'The Cock Pecking At the Hens'

http://allafrica.com/stories/200308010461.html

The Independent (Banjul)
OPINION
August 1, 2003
Posted to the web August 1, 2003
Banjul

Has Jammeh begun a political fight in an empty room well before time? In
this case he is Gambia's nearest to the scenario of a political cock
pecking at the hens.

His angry tirades against the whole opposition line-up shows that he is
rehearsing his lashing tongue before the real battle. But if there is
anything we can glean from his raving rants against his adversaries, it is
that, they are just a foretaste of the usual politics of insults that our
politicians are wont to trading back and forth as they get entangled in the
mesh of political intrigues for the ultimate prize. However, the inherent
indignities of political insults to which Jammeh has stooped so low as his
only conceivable means of discrediting his opponents, do much to reveal the
warped psyche of those who wallow in political mudslinging. If there is
anything we could glean from Jammeh's psychology it is his overt disdain
for dissent and opposition to his rule, which he and his liegemen have come
to brand as unpatriotic.

It seems they are happy to see themselves as the spotless saints of Gambian
politics whose tenure is necessarily without hitches and glitches and that
there is no future for The Gambia without them. But such utopian notions
are found in the fantasy world of make-believes, which leaves the
controllers of a political system passing judgment on themselves and giving
themselves encomiums that are ridiculous on the basis that we still have a
backlog of pressing state matters still unattended to and that there was
nothing yet to celebrate.

Jammeh does not believe in a future for the country without him and his own
take of the country's situation was all that mattered when counting his
successes and failures. The groundswell of dissenting opinion coming from
other quarters about how the country was run over the past nine years
counts for nothing as far as he and his liegemen are concerned. Such is the
haughty, lordly disposition reserved only for Kings, whom the bygone
medieval ages have been treating as near-saints who know no wrongs. He
hardly behaves as if he is a present day president - only a mean green man
as long as his political interests are threatened and a harum-scarum if you
ask the opposition.

If the opposition array against him are discreditable from head to toe,
then it takes reason to complete the rest of the argument, which suggests
that Jammeh and the APRC are the one and only creditable alternative for
The Gambia. But this is the first discernible step towards an autarchy - an
oligarchic system that is set to live under the deceptive gab of democracy
and the rule of law.

Jammeh should have held his head above personality politics if only he was
interested in presiding over the long-overdue debate about the country's
never-ending problems. His tirades may rankle in the minds of his political
opponents, but the damage done to the complexion of Gambian politics is of
rapacious proportions as it forces Gambians to revisit the haunts of their
follies in the political platforms of a bygone era when nothing of
substance were presented to the poor electorate, only disparaging comments.

National habits die hard especially those within the festering sores of our
body politic. When those who are supposed to lead by positive examples,
lead by impulse expressed in derogatory rhetoric, such tendencies become
ingrained in the national psyche. Jammeh is a product of this psyche in the
same way as other politicians are hybrids of the past. And this goes to
show how Gambian politicians across the spectrum are all guilty of such
licentious politics that relegates serious issues around which the real
debates about the country's problem should revolve. Such a serious debate
had been postponed indefinitely.

But the politics of insults would not carry us anywhere near the "promised
land". It can only promote an acrimonious climate of distrust and character
assassination and this is not what Gambians deserve from their otherwise
cantankerous politicians. And none of them should play by the rules of
morality more than President Jammeh.




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