*Discourse with Dr. Jammeh: On Your Neo-Traditional Rulership*

* *

*By Baba Galleh Jallow*



You see, Dr. Jammeh, we know that you do not define your political
leadership according to the books of constitutionalism that officially
govern the affairs of our country. You define your political leadership
according to that genre of neo-traditionalism so dear to your heart because
it perfectly matches your personal conception and preferred mode of
leadership among whose troubling features is once a ruler, always a ruler.
How can one be a ruler and then become a ruled? That could happen only under
the most unfortunate circumstances. So long as fortune smiles, I rule. We
know that your distaste for liberal notions of democracy derives from your
understanding of that notion as synonymous with western democracy. Hence
your frequent threatening protestations and warnings against attempts at
imminent recolonization. We have heard you say, not exactly in the same
words, “Emergency Red Alert! Nation Threatened with colonization! I will
never allow the West to come and re-colonize Africa! Over my dead body.” We
have heard orders, this time not of the particularly threatening sort,
rumble from above to impose order and apply Chinese balm to this spot of
bother. We say these particular orders are not of the threatening sort
because they are directed at powers much greater than our mighty above;
powers within which their very source is inextricably embedded. No amount of
threatening protestations can insulate you from the positive trends of
Gambian humanism, this great awakening of the Gambian spirit to the beauty
of its nation, this great determination of the Gambian spirit to
re-appropriate and actualize our national beauty. For this re-appropriation
and actualization of the national beauty to occur, Gambianism seeks to do
away with all trappings of neo-traditional rulership within the context of
our constitutional presidency.



We know, Dr. Jammeh, that in the choice between acting like an unaccountable
neo-traditional ruler and acting like the accountable ruler of a liberal
democratic society of enlightened citizens, you have chosen the former. You
know you are the ruler of a constitutional democratic society. You lay claim
to your right to rule by deploying the instruments of constitutionalism –
party politics, elections, legislation, the law, propaganda – whenever they
suit your purposes. But you show the greatest contempt for these same
constitutional instruments being deployed by your fellow Gambian citizens,
those who hold different opinions from you. The problem is, Dr. Jammeh, that
the very idea of the traditional-constitutional ruler you see yourself as
being is a contradiction in terms. The mechanical accuracy and efficiency
with which you deploy certain aspects of Gambia’s constitutional machinery
in pursuit of your aims and objectives prove that you can deploy any aspects
of that same constitutional machinery to enhance liberal democracy in The
Gambia. But you deny the relevance or even existence of any aspect of our
constitutional order that raises questions about your preferred
neo-traditional form of politics. Secure in your position as President of
The Gambia, you have invented a tradition of the traditional-constitutional
ruler that represents a political eyesore and that we seek to thrash out in
the course of these conversations.



You see Dr. Jammeh, we do appreciate the need for the invention of
traditions. However, we must hasten to add that not all traditions are to be
invented. Some traditions, especially of the neo-traditional rulership sort,
are better left uninvented. The mansa mentality with which you drive your
constitutional motorcade is one such tradition that is better consigned to
history. It has long gone caput, it is out of place, and it represents a
clog in the wheels of our national advancement. We have been pointing out
this dangerous anomaly within our political culture since 1994 when you
first became a political doctor. And we will continue pointing it out until
such a time that it drops out of our nation body and spirit. We cannot have
the rule of men riding the back of the rule of law. We cannot have
absolutism in the guise of constitutionalism. And it is the former that must
give way to the latter. You are either a king or a president. And since you
cannot be a king by any stretch of the president, you are a president and
must be seen to act like a president. These are not orders from below, just
hard-nosed observations befitting the spirit of our honest discourse.



You see, Dr. Jammeh, there at least three known mansa mentalities in our
part of the world. There is the mansa mentality of the precolonial period,
the mansa mentality of the colonial period, and the mansa mentality of the
postcolonial period with which we are currently engaged and which, we
repeat, is not only passé but blaisé. Our questions would have been
difficult to ask had we lived during the good old days of Mansa Futa or
Jollof Mansa. But old Mansa Futa and Jollof Mansa are now in blissful
retirement in the cozy realm of the ancestral spirits, still with us, but
never to return as the physical Mansas of ancient days. What makes our
questions easy to ask but hard to answer is this ugly phenomenon of
traditional-constitutional rulership that, in spite of our proclaimed mental
decolonization and our hatred of western re-colonization, remains stubbornly
lodged in our political mentality; and we seem to be enjoying it because it
perpetuates our ideal of what a healthy national discourse should be. Not
that it could choose otherwise, given the circumstances. As a cherished
tradition, the mansa mentality is welcome to stay. But as political
practice, it has no place in our current political configurations and must
go decorate our museum of national history where it rightfully belongs. On
this point, there can be no compromise. Not if we are ever to build a
healthy Gambian nation.



You see Dr. Jammeh, we know that you hate the very idea of the rule of law.
Because you feel generously endowed with “traditional African manhood” and
claim to be possessed of strange mystical powers of unknown origin, you
habitually take the thesis for the theory and the theory for the thesis. How
otherwise could you loudly proclaim to the whole big wide world in the year
2010 that you will never allow the West to come recolonize Africa? As if you
can protect the whole of Africa if necessary? As if anyone is the least
interested in colonizing Africa in this day and age? In spite of your
doctoral prowess, you do not see that every contemporary people have their
own big problems and are hostile to the very idea of carrying on another
people’s burdens. Or do you merely pretend that you can say whatever you
like whenever you like and no one can do anything about it? When you make
such outlandish and embarrassing announcements, you are deploying your
constitutional right to have a voice among the community of world leaders or
misleaders, as the constitutional head of a society of laws. But once you
are done having your pious say, you cast aside your constitutional
disposition and don your neo-traditional persona as the supreme ruler of a
society of that has no room for any rules or any rights as long as these
rules and rights conflict with your personal likes and dislikes. This state
of affairs is totally unacceptable and Gambianism is out to challenge it to
a wrestling contest and throw it down flat on the ground and flush it out of
our national political space.



You see Dr. Jammeh, Gambianism believes that conflict of opinion, like all
other conflicts, are best resolved through a regime of healthy compromise
and not an unhealthy regime of forced victories and enforced silences. We
all know that some compromises are unhealthy and leave a bitter taste in our
mouths and an unhappy look on our faces. While some doctors don’t need to
put on any fake appearances because they are so, well, handsome, they are
forced once in a while to attempt a smile even when they are seething with
rage and a sense of inadequacy or littleness in the face of higher powers.
In any case, what constitutes a healthy compromise for some doctors
constitutes an unhealthy compromise for other doctors. We do believe,
however, that we do need to compromise on this issue of your posing as the
absolute neo-traditional ruler of a constitutional nation-state based on the
rule of law and not of men. Your preferred notions of neo-traditional
rulership must necessarily be compromised because they negatively compromise
the Office of the Gambian President. They negatively compromise the
Constitution of the Republic of The Gambia. They negatively compromise the
doctrine of the separation of powers which is the bedrock of our
constitutional order. And they negatively compromise the dignity and
sovereignty of the Gambian people to whom power truly belongs. We shall
leave it at that and get back to this issue of neotraditional rulership that
represents such an ugly blot on our national flag.


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