I've always said that there is something inherently unsettling and
disreputable about the relationship between the AFPRC/APRC and MOJAG - or
whatever is left of it nowadays. What at best describes this unsettling and
disreputable relationship is a deep-seated ambivalence towards the record of
Jammeh along the same wave-lengths of - oh dear, not them again! - PDOIS' own
deep-seated ambivalence towards the question of Jammeh. For now, i shall
shelve the parallels that make these two parallel cousins, i.e., MOJAG and
PDOIS correspond together: fanatically anti- Jawara/PPP and a "furious
hatred" of everything and or anything bourgeois and liberal.

If during its heydays MOJAG was to be believed, it opposed the PPP and
decried Jawara's autocratic-cum-capitalist order because of the damages it
inflicted on liberty and freedom. The themes are familiar: from the
debilitating effects of the democratic deficit inherent in the body politic
to the gross and intolerable inequalities that "the system" inflicted on the
Gambia's poor and underprivilege, MOJAG waxed indignant and lyrical at all
sorts of social justice themes that leftists liked to invoke during the 70s
and 80s. And so MOJAG represented progress whilst those that opposed them -
notably the PPP and Jawara - were political decadents or reactionaries. Or
they would imagine and even led us to believe. MOJAG's apparent believe in
their own pose led to a more romantic and subversive revolutionary existence
in the emerging urban areas of the Gambia, where their political agitation is
the stuff of legend and subsequently earned them political exile abroad -
notably in Scandinavia. This tour de force of an historical bravado is what
we are made and led to believe about MOJAG's history in Gambian politics.

Let me - with the hindsight of late modern Gambian history - offer a
dissenting view. I strongly believe that the ripples discontinuity and
ambivalence in MOJAG - or whatever is left of it - of late to a very large
extent discredits and places a huge question mark over the achievements or
lack thereof of their heady and romantic revolutionary existence before they
were forced into exile. Stuff happens: if MOJAG was selflessly motivated in
agitating against Jawara on such social justice issues like political liberty
and socio-economic equality for all Gambians, then in the AFPRC/APRC, they
have such themes in plenitude. Whichever you feel like slicing the AFPRC/APRC
cake, themes of nefarious politics and injustices are there for you to choose
to your filling. Many a commentator - and i mean commentators who never
hesitated to denounce Jawara - were in agreement that Jammeh makes Jawara
look saintly. More to the point, with Jammeh, it ought to be personal: Jammeh
has more than a year ago illegally incarcerated a prominent founding member
of MOJAG - Dumo Sarho. With Jammeh, MOJAG ought to have gone into the
trenches. The man literally provides them with all the ammunition needed for
political mutiny. Yet, to date, i have as of yet to see, read, hear or hear
of through third parties MOJAG unequivocally denouncing Jammeh along the same
lines as they did with Jawara. I'm all ears.

Instead, what we have now from MOJAG is a treacherous, disreputable and
deplorable trend that will in all essence end up denigrating any sense of
achievement MOJAG may lay claims to. From a very prominent MOJAG activist -
Sarjo Jallow - serving the brutal regime that illegally continues to
incarcerate a former comrade to a splinter group from MOJAG milking State
funds through the conduit of an NGO, remnants of whatever it is that is left
of MOJAG are in cahoots with the APRC. How did we figure all this out? Now
during the weekend, i had a very interesting conversation with a source - who
happens to know very well some of these MOJAG operatives and what they are up
to in Banjul these days. The unimpeachable source put it to me that not only
do we have a prominent MOJAG operative serving in Jammeh's gov't but in fact
a splinter group formed around Ousman Manjang is very much informally
involved with the APRC and Jallow is their contact man. How does it all work
out? According to my source, Manjang operates an NGO call GAMSEM which
supposedly helps out the unemployed young; and Sarjo Jallow sits on the board
of this outfit. When the NGO runs out of cash or needs new contracts to be in
business, Sarjo uses his position of influence as a Secretary of State to
hand Manjang gov't contracts and so the NGO becomes the trough for cementing
the old revolutionary network. And so the vicious circle goes ... More to the
point, another source of mine once told me that whatever it is that Sarjo is
up to within the APRC, he is in it with Manjang: on several occasions, he
chanced upon Manjang at Sarjo's office looking for gov't contracts to fill
the trough. All of which should help explain why a year ago - together with
my compatriots, Brothers Saul Khan and Kebba Dampha - i was not able to make
Manjang denounce Sarjo's involvement with the APRC. What i didn't know then,
of course, was that Sarjo's involvement with the APRC is, in extension,
Manjang and his splinter MOJAG group's involvement with the APRC.

This is not the end of the story. As my source puts it to me again, Manjang
and his group - like many anti- Jawara/PPP fanatics - have taken up a more
unbecoming and disreputable position vis-a-vis the current political
atmosphere. My source tells me that members of MOJAG or whatever is left of
it - especially the wing of it that aligns with Manjang and his Marxism - is
arguing that in this presidential election, whatever keeps Jawara out is
better than what brings him back. Here they are merely saying that the anti-
Jawara votes are best served by going to the candidate and or party with the
clout to win the elections and resolutely opposed to a Jawara come-back - as
it happens, the APRC. A while ago, my able compatriot, the indefatigible
Kebba Dampha, warned of a mentality which gives succour to the corrupt
dictatorship: the "we hate Jawara more" mentality, as he put it then. Now
more than ever this disease is everywhere: from inside the Gambia to
Gambia-L, this nonsense is the genesis of the current anti- Jawara hysteria.

The question becomes relevant: is MOJAG - or whatever it is that is left of
it - in cahoots with the murderous and corrupt fascist APRC? Recent events
suggest that there indeed exist a very disreputable relationship between
certain influential MOJAG operatives and the APRC that is deeply unsettling
and ambivalent. Whatever our hesitation to denounce everything MOJAG stood or
fought, there is no doubt in the minds of many decent Gambians that MOJAG -
or whatever it is that is left of it that aligns with Ousman Manjang and
Sarjo Jallow - is a disreputable force; whose integrity has been left in
tatters by their association with the APRC. In this list of dishonoured
political forces, they've joined their parallel cousins - the PDOIS.

Hamjatta Kanteh

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