Kb,
An excellent and timely piece; cogently argued and lays barea fundamental
moral truth about Gambian society in the age of the madness and despotism of
Jammeh, the AFPRC and its mutation, the APRC: the toe curling hypocrisy and
lack of faith [whatever we so choose to delineate it], that dominates our
public life. You were spot on about this aptly named “acute low expectations
syndrome” or ALES - as you put the acronym. It is precisely because of this
ALES, that our public discourse, especially as it relates to Jammeh’s madness
and despotism, is infested with moral and political relativism galore. If
Jammeh plunders our State coffers, rest assured that there is a rag out there
that will choose to ignore such facts and properly subject them to a forensic
scrutiny as they used to do when the PPP was there. Instead they will choose
to dwell on the past making silly conjectures, anecdotes, trivial
personalisation and plainly hypocritical relativisation of issues. When
children are butchered, rest assured that the smarmy hypocritical editors of
the said rag would with their usual inebriated obsession with Jawara
relativise the murder of the children by dumbly pointing at Kukoi and 1981.
Brother, such is the twerpish disposition of the said hypocritical rag that
every time they break from their tradition of inebriated obsession with
Jawara and try to critique Jammeh, they end up with moral idiocy and conceit.
In effect, one has to date back to Jesus and the Pharisees to beable to make
sense out of the toe curling hypocrisy of this rag. They have subtly
metamorphosed from the radical rearguard critics of the mishaps of the ancien
regime to the resident rearguard refuters of the UDP and in extension making
Jammeh sound logical or plausible. Reading the said rag mischieviously
reporting on UDP activities and or utterances, one would be forgiven for
assuming the the UDP is the gov't of the day and or the leadership were the
very ones who ordered the butchering of the children in April 2000. If
Jammeh and his madness make ridiculous and treacherous allegations like
incriminating the UDP with ethnic bigotry, rest assured that the said rag
will attempt to make it logical/factual by giving the allegations
intellectual muscle. For as long as one can actually recall, the APRC and its
crowd of madness have always tried to tar the UDP with the past of PPP, NCP
and the GPP and the so-called “Mandingo” bigotry and or hegemony. In their
“analysis” of the by-elections, the said rag was quick to mischieviously
carry side remarks reportedly made by certain nonentities at a UDP rally in
Baddibu that went likethis: “Mandingos” should unite again certain groups,
blah, blah………. I cannot ascertain the attributed assertions by the
nonentities who were reported asuttering them during the said UDP rally.
Indeed, such imprint could be gleaned from the said rag's "special election"
published after the freakish 1996 presidential elections where they choose to
highlight what they perceive to be the UDP's inflammatory ethnic remarks and
deduced from it the treacherous allegation that the UDP harbours ethnic
hegemonists. Be that as it may, since UDP official policy is not geared
towards the ethnic hegemony of a particular ethnic group or to stretch the
argument, none of the UDP leadership have declared such an agenda, one pauses
to question: Why is the said rag and its editors hell-bent on making this
treacherous charge against the UDP sound cogent and or holding water? But as
sure as there is always a calm after a storm, such APRC bigwigs like Buba
Baldeh were openly peddling the ethnic card in Kiang to the “Fulas” of that
area to join forces with other ethnic groups to offer Jammeh a credible
bulwark against the “Mandingo” hegemonists of the UDP. In fact Baldeh was
the chief orchestrator of the move against the NRP Assembly Member of one of
theKiang seats [Njadoe – I believe that’s his name] to force him to
cross-carpet to the APRC. The same treacherous shenanigans were employed
against the UDP in Njolfen where, albeit Hamat Bah’s decent efforts, the APRC
was able to gainsome significant ground against the UDP - thanks to Baldeh’s
treacherous peddling of the ethnic hegemony conspiracy of the “Mandingos”.
Yet, the same rag that seemed to see theirs, as moral crusaders against
ethnic bigotry never highlighted these damaging developments. Instead they
choose to mischieviously highlight the fact that albeit Hamat’s honourable
efforts to side with the UDP,the “coalition” failed to retain the seat;
enough to spuriously conclude that the united opposition most have been
calling for cannot defeat Jammeh at the polls.
Now, during the 1996/7 elections, the same ploy was cynically used to instill
ethnic fear amongst a certain section of the Gambian electorate that hated
Jammeh and wanted to vote UDP. This was very effective in a last minute
vote-swing against the UDP: Certain ethnic groups out of such fears voted
APRC and to this day mistrusts the ambitions of the UDP. Indeed,shortly after
the elections, at a State House parading of so-called community eaders,
Yankuba Touray, in a rare public gaffe, painted this vignette of theAPRC
strategy: if the UDP lays claims to a large “Mandingo”
support/loyalty/following, they will simply tell the rest of the ethnic
groups to coalesce to the effect that no Gambian with a surname regarded as
“Mandingo” will ever win the presidency. Not exactly Touray’s words but the
gist of his message that day. It is also interesting that since Jammeh took
over, his behind the scene efforts in ethnic associations proliferated to the
point that a month passes without an ethnic association doesn’t have
anaudience with him at State House. And with good reason too; if you are
going to polarize the nation along such lines, better encourage such ethnic
associations – and even sponsor their activities with taxpayer money. Put
together such votes can very handy. These are the current bane of stuff about
the ethnic agenda of Jammeh. Did the editors of the said rag highlight these
amongst others? Did they bother to highlight the chauvinism of those who call
themselves “Jolas” within the security services and its links with the
insurrectionists in Southern Senegal? Did they ever to highlight the
unlegislated affirmative action that Jammeh used to leap frog those he term
as “Jolas” to the higher echelons of the State, especially in those
positions like the security services that he uses to impose his will on the
Gambian people?
This ethnic conspiracy hogwash of “Mandingo” arguments along the lines of
divine and aristocratic claims to the Gambian presidency/leadership is, of
course, nothing but sentimental nonsense – sentimental nonsense, that
supposedly intelligent people want tomake look plausible by giving close
scrutiny to every utterances made at a UDP gathering that will give
intellectual muscle to their grand conspiracy theory legs to stand upon. Any
objective observer of Gambian politics, familiar with whatever it was that
prevailed during a nominal “Mandingo” like Jawara’s reign would be hard
pressed to back these treacherous claims with substantive evidence. The
inebriated and fanatically obsessed editors of that rag knew that before
anyone heard of them, there were places Baddibu, Kiang, Jarra, Bakau,etc,
etc, and such politicians like Dibba, Makalo and even Juwara who were
relentless in their opposition to Jawara. But then that is the whole point: a
pea-brained twerp like Jammeh needs to propagate certain falsehoods and the
self-appointed mullahs of the said rag see it as their role to give
intellectual muscle to such barbarous and treacherous claims. That is what
there is to all these treacherous and cynically stupid conspiracy theories of
ethnic hegemony fromthe “Mandingos”. Simply put: All these attempts at
caricaturing the opposition as ethnic bigots is just romantic hogwash being
subtly peddled by a despotic Dictatorship and its closet allies in a rag
whose editors have quietly metamorphosed - without the batting of an eyelid
by many – into hypocritical savants. In the very end, these idiotic,
conceited, ridiculous and persistent attempts to tar the UDP with habouring
ethnic hegemonists ambitions, reminds me of a story I read when I was kid:
Remember that story of the chicken that chanced upon a thunderbolt that
scared the living daylights of her and mistook it for the sky falling down
and went to get the whole animal family she could summon, to come see the
fallen sky? We know how that story that ended. Turned out to be a big hoax
largely the feverish imagination of the chicken and her unfounded fears about
imaginary stuff. As that same stuff happens in 2001Gambia: These twerpish
claims that the UDP harbours ethnic hegemonist ambitions is not only
sentimental hogwash but the deluded and unfounded fears of Jammeh and his
allies – both open and closet – anchored on the periphery of figments of
feverish imaginations.
I can’t help but end this with a broadside I chanced upon last year when I
visited the North. In one of those quirky Gambian gatherings, the editors of
the said rag were the subject of one individual’s wrath. This gentleman told
us an anecdote about the editors of that rag, which if substantiated, should
explain some of their arrogance, condescension and hubris: At the height of
their lampoonery of the PPP establishment, the editors of the said rag used
to brag that Gambians can’t write and or engage in polemics; which is why all
the challenges they threw at the PPP establishment’s intellectual heavies for
debates have largely gone unanswered. Well, have we got news for them: turns
out that Gambians after all can write and engage in polemics. And 1987 Gambia
is not 2001 Gambia. Evidence? Well, the last time such challenges were thrown
on this List, the brags and chortles have been replaced with exasperation and
gasping-for-air fight backs. Welcome to the age ofdiminished returns in
polemics. And the sages were right: want to be reduced to an irrelevant
has-been? Try putting on the apparel of peacock vanity, hubris,and
undisguised hypocrisy.
Hamjatta Kanteh
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