Karamba:

No one analyzes and says it better than you do.  This is excellent work.
I pray that you will find the time someday to put together into a
book/monograph your writings on political events and home, and while you
are it, do one for those who love your creative writing.  Best wishes!

Abdoulaye

[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> On Monday the leadership of The Gambia Police ruefully and publicly confirmed
> what many a citizen has long ago concluded: Citizens have totally lost faith
> in them as an institution to do the basic job that characterizes their very
> essence viz-a-viz enforcing laws that every Gambian is supposed to live
> under. For the Police losing the general publics' confidence is the
> functional equivalent of an institutional obituary that gravely endangers our
> very society. Afterall in this day and age no nation can remain viable if the
> basic notion of equal protection under the law becomes a constitutional relic
> and law enforcement degenerates into selective application and
> vindictiveness. The Gambia Police today is beset by a myriad of problems so
> endemic that even a new gov't may have to break it up and rebuild it. At the
> heart of their problem is the total lack of a leadership cadre that is
> professional with institutional loyalty and training to set forth a course
> that can evolve a department that is equipped to fulfill it's mandate. The
> problem is Yahya Jammeh is not interested in such a police force precisely
> because he knows as someone who is essentially turning the gov't into a
> criminal syndicate, a professional police force would by dint of their duty
> stand in his way. Consequently he has devised a two pronged approach that
> relies on purging the department of officers perceived to be unenthusiastic
> supporters and replacing them with lackeys whose only interest lies in
> undermining the department and perpetuating themselves. They spend most of
> their time ensuring that legitimate investigations are stymied, innocent
> people are framed while criminals as long as they have gov't sponsorship are
> free to ply their trade of terror and intimidation. This poor leadership
> translates into sagging morale for the poorly paid rank and file who
> concentrate on scrounging a living by shaking down regular people for small
> bribes and not devoting the time and effort that effective policework
> demands. The President further undermines them by making it tacitly clear to
> them that their very existence as an institution is in question, all in a
> cynical ploy to sow uncertainty and fear of job loss making it all the easier
> to manipulate and control them. To drive the message home he allows
> vigilantes and thugs that he himself organizes to arm and parade themselves
> in police stations in a brutish show of force that is meant to humiliate the
> police.  He provides these thugs with the very resources such as guns,
> vehicles, radios and cell phones that the police desperately need. Typically
> this is the mode in which tyrants operate. On the one hand they actively
> undermine law and order while at the same time setting up illegal outfits
> such the ones Picka  and Baba Jobe run to take advantage of the vacuum
> created by the gradual breakdown in law enforcement to sow fear and visit
> terror on the population. They know they can count on the biggest guarantee
> of all; state protection and ultimate impunity, courtesy of Yahya Jammeh. As
> a result unless one or more groups of these thugs gets greeted by a hail of
> bullets from the machine gun of someone they come to kill in the middle of
> the night, Gambians can count on zero or mediocre police protection. They can
> however count on indolent and specious press conferences from Sarjo Jallow,
> Pap Cheyasin Secka and the rest of that crowd. They make me sick! We are
> supposed to remotely stomach their insincere pronouncements of contrition or
> outrage over activities that the gov't in which they serve is directly
> responsible. The responsibility for what is happening to our country lies
> squarely on their feet and they ought to shut up and live with themselves.
>
> Karamba
>
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