When the dust settles , Yahya Jammeh and his henchmen would be found to have
conspired to commit murder, stolen money from the people, abused innocent
people by torturing them and denying them basic rights. Until the day when
the people successfully  bring these criminals to account for what they have
done , we will continue to get the same predictable dose of lies and
obfuscations regarding every evil they perpetuate. Even in instances when
their evil machinery is directed on one of their own, as in the case of the
socalled attempted coup the pattern is the same. The President directs the
murder, dispatches a surrugate to spin an utterly implausable tale of how two
lackeys of the president supposedly put together months long elaborate plan
to overthrow a government they owe their undeserved livelihood to. Aware that
rationalising assasinations even in Yahya Jammehs Gambia is a tricky business
, The President three days later comes swinging with his fantastic assertions
about how these two boys of his were going to go on a mass murder of sorts
including those who opposed his regime. He shamlessly tries to portray
himself as protecting the country from a cardinal segment of his repressive
regime. We are supposed to believe that arresting teams of soldiers  who
endured firefights and grenade attacks  in their attempts to 'arrest' the
alleged leaders  managed to do it all in perfect sequence sustaining no
casualties far surpassing the way it is done in movies.Their version, list
members like all the other murders they have comitted all point to the  now
familiar pattern. Kill people and make an amateurish attempt to rationalise
it by propounding outlandish theories while hushing up the true nature of the
crime in a web of lies.
Similarly when clearcut cases of theft and malfeasance directly involving the
President as in the case of millions of dollars of loans contracted from
Taiwan and more recently the crude oil deal in which the President personally
diverted $1.9million, the same web of lies are advanced. Afterall one cannot
simply deny cases that came to the attention of the nation not because the
President has had a change of heart and made a national confession but
because they were ferreted out by concerned citizens despite the herculian
efforts to conceal them. In the oil case the President thought he could
quitely settle this case of theft in a small English court while keeping the
money even as the people reel in poverty. Sensing the creeping outrage people
are expressing about the theft , the President in a rather churllish and
indignat manner told those religious leaders who chose to visit him on
Koriteh that it was not exactly right to label him a crook considering how
much money he was giving to people. Again standard operational procedure for
a tyrrant who seems to think people are better off wallowing in his
ill-gotten benevolence. It is beyond contempt for the people of our country
to have this brutal tyrant herd them into the abyss.
The only thing that keeps me going is the undertsanding that like many a
tyrant before him, a quite retirement is not in Yahya Jammeh's future. Their
fates the world over has ranged from a mob justice as severe as a public
hanging, to a meticulous, fair and open trial that would seek to catalogue
and prosecute every aspect of their repressive rule . No one seriously thinks
our nation has any future if  we do not manage to collectively say muders,
and other serious crimes against the people and state must be thoroughly and
properly adjudicated. In a dictatorship, crimes against  percieved opponents
are not carried out on a freelance basis. Every single one of them is planned
and directed from the top by specific people  who must bear the ultimate
responsibilty. All these attempts to blame past crimes on dead or otherwise
unavailable people all fit into the lying and abfuscation pattern.I know we
Gambians have a predisposition to want to move on but not addressing the
issue of lives that have been wantonly snuffed out would set a very omnious
precedent that would sow the seeds for further polarisation.This is a test we
must once and for all conduct well for we cannot afford have the very
foundation of our society destroyed by criminals.

Karamba

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