Ebrima,

I could not agree more with you. I also believe that Jammeh has completely
lost the plot. He does not seem to know what he should do next. The economy
is falling aapart, unemployment is rising, the roads are in a bad state of
disrepair, and prices of basic food stuffs like rice are at an all time
high.

Yet, his aides think Jammeh is God. To them, the man could do no wrong.
Jahumpa, for example has given yaya all kinds of titles, engineer, aviator,
navigator, architect and God knows what else. I remember one of Jammeh's
trips ( I think it was to Niger or Chad). When they returned, Jahumpa was at
the TV. Instead of telling the country what the trip achieved, she was
telling the country that our president flew to the plane all the way to
Banjul.

Jammeh himself claims knowlege of herbs and their curative uses. So Jahumpa,
why don't you tell your god to do us all a huge favour. Tell him to retire
to his farm, let him use some of his money to build a herbal treatment
hospital where he can become doctor. That way, he will be more useful to the
country than being President. You Jahumpa can become the Resident Nurse and
Seedat Jobe can be PRO, to recruit patients for him.

For those of you who know Mr Dumo Saho, is M. Sarjo Jallow, SOS for Works,
Communication and Information not a close friend of Saho? I am sure they
were both part of MOJA and were both at one time in Sweden.If MOJA stood for
justice why didn't Jallow resign and speak against the injustice they tried
to fight during Jawara days. See, the  problem with many gambian
intellectuals..

God help the country.


Sulayman Jobarteh
Seattle, WA


>From: ebrima ceesay <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: My reaction to Jammeh's 6th anniversary speech!
>Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 11:39:05 PDT
>
>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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