Baba,

Great piece for some of die-hard Jammeh fans to reflect on.... Keep up the good word... You are a fundamental pillar of our society...

Respectfully

Fankung

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 6:29 PM, Demba Baldeh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Baba,

 

I feel chills running my spine reading your absolutely brialliant master piece. It reminded me that in the face of adversity and hopeless in our society and all the gloomy days and fear instilled in our citizens, the concious are well aware that July 22nd is a historic accident that infact has led to the true revolution as you consciously stated...

 

Thank you again Mawdo Baba for that magnificient piece. May God bless you and continue to guide that sharp pen!!

 

Thanks

Demba

 

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 1:31 PM, Dave Manneh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Thanks Baba.

May Allah bless you.

Manneh.

---------------
Sent from an Android-powered mobile device.

On 12 Jul 2010 18:55, "Baba Jallow" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

The Real July 22^nd Revolution – A Section

By Baba Galleh Jallow

Traditionally, as July 22^nd approaches, our minds are exercised by matters of grave national import occasioned by the military overthrow of the thirty-year-old civilian regime of Sir Dawda Jawara. A conspiracy theory has it that some malignant distant power seems to have grown tired of old Sir Dawda or perceived him, rightly or wrongly, as representing some form of threat to its sacred interests. Whatever its motive, the malignant power seems to have found ready and willing weapons in the hands of a few soldiers of the Gambia National Army with which they chased Sir Dawda out of town and then carried him to safety. The condition and reward for the willing weapons was merely that no weapon must be discharged and they would all live happily ever after. A second, more mundane theory, one that was espoused by soldiers of the Gambia National Army in the aftermath of the July 22^nd, 1994 coup, has it that Sir Dawda Jawara presided over an inefficient and corrupt system, that had been in power for far too long, and that the loyal national army had intervened to rectify.

Whether our conspiracy theorists are right or wrong, the soldiers have lived happily ever after, some of them becoming millionaires in the process and bagging honorary doctorates both fundamental and ordinary universities around the world. Every year, they celebrate July 22nd in grand style. They declare it a national holiday, a day on which the Gambian people are invited to join in commemorating the day the weapons killed without discharging. It is always a magic day for them. A day on which they proclaim their legendary bravery against a small group of unarmed and terrified old men suffering from chronic paranoia born of perennial fear of a military coup. A day on which they enumerate their great victories over pitifully unequal opponents and tout their great achievements, evidenced by heavily armed convoys of fierce looking soldiers, the glittering lines of flashy expensive cars they own, the magnificent flowing robes they wear, the visible shine of the creamy fat oozing out of their formerly hollow cheeks. On that day, Opulence itself is bedecked with gold and glory and made to strut and wildly dance in the streets, making funny faces at the National Conscience; making the hungry stomachs of the teeming poor churn with sorrow, and making them wonder why some people are so filthy wealthy, while they are so dryly poor. This disturbing thought conjures up the solid myth of divine favor, which appeases their baffled spirits. Yes, it is God’s will that Yahya Jammeh becomes president. It is God’s will that he could rise from a poor, malnourished lieutenant to a fat multi-millionaire, if not billionaire, within the space of a few years, while they have been poor and hungry all their lives, even before Yahya Jammeh was born.

Deaf and blind to the sorry plight of these hungry poor, the conspiratorial weapons of the malignant power quietly insist that they are indeed the blessed recipients of divine favor, the praiseworthy saviors of the wretched masses. They quietly insist, and often selectively proclaim, that they are the blessed ones who had brought national glory and happiness to the utterly stupefied masses. It does not matter that most families hardly afford only one meal per day; or that the streets are so full of beggars that the police had to round them up and drag them before a so-called court of justice, accused of being a public nuisance. Because they are poor, these innocent beings are publicly humiliated and told that they represent an undesirable element, a less than human nuisance to their fellow beings. What cruel and unjust order will stab the souls of people who spend their daily lives suffering the excruciatingly painful humiliation of begging for a living? The real July 22^nd revolution recognizes that an alliance of soldiers that claimed to have intervened to rescue the poor people from the clutches of a corrupt order has morphed into a strange disorder that is not only filthy rich and corrupt, but that also labels poor beggars a nuisance. It must be a very small mind that thinks such thoughts and that can justify such mind-boggling cruelty.

This year again, the now exceedingly wealthy conspiratorial weapons of the malignant distant power gleefully look forward to July 22, 2010, another potentially ridiculously wasteful episode of nauseating extravagance, yet another occasion to once again remind the Gambian people how extremely grateful they should be to His Excellency the President, Retired Colonel Sheikh Professor Doctor Alhaji Yahya Abdul Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh; Exemplary Muslim Extraordinaire; Charitable Soul; Legendary Discover of the first cure for Aids – the Breakthrough! Possessor of Mystical Powers; Owner of Escaped Demons; Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Second Republic of The Gambia! This year again, His Profellency of Aids Breakthrough fame is looking forward to another celebration, another occasion to display to the common people just what an uncommon superman he is. He will enumerate the multiple achievements of his government; he will reaffirm his iron commitment to the advancement of the Gambian people; he will warm his ministers and all members of his government that nothing less that perfect loyalty and perfect service will be tolerated; he will call on all patriotic Gambians to join him in the noble task of nation-building; he will swear by the Holy Quran that only over his death body will he allow anyone to pose a threat to the our national security; he will chastise and threaten his opponents and critics; and he will deftly demonstrate to the national public why all his opponents and critics are unpatriotic Gambians who deserve the worst that his government can offer –imprisonment or even death! 

The real July 22^nd revolution refuses to recognize Yahya Jammeh as a true revolutionary. His record as a leader of the Gambian people is much less than deserving of that honorific title of revolutionary. A true revolutionary cannot be drowned in a sea of names. A true revolutionary cannot bear the sight of massive posters of his grinning image posted on every street corner, every park and square, every nook and cranny of the city. The mind of a true revolutionary cannot possibly be preoccupied with grandiose and undeserved religious and academic titles; or with flowing robes and sentence names, and large grinning posters of himself. These will be a nuisance to his conscience, a distracter to his spare attention, a shame, an embarrassment to his sensibilities. The real July 22^nd revolution affirms that he who wears large and heavy clothes whether it’s hot or cold stands in urgent need of a mind revolution. The real July 22^nd revolution recognizes that our so-called former soldiers with a difference, whose mantra back in 1994 was “we are not here to stay”, do not realize the enormity of their historical predicament. These men choose to believe what they want to believe. They merely take life for granted and feel too good to admit that they are sometimes cruel or unjust, or that they could sometimes be wrong. Because they are incapable of admitting their human fallibility, men like Yahya Jammeh are condemned to a tragic state of mental blindness – much worse than physical blindness; the kind that could mistake poor beggars for a public nuisance under a self-proclaimed revolutionary and redemptive order.

The real July 22^nd revolution insists that the military coup that brought Yahya Jammeh to power was not a revolution at all. It was merely an archetypical African military coup, one of more than two dozens that have happened on the continent since 1960. The behavior pattern of Yahya Jammeh and his henchmen in the military have been no different from that of the Mobutu Sese Sekos, the Idi Amins, the Sani Abachas, the Mengistu Haile Mariams, the Samuel Does, and the Gnassingbe Eyademas of Africa. Each has seized power citing corruption and inefficiency; each had become even more corrupt and inefficient than its predecessor; and each had unleashed bloody brutality on sections of its population in the name of national security.

The real July 22^nd revolution knows that a true revolution is not expressed through flowing robes and extravagant displays of wealth in a country with so many beggars that they are declared a public nuisance. A true revolution is not expressed through the adoption of grandiose titles and ridiculously high-sounding sentence names. A true revolution is not expressed through the erection of buildings, the building of roads, electrification, a growing GDP when at the same time, the jails are full of innocent inmates like Femi Peters, forcibly snatched from his family and friends, criminalized, and condemned to waste and drown in a sea of frustration and powerlessness at Mile Two Prison merely for offending Yahya Jammeh by holding a legitimate and peaceful political rally without a permit the police repeatedly refused to grant; when the families of men like Chief Ebrima Manneh, Kanyiba Kanyi, and Daba Marena live in burning agony worrying about their disappeared loved ones; when the family and friends of a gentle and promising soul like Ousman Koro Ceesay are condemned to perpetual agonizing over just how or why Koro was burnt to ashes in his government issued vehicle; when mild-mannered government critics like Deyda Hydara are brutally gunned down in nocturnal drive-by shootings, when the hard-earned printing presses of struggling media houses are doused with petrol and set on fire, when - and this must be the crowning evil of this regime - when the president wallows in a nauseatingly creamy sea of wealth while poor and hungry beggars are arrested by police and charged with being a public nuisance. The order that presides over these states of affair cannot by any stretch of the rational imagination be a true revolutionary order. Such an order desecrates the sacred spirit of Revolution and represents a rude assault on decent human sensibility.

A real revolution is always born of extreme oppression. The true revolutionary spirit is awakened only under conditions of persistent and brutal oppression. And whatever crimes the regime of Sir Dawda Jawara might have been guilty of, it was certainly not guilty of the extreme brutality and oppression, the kind capable of triggering the onset of a real revolution. That dishonor is rightfully claimed by the regime of President Yahya Jammeh. The relentless pattern of injustice and brutality the Jammeh regime continues to mindlessly inflict on Gambian nationals is what has led to the birth of the revolutionary spirit of the real July 22^nd revolution, which manifests itself in the evolution of a sharp Nation Mind and the flowering of progressive institutions within the Gambian Nation, which is much more than merely a geographical expression on the coast of West Africa. The real July 22^nd revolution is an emergent critical mass of politically conscious Gambians who have bonded across time and across space, and who recognize Yahya Jammeh for what he truly is – an unfortunate episode in the history of our country. The real July 22^nd revolution knows that Jammeh is a mere historical actor who, sooner or later, will have to pass on to the realm of nonbeing. The real July 22^nd revolution is a spirit, an essence that, by its very nature, is beyond mortality and temporality. It has evolved into a thoughtful Nation Mind that projects itself beyond time and beyond space; that refuses to recognize man’s right to indulge in willful and naked acts of injustice against his fellow man merely because he is in a position to do so. For this Nation Mind, Yahya Jammeh occupies nothing more and nothing less than his rightful place in the larger scheme of things.

The real July 22^nd revolution also expresses itself in the flowering of vibrant Gambian civic institutions, despite all of Jammeh’s futile attempts to stop such a fortunate eventuality. It expresses itself in the spirits of the Gambia L and the Gambia Post; in the spirits of the Freedom Newspaper, Gainako, Maafanta, Jollof News, The Gambia Echo, Senegambia News, the Gambia Journal, Raaki Radio and TV, Baati Rewmi, and other new and vibrant online media that refuse to recognize Jammeh’s claims to revolutionary stature. It expresses itself in the spirits of Gambian civic organizations such as the STGDP and the GPU-USA, among others. This year, as we approach that fateful date in our nation’s history, it is this Real July 22^nd Revolution that exercises our minds, not the other, fake one which is both illusory and transitory.

Caution: The real July 22^nd revolution is not merely a grammatical expression to be lightly dismissed out of hand. God willing, in B Section of this series, we shall demonstrate why this is so.

 

 

 

 

 

---

Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. Get it now.