Gambia-L:

I listened in amazement this afternoon to Yahya Jammeh's speech, brought to
me in the UK courtesy of GRTS, marking his 6-year anniversary in public
office!  Quite honestly, I was incredulous and quite bewildered by what I
heard. Indeed, Yahya Jammeh's words to mark six years of his impotent
regime's attempts to govern our nation, confirmed what many of us have been
suspecting for so long - namely that the man "has lost it": that he is in
the terminal stages of psychosis and rapidly approaching total mental
breakdown.

Even the photograph of Jammeh that GRTS used three times (!!) to illustrate
the bulletins showed us a man with apparent "health" problems: did you note
as I did, the thickened facial and body features of a person in a terrible
condition of decline? And the voice?  Well, he certainly sounded close to
hysteria. I shall come later to the content of what the man said to his
audience.

But before that, I must tell you that just yesterday afternoon, one of my
unimpeachable sources in the heart of the Government, reported to me about
Jammeh's constant daily habit of getting a "Gambia-L Fix"!  Jammeh is so
desperate to know the true situation in our country and the thinking of
Gambians abroad about his despotic regime that he spends many hours on a
daily basis accessing our postings and acting on them! Early on Friday
morning, my source assures me, Yahya read the third of my messages to all
Gambians: his immediate reaction was to change his mind about getting Isatou
Njie-Saidy or Susan Waffa-Ogoo to deputise for him at Saturday's march past.

Instead, to prove that he was mentally okay and governmentally soundly in
control, he jumped alone into one of the government Jeeps garaged at Kanilai
and without the usual escorts, made the perilous journey along the south
bank road heading for Banjul. To his dismay, heavy traffic in Kanifing
brought solitary driver Jammeh and Jeep to a halt: jumping down from the
driver's seat, our so-called "leader" was totally shocked and humiliated
when people in the vicinity, who in the past would have crowded around him
with praises, waving and hand shaking, refused even to acknowledge his
presence in any way.

He was forced into using his personal mobile phone to ask the Kanifing
police for assistance in reaching Banjul. It was then that a police siren
came to escort him from the Jimpex area and drove in front of him to Banjul.
We could only guess at his state of mind upon reaching State House, and we
could only pray that they opened the gates and let him in.

How good it is to know that Jammeh attends to our messages on the Gambia
List, and that our sources in The Gambia are providing such impeccable and
detailed information about Jammeh's everyday plans and activities. The
interventions of those of us who are posting messages on the List are
increasingly crucial in getting Jammeh to "act" in response to OUR news and
views! If we can continue to exert this sort of pressure and strategy on
Jammeh, then the future is ours! Fellow Gambia L-ers! Please, be assured
that we are having a potent effect on the regime and on Jammeh himself: let
us do all in our power to keep the postings going and see the back of the
Butcher of Kanilai.  Believe it or not, we are now having a tremendous
effect on Yahya's thinking and actions, even on the smallest of matters.

Now, back to today's GRTS news bulletin - couched in very careful language
indeed, it neglected to tell us from where Jammeh was speaking. Could it be
that the man had decided to remain behind the Moroccan fortifications of
State House to make his speeches, or did he brave the gathered "multitudes"
of well-wishers and school children marching past the crumbling Arch 22?
Only time will give us the answer to these questions - certainly not the
ambiguous GRTS.

I could not believe my ears when I listened to the content of the man's
speech.  How dare he boast of six year's of social and economic (under)
development and call them "hall marks". How dare he suggest that his
(supposed?) achievements were "much to the satisfaction and well beyond the
expectations" of others?  Who IS he kidding??

In my recent postings, I have taken great pains to detail the terrible state
of social and economic life across the whole of The Gambia. I have received
so many public and private replies to these postings, and each one provides
further evidence of the chronic state of every sector at home. Yahya's
dishonesty and corruption, and the sleaziness of his minions are what
characterise the social and economic life of The Gambia today. We move from
scandal to scandal, from disaster to disaster, from lie to lie, from
evidence of corruption to even greater evidence of it! We are living in
sorry times, all thanks to Butcher Jammeh.

Jammeh's next claims about the happy state of Education Services in The
Gambia left me completely perplexed. Every child is receiving his or her
entitlement to a minimum of 6 years education, he claimed, and 9 years of
education is available for high-fliers.  Education under his regime, he
claimed, was truly a "right and not a privilege".  What a lot of bunkum!!
Yahya should get out into the streets on a weekday, and count the number of
school-aged children NOT in school: whose parents cannot afford to pay the
term fees, the book fees, the uniform expenses, the furniture expenses, the
examination expenses.

To keep a child at Lower Basic levels of education is now upwards of one
thousand dalasis per year: how many of our fellow citizens can possibly
afford to educate even one child in the family?? Jammeh should go and talk
to his farming communities, and ask them about how they pay for their
children to be educated!! They will soon see the back of him.

Next, he went on to talk about his determination to stamp out hunger and
malnutrition: about how his government were ensuring that "all Gambians have
access to affordable food at all times".  Let Jammeh go and talk these
issues through with the unemployed, for whom the daily struggle to get fish
money and rice is an appalling worry.  Let him talk to the housewives who
try to feed their families on miniscule, and every decreasing, amounts of
money. Let him go to the markets, and get direct experience of the reality
of inflation as it hits the poorest:  let him try to fill his shopping
basket with nothing instead of dalasis.

Indeed, let him go to the mosques throughout the country on Friday afternoon
for "Ajumaa" prayers: let him run the gauntlet of the countless beggars
there, asking for a crumb to stay alive. The man is so out of touch with the
reality of everyday life in The Gambia in the year 2000. His speech writers
are doing him a terrible disservice - and us who oppose him, a good service,
because the more that ordinary people can begin to understand Yahya's
DISHONESTY and IGNORANCE of the state of conditions in the country, then the
sooner he will be forced from power.

Yahya's following pronouncements concerned those detractors, like some of
us, who are "relentlessly determined to undermine our efforts and plunge
this country into chaos". He spoke of the "stark manifestations" and the
"devilish instincts" which are being put "to test the stability of this
country". The man had the unheard-of nerve to bring into his speechifying
the young dead of April 10th/11th.  "No Government has ever done more for
school children", he boasted, while lambasting those people who "used
innocent school children to demonstrate against the government".

You, like me, will feel total and justifiable OUTRAGE at what the Butcher
said in his speech:  the "heinous and deplorable act" of the murderers of
the school children was, as we all know, perpetrated by Jammeh's own forces
under his direct orders. There were no detractors, or opponents to the
regime, killing young Gambian kids on those inauspicious days: the
government owns total and complete responsibility for these deaths. The
blame and the blood lie at the feet of Jammeh himself - at no one else's.

Our total anger towards Jammeh and his team of thugs, knows no bounds, and
we publicly challenge him to meet his "opponents" in The Gambia (or anywhere
else in the world, for that matter). Let him be answerable directly and
personally to all of us who see through his nefarious lies and twistings of
the truth. Let him come out from behind his armour and his foreign
bodyguards, and meet with us face to face to answer the charges we lay
before him.

I end this posting with a personal message to Yahya Jammeh:

"Your days are numbered, and soon there will be no hiding place in the world
for you. Why not hand over the reins of power NOW, before you commit even
more outrages on your people and earn their total and undying hatred and
curses? For once in your life, be a man and admit that you have failed
miserably in everything you have attempted to do."

Ebrima Ceesay,
Birmingham, UK



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