The United Democratic Party (UDP) is shocked and deeply concerned by the recent statements made by President Yahya Jammeh in Farafeni during his “dialogue the people tour” in which he ridicule past and present Presidents of Senegal.
Footage of the Gambian leader’s speech shown on GRTS Television on Sunday clearly showed him raining insults on the Senegalese leaders. The current President Macky Sall received the main brunt of President Jammeh’s insults whom he described as hypocrite and a stooge for France, among other things. Former Presidents Abdou Diouf and Abdoulaye Wade were also named and heavily ridiculed and caricatured by President Jammeh.
The UDP vehemently condemns President Jammeh’s conduct as it offends all conventional wisdom and decency. By stooping this low in insulting Senegalese leadership, Yahya Jammeh has shown his lack of respect and decorum for anything decent. The Gambian and Senegalese people are one and the same and no amount of immature rhetoric and vitriolic outbursts from the leadership in Banjul will change that.
This latest posture of President Jammeh is as usual at variance with all decent and internationally acceptable diplomatic norms and does not in any way represent the views and attitude of the Gambian people. It is unacceptable for a sitting head of state to make derogatory remarks about his fellow heads of states, present or past. It is as crude and undignified as it is unGambian, undiplomatic and unacceptable.
In this regard, the United Democratic Party (UDP) and indeed all decent, peace loving Gambians, disassociated themselves from President Jammeh’s crude attacks on Senegalese Presidents. Unfortunate as it is, this is the kind of irrational rantings that have come to embody the persona of Jammeh all throughout his life as head of state of the Gambia.
The UDP would like to place on record that the Gambian people have always had unalloyed and untainted love for our brotherly people of Senegal. Until the unfortunate emergence of Jammeh and his rogue regime on our political scene, Gambians have lived peacefully with all our neighbors far and near.
Yahya Jammeh is a lonely, angry and dejected dictator who is despised by everyone at home and abroad and we urge the Senegalese leadership to continue to ignore a dictator who has lost relevance and credibility even in his own country. Looking around, there is failure in every aspect of Gambian public life. The economy is almost floundering and doomed to collapse. Agriculture is almost dead. The health sector is on its knees and there is mounting unemployment across the country. Jammeh has therefore clearly sensed the catastrophe he has created thanks to his bad and ill-advised policies spearheaded by his personal incompetence and ignorance as Head of State for which he wants to use Senegal as scapegoat.
If anything, the recent attacks by Jammeh on Senegalese Presidents, coupled with his misrule have given UDP renewed energy and determination to redouble our efforts in ensuring that this regime that has always been an embarrassment to Gambians becomes history once and for all. Jammeh and his regime are a collateral damage on our national conscience. They are an embarrassment and a huge liability to Gambia.
The United Democratic Party assures all Gambians and our brothers and sisters in Senegal that come 2016, Jammeh will be removed from the helm of affairs which he has held only by foul means for far too long.
Long live the UDP
Long live The Gambia.
UDP Secretariat
Banjul,
18th November, 2015
