*A Gambian Hypothesis*

By Baba Galleh Jallow

For once, we feel some level of confidence in hypothesizing that the end is
near for Yahya Jammeh. Perhaps he might live a long life. But he might just
be at or near the end of his days in power. Recent trends in his
increasingly erratic behavior, his irresponsible and hubris-driven
pronouncements, his chest pounding and his increasingly bold insults and
assaults against both local individuals and institutions and global
institutions points to one possible conclusion: that the fate that befalls
every dictator is about to befall Yahya Jammeh. Of course like all
hypothesis, the evidence will determine the thesis. However, if history is
anything to go by, Yahya Jammeh has probably reached the end of his days in
power. We can only say amen to that because Yahya Jammeh has long outlived
his usefulness for our country and has wrecked damage on our national
conscience and institutions that it will take many years to remedy.

Yahya Jammeh habitually brags that he will be in power for a million years
which, we think, is just his way of saying that he will be in power for as
long as he likes because he knows he cannot live even for a hundred years.
If he did he would be so old and senile that we would simply lift him up
from the throne and set him in the yard to enjoy some sunshine. This
‘million years’ statement projects the tragic hubris of a man who is so
power drunk that he claims mastery over fate and human destiny. The
blindness of the heart and the mind of which the holy books warn has
afflicted Yahya Jammeh and as such, he no longer sees himself or knows
himself as we would say in our local Gambian languages. We hear echoes of
the Pharaoh of Moses’ day or those of Idi Amin Dada, Saddam Hussein and
many other tyrants of the human race whose power had rendered mind-blind.
You do not know a thing about how long you will stay in power Mr. Jammeh,
or when indeed you will no longer be breathing the airs of this world. No
human being does, unless they are diagnosed with a terminal illness,
physical or political. In spite of all our insights into what the future
may hold, we are as blind as a blind bat when it comes to knowing what will
happen tomorrow, as in tomorrow, the next day after this. Jammeh has become
so paranoid that he sees enemies lurking everywhere – even and especially
among his own close confidantes and members of his government, including
the human robots of his shadow state. And so he lashes indiscriminately out
at literally everybody in this world! That looks very much like the sign of
a fatal political illness.

The Peul Futa say that if you violently shake every tree you see, you will
one day shake a tree full of hornets. Yahya Jammeh has already or will soon
shake such a tree, since he has the very unwise and hubris-driven habit of
shaking every tree he sees. He foolishly insults everybody he wishes and
thinks that he can get away with anything he says or does. From ordinary
security officers to  government ministers and other civil servants, Yahya
Jammeh lashes out with unprovoked invectives, calling people names and
doling out all mighty threats of death and destruction to anyone who in his
estimation, is not doing what they should be doing according to his
standards which, incidentally, are world class low. There is a widely
circulating rumor that he even habitually insults the mothers of his
cabinet ministers at cabinet meetings. One can only hope that this is just
a rumor; but it is not beyond the realm of possibility knowing that we are
talking about a half-wit or maniac who happens to be wielding the most
power in his country and commands the power of life and death over 1.8
million people.

Yahya Jammeh consistently insults Gambian journalists, human rights
advocates and members of alternate parties, all of which groups he
considers, for reasons known only to him, as illegitimate and not deserving
of constitutional rights and protections. He has called journalists
illegitimate sons of Africa, among other ugly names, and has declared that
members of alternate Gambian parties are donkeys. This is coming from the
mouth of a man who habitually invokes the name of Allah, who in the holy
scriptures explicitly forbids such behavior. He habitually proclaims that
neither the ballot nor the bullet can remove him from power. While the
bullet issue is anyone’s guess, conducting elections while claiming victory
before the fact constitutes one of many disrespectful and outright
insulting behaviors towards the Gambian people by Mr. Jammeh. Why does he
hold regular elections if he can declare before the polls that he will
remain in power until “20 million 20” in his own words. Beyond the crudity
of the obvious contempt for the Gambian constitution he expresses with such
a statement, Jammeh’s pronouncements that no other party will rule The
Gambia in a million years reveals the extent of his blinding hubris. It is
also another way of saying that suppose the majority of Gambians vote
against him in an election, he would not hesitate to use force to steal the
elections or insist on staying in power. And he will do it if he thinks he
will get away with it, which he might not next time around.

Yahya Jammeh, the man who proclaims his Muslimhood at every possible
opportunity, also practices blatant tribalism by habitually insulting
Gambian Mandinkas. When he insults Mandinkas in general, he of course
cannot leave out anyone belonging to The Gambia’s largest ethnic group,
whether they support him or not, whether they are respectable elders or
not, whether they are women, children or even babies. While he claims to be
a unifier of Gambians on one hand, he singles out an entire people for
insults and threats for no conceivably good reason. Surely, the All Mighty
Allah whose name he invokes all the time does not approve of such ungodly
behavior. One of many conclusions we can reach on this issue is that Yahya
Jammeh is no Muslim or even a believer in the God in whose names he
castigates all who care to listen. A Muslim cannot be so rude as to
habitually subject an entire people to a barrage of insults like Yahya
Jammeh does for the mere fact that he feels he can.

But Yahya Jammeh’s hubris-driven rudeness knows neither tribe nor age or
social status. As is now common knowledge, religious elders are a common
target of his insults and bullying. While some of these men of God perhaps
deserve such maltreatment owing to their aiding and abetting of Jammeh’s
tyranny, the majority of them are innocent of any wrongdoing. Witness the
recent case of the elderly Sheikh Muhideen Hydara, who endured seven months
of state bullying in the form of arrests, bogus charges, and repeated court
appearances for allegedly disobeying Jammeh’s order to perform the Eid
prayers on a particular day. The elderly Sheikh is just the most recent
example of Jammeh’s unjust bullying of religious leaders. The cases of Imam
Ba Kawsu Fofana and Imam Baba Leigh are also well known. Both these latter
two Imams were arrested and subjected to painful and humiliating treatment
because they dared to express an opinion on their country’s political
affairs. Having totally personalized both the Gambian state and the Gambian
nation, Yahya Jammeh sees any comment critical of his words and actions as
a personal affront and proceeds to bully those responsible. Well, it is
safe to imagine that these men of God also claim friendship with Jammeh’s
All Mighty Allah and may well be asking Him for justice against their
persecutors. There is nothing Jammeh can do about that. Even within the
confines of a tight prison cell, a person can ask for God’s intervention
either verbally or in their minds. For is not God the all-hearing,
all-knowing? Judge Thou with truth, they could pray, for You are the Best
of Judges.

Yahya Jammeh’s favorite target for abuse and insults is of course the West
and Western countries and institutions. The reason for his obsessive hatred
of the West is not far to see: the fact that they criticize his rampant
abuse of the rights of his own people and anyone who resides in The Gambia.
Jammeh’s favorite hobby horse is of course long dead colonialism and in
this respect, it is amazing just how similar Jammeh’s regime is to the
worst of the colonial regimes that existed in Africa. Like colonialism,
Jammeh’s regime is “bula matari” to borrow Crawford Young’s memorable
phrase: it is based on foundational violence that brooks no opposition and
mercilessly crushes its critics. Like colonialism, Jammeh’s regime regards
itself “as the sole power to judge its laws”; and like colonialism, the
supreme right of the Jammeh regime is its assumed right to deny others
their rights. And like colonialism, the Jammeh regime considers its
“subjects” as mere things of power, to be treated with contempt and
impunity at every possible opportunity. The parallels are legion that the
Jammeh regime is not at all different from the most brutal colonial regimes
in Africa. In fact in some respects, the Jammeh regime is more brutal than
many African colonial regimes. But of course being mind-blind and
intellectually corrupt, Yahya Jammeh has no way of seeing this blatant and
cruel irony of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. Mind-blindness
and intellectual corruption are behind Jammeh’s arbitrary decision to pull
The Gambia out of the Commonwealth and most recently, to expel the EU
representative to The Gambia. Self-destructive hubris keeps him on the
verbal assault against Western nations and pure foolery keeps him shouting
that he will never allow the West to colonize The Gambia again. His recent
threat to deal mercilessly with the European Union and other Western
countries demonstrates the extent of his alienation from reality. How
tragic that beautiful Gambia could be sadly with such ugly leadership.

Until recently, Yahya Jammeh only indirectly attacked his fellow African
rulers. But since the issue of term limits was raised a few weeks ago, he
has turned all African Union and ECOWAS leaders into stooges of the West
who are being used in an attempt to recolonize the continent. Here is
segment of his rant on the subject a couple of days ago as published in the
June 6, 2015 online edition of *The Standard* newspaper: “Now they [West]
are trying to use Ecowas. They said Yahya Jammeh cannot be changed by
elections. They want to use their stooges in Ecowas to impose term limit
because that is … a Western agenda. Where were the so-called Western
leaders today 20 years ago when I became head of state? Let me warn Ecowas
- Gambia is nobody's colony and our development is not dependent on Ecowas
that has already failed because it has been hijacked by the West. Even if
the whole world introduced term limit, I will not have a term limit and let
me see what you can do. Democracy is power to the people and not power to
the West. I am a pan-Africanist, but I will not subscribe to any
institution that is hijacked by the West and be used against Africa. If it
is the AU, I will leave AU; if it is Ecowas, I will leave Ecowas, but I
will not be given lecture by any of these institutions on behalf of the
West. Tell me about one electric pole here which was installed by the AU
(African Union) or Ecowas or by the British or the Americans. We are not
fools! Let them mind their own business.”

Indeed, indeed Mr. Jammeh. And you, of course are Gambia in absolute terms.
And you, of course choose to forget your very own words back in July 1994:
“We are not here to stay and we will not allow anyone to be in power in
this country beyond ten years. In fact, ten years is too long.” I guess you
will now say that ten years is too short; even twenty years is too short
for you. You will be in power for a million years, long after you are dead,
gone, and remembered only in history lesson discussions of Africa’s worst
dictators. Anyway, suffice it to inform you sir, that your ill-conceived
attack on the African Union and ECOWAS marks the end of you in a very real
sense. You have now not only lost the respect of the entire big wide world;
you have now become the most visible pariah, the laughing stock and the
butt of unfunny smutty jokes of all your fellow African heads of state. I
guess if they are stooges of the West some of us on this side of the
paranoid and self-righteous equation might well be usefully described as
stooges of the Rest, who incidentally, are just as bad if not worse than
the West in many crucial respects! The AU and ECOWAS are probably thinking
of a forced exit for all those who refuse term limits and insult them with
impunity. They are probably thinking that the ECOMOG model would do the job
just fine with a slight tweak in its mandate. The Johannesburg meeting is
fast coming up and word on the street is that term limits will be on the
agenda again!! And many more “Western stooges” will be in attendance!! And
who knows, the West might perhaps be thinking that a small group of Special
Forces might be a good way of colonizing our small part of Africa again as
a way of convincing us that no one can be in power for a million years or
refuse to deliver on their term limit promises. In any case, one has a
feeling that the end is always near for those who would violently shake
every tree they see.


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