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Square Pegs v. Round Holes, Apples v. Oranges

Part Four

By: Saul Saidykhan ([log in to unmask])


My point in citing all the foregoing incidents (from “a” to “q”) which ALL happened BEFORE Jammeh took over as
“president,” is to demonstrate that Yaya Jammeh did what he had to do (lie, con, fake, name it,) to get to where he
wanted to go. It’s Gambians who failed in their responsibility – over and over again. In every single one of the cited
cases, what Yaya Jammeh and his gang were promising or saying was the diametric opposite of what they were doing!
Yet very few Gambians seemed to have caught on to what was going on. Are Gambians so stupid that we cannot pick
up on clear signs of deceit until something undesirable happens?  

But then we proudly call ourselves people from the “Smiling Coast,” a moniker that on close examination,
does not speak well of our thinking ability. You see, excessive smiling –especially in the midst of the kind
of misery that is pervasive in Gambia, is a sure sign of idiocy! Discerning people around the world have to
wonder how Gambians will behave if they had the basics of life – clean water, good roads, adequate electricity, good
schools, good hospitals, basic human rights, security of life and property, etc. We lack all these, and we are the Smiling
people? A friend of mine thinks I’m being too critical in pointing this out, but I’d rather we call ourselves something else.
The “Friendly” or “Warm’ or “Sunny” Coast would be better at least until we have something to smile about.

What is our claim to be called intelligent human beings anyway? I am particularly at pains trying to understand how
“educated” people who conveniently ignored the many open lies Yaya Jammeh told Gambians during that crucial 1994-
1996 period can now accuse him of being dishonorable. They cheered him on to self-succeed because he has the
“right to run for president as a Gambian” despite his own public promise that he won’t. What has following through on a
promise – an honor or moral construct, got to do with his having a “right to” run as a Gambian – a legal precept? See
the hypocritical False Debates we are subjected to? Some actually egged him on in the delusional belief that democracy
would flourish better under Jammeh relative to the first republic – despite abundant historical facts regarding his types
that suggest otherwise.  

Integrity is not just about what one says or does. It also includes how one holds others accountable for what they say or
do. If you let someone lie to you without any protest, you’re probably as guilty as the liar in terms of lack of integrity, and
you’re most certainly guilty of hypocrisy when you later protest at similar behavior. Yaya Jammeh should be asking
some people what the heck they’re bitching at him for these days.  

It is because of such hypocrisy that I sometimes find myself feeling sorry for Yaya Jammeh. In so many ways, this man is
as much a victim as he is a victimizer of Gambian people. Many that had it in for the former regime cheered and egged
Jammeh on long after it became obvious that his actions were purely arbitrary, and motivated by anything other than
justice. In him, they had found a hound dog, and they’re now surprised he has not confined his hunting to their
designated prey. This becomes plain when one considers that Yaya Jammeh CLEARLY lacks the requisite Skills Set to
run a poultry farm properly, not to talk of a whole country. Because it served their purposes at the time, they played
dumb. Now that it has back-fired, its all Yaya Jammeh’s fault. Those that are not honest enough to admit their role in
foisting Jammeh on us, lack the moral wherewithal to criticize the man.

It’s no wonder at all that under Jammeh, Gambian public life has become one of classic tragicomedy. And
why would any “educated” person be surprise that Jammeh has messed up so much? My personal training
is in the Finance/Accounting/technology areas. If one lets me perform medical operations on their loved
ones, there’ll be a lot more dead bodies heading for the cemetery– not because I intend to kill people, but
because I simply don’t know any better when it comes to health care. Such is the case with someone like
Yaya Jammeh running a country.  The man simply does not know what he’s doing because of his obvious lack of
qualifications. It’s the combination of the baggage (call it a complex,) that his lack of education has saddled him with,
and his justified fear for his life, that triggers the weirdness that has now morphed into the real mental sickness he is
now universally known for.   

The Yaya Jammeh Show would in fact be hilarious if not for the severity of the consequences of his misrule – sometimes
manifested in naked criminality, on the lives of two million people. As it is, we are forced to be spectators to an endless
sequence of frighteningly bizarre or unspeakably cruel acts by Yaya Jammeh and his thugs. One bizarre event
supplants another as the headline of public discourse regarding Gambian affairs within and outside the country. Some
of Yaya’s antics are so stunningly bizarre that most native Africans –not just Gambians, can hardly do anything more
than pretend to laugh them off while internally weeping at the gut-wrenching and really embarrassing spectacles. Others
are so outrageous that those of us who lived in Gambia before Jammeh, are forced to engage in juvenile denial about
what is in fact the ugly reality in the country.  

Before one can wrap his or her mind around one shocking event, another comes along that is even more outrageous in
its absurdity, brutality, or senselessness. Apparently, there is no bottom in terms of how low Yaya Jammeh will pull down
The Gambia in the view of normal people around the globe. Following Gambian events today is therefore, to put it
mildly, being witness to a ceaseless bacchanalia of the bizarre interspersed with the horrendous. Almost everything that
we native Gambians used to swear with swagger “could never happen in Gambia” is now commonplace in the country.
From murder to rape, state-sanctioned brutality against an endless list of “enemies,” to legitimized naked ethnic
jingoism, Gambians are now well inured in the most unflattering categories. Most Gambians nowadays just shake their
heads and go on with their daily grind for survival at news of all types of horror that would have been talked about for
years (because of how seldom they were) before Yaya Jammeh took over. Jammeh’s rule is simply one of a mad man
taking over the mental asylum! Yet, it’s all predictable.

If one dares to harken back to the beginning of the sixteen years that he has foisted himself on us, there are literally
dozens of incidents where Jammeh and his government’s actions simply defy sanity, logic, and basic commonsense.
The most egregious of his crimes of course, was the April 2000 incidents in which school children, tired of being abused
by his soldiers tried to hold a protest march. Jammeh, who fashions himself as a “friend” of students, ordered his
soldiers to fire on them. The soldiers were not content with shooting at the kids at the proposed protest location which
was in an industrial area; they literally chased the children for miles into residential areas shooting at them as if they
were escaped wild animals. Consequently, a three year old toddler was also killed in addition to the over one dozen
school children that were brutally robbed of their lives needlessly.  Some fret about what Jammeh does to opposition
leaders, yet even if he rounds up all opposition leaders and shoots them, that crime would be minor compared to what
he did to the little school children in 2000 – in my book.

Anyhow, Jammeh’s multi-dimensional crimes began much earlier in his reign. Today, these have come full circle, and
encompass almost all aspects of Gambian public life –some less known or discussed than others. Yaya’s violence
against the Press, political opponents, opinionated citizens, human and civic rights activists, and members of the
security apparatus he feels threatened by for myriad reasons, are well documented. Less discussed is his equally
revolting crimes in the areas of personalizing the country’s finances; his usurpation of both public and private lands and
properties through the abuse of the concept of “Eminent Domain;” his open involvement in commerce and the willful
destruction of legitimate businesses -sometimes through surrogates; his deliberate stifling of the professionalization of
public institutions by making “tribe,” “loyalty,” and ethnicity THE necessary criteria in public appointments; his abuse of
the judiciary as a tool to “teach” those who won’t kiss up  to him, “a lesson” and so on.  

He’s is a classic case of “Rule by Law,” not Rule Of Law because in his Gambia, “the law” is personified by Yaya
Jammeh alone. What Jammeh wants, Jammeh takes, whether that is someone else’s woman, car, land, or building; what
Jammeh says is automatically THE LAW irrespective of what the law books say.  There is no worse example of a modern
ruler anywhere operating with more impunity than Jammeh is in Gambia. Yaya Jammeh has put Gambia on the global
map for all the wrong reasons!

However,  as tempting as it is to dump all the blame on Yaya as so many do, that option does no justice to either the
facts, or the record. The hard truth is Jammeh has had, and continues to have a lot of help in all the schemes he
engages in criminally in the name of governance. Be it land, or business deal, Jammeh often operates through well-
known fronts.   Like I stated before, Yaya Jammeh’s behavior is representative of the average Gambian. In a
sense, he is a man Made In Gambia wholesome. Though part mafia don, part buccaneer, part political
conman, part drug kingpin, the overly lecherous, unnaturally greedy, hustler-minded, and utterly
unscrupulous tribal bigot that he is, Yaya Jammeh only embodies what is wrong with the generality of
Gambian people:  

He lives in the immediate -as do many Gambians; he has no compunction about lying to gratify some temporary urge or
to stave off some inconvenience –as do many Gambians; he is incapable of being loyal to any person, group, principle,  
or cause –neither are many Gambians;  he lacks the discipline to study anything in depth to understand its intricacies or
the implications of making alternative decisions -like many Gambians; he is a master of One-liners and worn out clichés,
perennially confusing form for substance –like so many Gambians; he is a small-minded medieval cultist, who despite
pretensions, does not really believe in or follow the dictates of any of the monotheistic religions –neither do many
Gambians; he lacks depth and is bereft of the gift of commonsense – but if truth be told, he is again, among solid
company as a Gambian. Too many Gambians behave exactly the same way he does!

It is precisely because of these inconvenient facts that Jammeh’s behavior still illicit no outrage in so many Gambians,
thus his continued LEGITIMIZED BRIGANDAGE deceptively wrapped around democracy just because he is “elected.”
Elections make NOT democracy! The Gambia is on the move no doubt, but in a direction that is the exact antithesis of
democratic apogee. Almost all the gains that were recorded under the first republic in terms of building institutions,
nurturing a culture of civil dissent -be that verbal or written, and instituting a meritocracy in the public sphere, have all
been long lost.

In their place, we have Yaya Jammeh’s whims and caprices – the twisted, rambling, inchoate ideas, part narcissistic, part
comical, part juvenile, but invariably dangerous because of their deleterious effects on our body polity. Jammeh’s
problem is compounded by the fact that the man is an absolutist of the worst kind: he is absolutely sure that he is the
absolute personification of patriotism and progress in the Gambia –a Special Visionary, someone uniquely qualified to
lead and “debolop” the country, and anyone with any contrary view is absolutely unpatriotic, and therefore guilty of
treason. These, he believes absolutely!  

What is at once perturbing and infuriating about Jammeh’s attitude is the implication that the man must have acquired
his knowledge on the wings of some benevolent extraterrestrial spirit since some of us enquiring minds have been
unable to locate any institution on this planet that has prepared Yaya Jammeh to be not only the uniquely qualified
leader of our country that he claims to be, but also the All-round professional who harangues us about our deficiencies
on everything from farming to business, economics to politics, industriousness to discipline, not to mention what it
means to love the Motherland. In any of these areas, having to listen to Jammeh is –pardon the analogy, worse than
sitting through a lecture on Lady-Like Behavior from the Town Tramp!  

Like I just stated, Yaya Jammeh is a perfect embodiment of everything that holds us back as a country, though not an
exception. At the public level, he runs a government that is now a globally recognized symbol of recklessness,
opaqueness, excess, and retrogression -be that financial, executive, judicial, or legislative. At the personal level, he is
the epitome of indiscipline, and unscrupulousness. So how can such a character teach anyone anything good?

But then, as titled in this series, we’re a people who like to force Square Pegs into Round Holes. And we
wonder why the result is not to our liking. We’re looking for peace from a man who is at war with himself. Since when can
any human being give what he or she does not have? Yaya Jammeh is a very sick man. This is the man who has made
the careers of countless Gambian professionals, security officials, or Civil Service careerists mimic the life of the fictional
Solomon Grundy who was born on a Monday, and died the next Sunday, but in-between, experienced all the major
joyous and painful experiences of living. We’ve seen several army officers wake up as Lt. General on a Monday,
and go into that weekend as Major General after having been demoted to enlisted Private soldier mid-
week! In Jammeh’s Gambia, it’s now commonplace to see Mondays’ National Award winning “patriot”
become Friday’s treason-accused prisoner. This is an insane man doing insane things! And WE let him.

Those who follow world politics might recall the case of Abdala Bucaram, the Lebanese-Ecuadorian who got elected
president of his country in 1996. On the day he won the election, he went out to play soccer with youngsters. People
loved that because they thought they had finally found a simple man who wouldn’t take himself too seriously as their
president. Well, it didn’t take long before they realized that their self-described “loco” president was truly “loco” – crazy!
That became apparent when he started to confuse the country’s money for his own. It took only six months for the
legislature to rise up and kick the mad president out.  

For years now, Yaya jammeh has stopped pretending that there is a difference between his personal pocket and our
national treasury. Both funds are commingled. Yet, it’s ok to us. Yaya Jammeh told Gambians some years ago that he
has lost his “friendly, harmless” djinn friend, and again, Gambians don’t see anything wrong with that. Since then, he
has had to intervene between warring djinns as their “mediator.” Yet, it’s just another day in Gambia. I ask again, what is
Gambians’ claim to be called intelligent human beings?  

In the next installment, we’ll put the “good” Yaya Jammeh in its proper perspective since one cannot talk about Jammeh’
s misrule these days without being asked about “the good things he has done.” From the little I read, it’s obvious – but
not surprising to me, that in order to appear “balanced,” some are putting out arrant nonsense about Jammeh’s record
devoid of any relevant context. We shall supply such relevant context, and lay out the concomitant effects of Jammeh’s
LEGITIMIZED BRIGANDAGE manifested in his naked primitive appetite to amass wealth relative to what obtained under
the regime he toppled.

Earshot

A friend called to say he read something from Senegalese sources about President Jawara marrying Yaya Jammeh’s
mum a couple of days ago. Thought the whole thing was a joke. Jawara is way past his shelf life as a man. So, this is no
marriage as we know it. What is Yaya Jammeh hoping to gain by forcing his old lady on Jawara? It most certainly won’t
buy him any respite or respectability from those of us determined to see his back. To those who still don’t get it, this
speaks volumes about Jammeh. This is NOT about Jawara or mama Jammeh. This is all about Yaya Jammeh and his
evil machinations. This man is actually using his own mum for political expediency. Unbelievable! All Jawara
wants and deserves is quiet, peaceful retirement. Apparently, even that is too much to ask. The man is
close to ninety years old! What happened to the Imam he Jammeh married his mum to initially anyway? What
a country!


--
Surah- Ar-Rum 30-22
"And among His signs is the creation of heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colours. Verily, in that are indeed signs for men of sound knowledge." Qu'ran

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