My fellow Gambians:
All the latest reports and telephone calls from The Gambia which I have been
receiving, in addition to the information coming from my centrally-placed
sources in The Gambia, indicate extremely worrying trends. The Gambia is now
showing distinctive trends of increasing chaos and lawlessness. People have
been pushed so far against the wall by the iniquitous actions and haphazard
governance of Jammeh's regime, that they no longer care to follow the
dictates of good citizenship. Poverty is at a level in our country where
people will do anything just to survive, and to ensure their loved ones'
survival in a fiercely competitive society.
Today, our once-reliable system of care within the extended family has been
pushed to extremities: so many breadwinners have been rendered unemployed
and disempowered and in fact, the whole fabric of our social well-being is
now under terrible threat, thanks to the Kanilai butcher. People, who no
longer have ANYTHING, will do ANYTHING to ensure the well being of their
loved ones. It has become a basic matter of survival.
And needless to say, the disintegration of our beloved nation under Jammeh
and his cohort touches every sector: governance, economic, judicial, social,
health, educational, artistic, moral: the impact of this terrible regime
bites hard in every facet of our daily lives.
Therefore, it is time NOW for our people to prepare for the forthcoming
Presidential election in November 2001 (if it does take place at all, given
the political threat under which Yaya Jammeh is labouring) so as to
successfully unseat Jammeh from the Gambian presidency: our country needs to
be mobilising NOW to ensure that Jammeh is finished by the end of next year.
The way forward for The Gambian Nation is for its people to use the ballot
box to vote Jammeh out come the next presidential election. The man's record
is awful: in power for 6 years, and our country has taken three or more
steps backward. We have become the laughing stock of the world, and the
"poor boy" of the African continent. Jammeh has brought notoriety to our
wonderful country: he is known for his lawlessness, for his thirst for
power, for his lust for ill-gotten gain. He dabbles in a war-mongering
statesmanship on a stage peopled by like-minded personalities bent on
personal gain.
In any case, we should not be allowing Yaya Jammeh to divide us: his true
intention is to "divide and rule". Consequently, we have to do everything in
our power to resist this. Only by remaining a unified opposition to this
villain will we see the back of him and his ilk. My fellow Gambians, the
problem in our country is Yaya Jammeh, not our people and not those
unfortunates who have had to seek refuge in our nation. There is no dispute
about the fact that Jammeh is, in actual fact, the root and branch of our
misfortunes as a nation. So our people have to have the WILL to get rid of
the man.
Our need as Gambian citizens with a deep and abiding love for our nation is
for peace, stability and genuine co-existence. These three things used to
mark our country. Now we have been betrayed by six years of brutal
militarism, dishonesty and "intransparency". And Jammeh has also done his
best to play a tribal game in our country; he has tried to set us against
each other, and to disempower many of us at the expense of his favourites.
But we have to do all in our power to resist this trend, and to ensure that
the Gambia remains a polyglot nation with a genuine respect for, and
tolerance of, difference. We have to present a united front of opposition in
order to uproot the butcher of Kanilai.
However, we should not fool ourselves: the task in front of us is enormous,
especially after Jammeh is gone! The damage that Jammeh has done since 1994
is going to take years to put right. To this end, we need to undertake a
massive repair job as soon as we have seen the back of this despot through
the ballot box. We need to call on every human resource available to us: all
those concerned citizens who have remained in The Gambia, and all those who
have been forced by one means or another to flee the country and settle
elsewhere in the world. In fact, knowing the gravity of the destruction in
our country as a result of Jammeh's ineptitude, I would even argue that we
need to be making moves now to bring these people together so as to tackle
the human resources problem, which our country is now facing.
Gambia-L, there is no doubt that the Gambia is at a crossroads; tension is
raging in the country as a consequence of Yaya Jammeh's tyrannical actions
and heavy-handedness. What Gambians must therefore understand is that Yaya
Jammeh has come to bring chaos in our beloved country. He represents doom
and despair. He wants to bring turmoil in our country but we as a people
should not accept that. We must ensure the continued peace and stability of
the Gambia.
From day one, we have always had a peaceful co-existence as a people. That
MUST continue. Consequently, we are now faced with the challenge of making
sure that peace and stability are consolidated in our country, knowing full
well that if trouble erupts in the Gambia, it is us the ordinary people who
will die en masse, while the main culprit (the butcher of Kanilai) would be
relaxing in his presidential suite in Kanilai, or in one of his Moroccan
palaces.
Having said that, since it is now clear to us that Yaya Jammeh only
represents retrogression and a potential chaos for our country, we MUST try
and join hands, despite our differences here and there, and vote him out of
office come November 2001. In this regard, all Gambians who have reached the
voting age, but who do not possess a Voter's card must make sure that they
get a voter's card before the elections. And having a voter's card and not
voting on Election Day should also be a thing of the past. All those who are
eligible and have a voter's card should go and get dictator Jammeh out of
office in the forthcoming election if they genuinely want a quick end to the
mess in which our country now finds itself.
And at Election Day and also during the pre-election period, all Gambians
must be vigilant enough to ensure that the possibilities of rigging are not
only minimised but also removed completely. To this end, the role of the
Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) will be crucial/paramount, but we as
a people should also have to be our own police and ensure as much as
possible, a totally fair and unambiguous ballot.
Gambia-L, the stakes are high and needless to say, the ONLY way forward for
our beautiful country is to unseat dictator Jammeh from the presidency come
the next presidential election. No one in his or her right frame of mind
needs convincing that Jammeh has nothing to offer to Gambians except tyranny
and corruption. He is nothing but a thief, a murderer, a liar, and a
nuisance whose only goal is to swindle public funds.
He has already done massive damage in our beloved country by inflicting an
unprecedented level of poverty; in fact, in a post Jammeh era, eradicating
poverty and ensuring the continued peace and security of our country would
be paramount. We must, in a post Jammeh era, underscore the need to promote
genuine democracy and popular participation in governance through greater
pluralism, transparency and respect for fundamental human rights as a
precondition for peace and sustainable development. Peace and security and
the achieving of sustainable development are very much related. So it should
be clear to us that the absence of durable peace and security will no doubt
prevent us from achieving sustainable development for our country. The
message is therefore clear: in a post Jammeh Gambia, we must also address
the twin phenomena of sustained development and peace and security.
Whoever is going to succeed Jammeh must articulate a new and realistic
development paradigm that can, at long last, address the Gambian people's
needs and aspirations. But, meanwhile, our challenge - if we really love
our country - would be to vote Jammeh out of office come November 2001. We
cannot afford to give him another mandate. That would be tragic if it were
to be the case. How can someone who cannot even manage his own house be
expected to lead a Nation? And another thing: once we succeed in unseating
Jammeh, we would then have to try him before a court of law and make sure
that he accounts for his past deeds and actions. More importantly, he must
also surrender all the public money he has siphoned off.
Meanwhile, we must be prepared NOW to ensure a good future for our country:
we have to mobilise every concerned citizen firstly to get rid of Jammeh by
peaceful means through the ballot box, and then to work in harmony together
to start the mammoth task of rebuilding our nation.
Ebrima Ceesay,
Birmingham, UK.
PS: I am urging Gambians in the Gambia with access to the Internet to make
print out of this message and distribute it to those Gambians without access
to the Internet.
Cherno Baba Jallow: Your piece on the Independent editorial was apt and
inspiring. Keep it up, and please do write as regularly as possible; this is
an era of clarity and, certainly, your beloved country needs you NOW more
than before. Also get our sister, Fatou Jaw Manneh, to join the debate.
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