AFPRC. He wrote them after his meeting with the Junta, because he deemed it necessary to have an agreement with them to be signed by all parties. Goloh signed on behalf of the Junta.
In both MOUs, Fafa focused on five major things; his commitment to restore democracy, the settlement payment due to his client from a lawsuit suit he won against the previous government, funding of the full education of his three sons in the UK, his personal security and that of his family and associates, and redress for his grievances against the previous government, which he believed were perpetrated against him by corrupt elements. In the five conditions Fafa Mbay laid, four of them were for his direct personal gain. The common good seemed secondary.
Once Fafa entered Goloh’s cabinet, his office went to work, cranking out decree upon decree. Twenty four decrees in six to seven months. That’s about four decrees a month. Decree happy if you ask me! The goal was to legitimize a criminal government, and Fafa Mbye was there to guide them. Under his watch, draconian laws were passed, and the Junta was on its brutal way! In his MOU with the Junta, Fafa’s fifth condition was for them to address some of the injustices he suffered from the previous government, and the decrees did just that. The decrees went after a particular category of people with a vengeance, who were part of the previous government. Could it be that some of those were the corrupt elements Fafa believed to have perpetrated injustices against him? He had an axe to grind, and the decrees were busy chopping down anything in their path.
According to Fafa, bad laws properly executed, are better than good laws improperly executed. That left me scratching my head. If good laws can be improperly executed by corrupt judges, then what about bad laws, especially in a military regime? Fafa became the Junta’s ferocious defender, and wasn’t shy to defend them anytime the opportunity arose. On the cassette tape of his interview with BBC which he proudly shared, he could be heard promoting the Junta. And when asked about the mess the Junta had created in The Gambia, he responded that there was no mess, and that the Junta came to power to clean up the mess left by Jawara’s government. A couple of months later, those same decrees he defended and tried to justify, came back to bite him mercilessly. Now Fafa the AG was no more, and he immediately became a member of the Victim’s Club, crying foul over his victimization. Ironically, Fafa is still unable to recognize the impact of his actions that had left him and the Gambian people at the mercy of young hooligans.
The degrees passed during his time in office are his shadow, and no amount of running will separate him from his shadow. Fafa Mbye testimony was meant to set light on some of the decrees the Junta used to subjugate the people, but it ended up being a deflection session. Instead, he made it all about Fafa Mbye; his intellectual prowess, his degrees, his clients, his chambers, his trials, his accolades, his admirers, his “uncle human rights defender” title, and his house in Pipeline (with every item listed, baku ak chunuwarr rek la fateh). Smh. To say that Fafa Mbye was oblivious to the plight of Gambians is an understatement. He was indifferent, and it was crystal clear all through out his testimony. It was all about Fafa Mbye the lawyer, not Fafa Mbye the witness. Fundamentally, Fafa Mbye left me with more questions than answers, and I hope that doesn’t extend to the TRRC. And here is the killer for me! When Lead Counsel Faal expressed the high regard in which he held Mr. Fafa Mbye, instead of appreciating it with some level of humility, he responded that he wasn’t surprised by Faal’s admiration of him. What a narcissist! I wonder at what point was it about the country, and not Fafa Mbye? I might have missed it.
