Over the past elections cycles, Yaya Jammeh perfected the art of snatching the Gambians wishes of change from the jaws of victory by using so many compounding fraudulent factors and lack of lock step unity of the opposition “coalition “to give himself a landslide victory. Thereafter, he adopted a default campaign mode of blind folding Gambians, using brute force that crosses the moral line to make people fearful of him and regaling the public with tales of false history. Every respectable religious figure in Gambia and the voice of conscience have tried to work tirelessly for Jammeh to strip the worst of his moral excesses but they failed. The EU and world bodies such as UN, have tried to comb through the regimes bad habits and remove archaic and unnecessary brutal policies but he begins pulling out their welcome mats. African statesmen have all tried a matchmaking process to help connect him with his conscience of relishing power but failed. He seems incapable of working with human beings together on anything because he deplorably fight to curtail anything that will move the country forward.
But with 22 years staying in power comes a track record we simply cannot put our backing behind. One cannot be weeding through the thousands of the regimes crimes and issues without shedding tears or losing a piece of your heart. People from all sects of life and businesses continue fleeing the Gambia because of crushing regulations, villains of NIA offered exemptions from the law for crimes they commit and limited economic opportunities. The regime elites are so particularly overzealous with power and it the benefits that they refused to look down their noses to see failures at every level. Instead of providing the leadership the country needs by putting out the welcome mat— in reaching out across the political aisles for citizens who has plenty of government experience under his belt in addressing issues concerning from fiscal prudence to bringing the nation together and denying the unbridled ambitions of the few who put self-interest rather than nation’s interest, he instead chose a supermajority of the incompetent domineering predilections and very divisive people choking our institutions to death.
Particularly so these days, Yaya Jammeh boldly abandoned publicly— all pretense of his promises and began espousing his unthoughtful mental philosophy. He refused to soar above issues that divide Gambia and decided to settle every grievances or guilty consciences he had growing up. It’s felt like from that moment, Gambian simply covered their eyes and kissed “Death” to its face unknowingly. We are still paying for our past mistakes dearly and price tag of this regime with — our lives, blood, money, our heritage, our traditions, our dignity, and our national identity. Where we expected hands-off approach to encourage business grow and competitively bidding various services, they acceded to monopolistic ideology by resorting to detrimental crony capitalism of sweetheart deals for special interests with APRC political connections causing too much too much imbalance. Where we expected the regime to find areas of common ground by building relationships with local communities—that possessed interesting ideas to developed their neighborhood, he began denying them developmental funds provided by EU that lead to the backway to EU. They went further thwarting the skills of experience Gambians on the other side of the aisle who shares a common commitment to the nation —to fix back our broken institutions such as electric company or ferry services by placing people who speaks only the local dialect or patwah at best (broken English) or their drivers of yesterday to head them in their respective institutions.
As Gambia continues to nosedive even further into uncharted territories of brutal dictatorship, he became so comfortable that —they began using of enormous power of the state machinery to settle political scores and do away his opponents. His regime ears, became apparently — not even attuned to the cries of pity or trail of tears from the Gambians —asking them to be more compassionate toward their fellow citizens and stop the ceaseless abuse of Gambians. And with all the bad reasons: The Regime have long thrived on its machinations divisive tactics, intimidation of politicians and manipulation of the unsuspecting Gambians minds. However, the never ending cycle of violence in this 2016 banner calendar year which lefts of with so many unfathomable monuments of pains in our history. This election cycle, emotions and tensions are particularly high, almost every Gambian household have been affected by the regime one way or multiple fronts. To that end, it gave the opposition parties and Gambian people the much needed rude awakening to finally held hands together and walk in lockstep of unity to climb that high mountain of coalition.
Suddenly as December 1st approaches, Yaya Jammeh saw the clouds of the cleansing rain of love for each other we need to wash off mistrust forming in the sky of Gambia. The clouds of happy thoughts to wash away suspicion of each other and clouds that hold the rain of goodwill to wash off division caused by APRC regime chameleon tendencies gathering to fall. He looked around and saw political landmines he buried everywhere and decided a plan B to minimize damage by retracing his exit plan, instead of relying on rosy predictions of anchor babies of the neighboring country— whom are his enablers of security heads. He is now realizing he is on thin ice and immediately withdraw Gambia from ICC. He understands fully well that these people even though some have intermarried among us, do not understand our cherished values of empathy, cared about our religious customs and culture of unlimited compassion of Gambians towards one another.
Deservedly so and cumulatively, Yaya Jammeh knows very well—he will have to shoulder the actions of anchor babies from our neighboring country, his shrewd enablers of security heads busy enjoying his lifestyle, the actions of incompetent easy riders bankrupting the country and freeloaders of mercenary’s judges. Yaya Jammeh never falls short to make Gambia suffer a tsunami of bad publicity even though he ran away from the public to avoid the thorny Orientals of his mere words. In a broader sense, Yaya Jammeh does not need help for bad publicity because —his conduct in numerous controversies always attract increasingly fierce criticism. In another worrisome sign, the reports of possible rejection of asylum of Osman Sonko’s — one of the architects of death and axil of evil, might have prompted him to withdraw Gambia from ICC. Who knows when it comes to Yaya Jammeh because you will never get the honest truth about anything. Well, Yaya Jammeh chose out of his free will to bent Gambia out of shape to suit his vision of old times of barbarism. He spent his presidency fanning the flames of distrust to the point of destroying all our neighborhoods and communities. He has proven to be patently dishonest. No amount of his gesture can be the healing balm to emotionally inflamed communities and our beloved country he totally destroyed. Fortunately, Gambians are beginning to remember what was once lost. The coalition will give his regime the shellacking it needs to ever become history. Hopefully, none of our generations yet to come will have to go through this pain again.
By Habib ( A Concerned Gambian)
