> Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:16:59 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [G_L] The Ideal Presidency
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Dr. Jallow,
> Thanks again for some great insight. I guess
> Obasanjo ( former President of the Great Republic of Nigeria) was
> reading your mind when he had the audacity to tell the World that
> Africa's problems are caused by its 'Leaders'. He is right though ONLY
> that he came to realize it after wasting the lives of countless
> Nigerians and Africans. You are on point for it reminds me of the
> Ifangbondi Track 'It is a SAD SITUATION'. Great Piece, thank you.
>
> Farang.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Baba Galleh Jallow <[log in to unmask]>
> To: GAMBIA-L <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thu, Apr 25, 2013 9:12 pm
> Subject: The Ideal Presidency
>
> The Ideal PresidencyBy Baba Galleh Jallow“Being president is a humbling
> job,” said Obama as he spoke at the opening of the George W. Bush
> Library at the Southern Methodist University Campus in Dallas, Texas on
> Thursday, April 25 2013. Those words sprung involuntary tears into my
> eyes. Indeed, I find tears involuntarily springing to my eyes on many
> occasions when I watch and hear the speeches of American leaders.
> Perhaps it is the extremely stark contrast I see between these great
> but humble citizens, and the mediocre and arrogant persons who impose
> themselves as so-called leaders in our homeland. Perhaps it is the
> realization that nothing really keeps Africa from being great but the
> stifling arrogance and chronic aversion to ideas, knowledge, truth and
> wisdom that our leaders characteristically demonstrate. While being
> president of the world’s most powerful nation is considered a humbling
> job, being president of the world’s poorest and weakest nations is
> considered license to assume a godlike status that gives the power to
> bully and kill the people with total impunity.Of course, neither Obama
> nor any other American president, dead or alive is any more human than
> any African president, dead or alive. Americans are no less susceptible
> to corruption and the abuse of power than Africans. Americans and their
> leaders are endowed with the same brainpower that Africans possess.
> They have the same capacity for thought and rational action; the same
> weaknesses of the human being. Given this fact of the equality of
> humanity, Africans must wonder why their presidents behave like drunken
> gods with machine guns blazing among their people. Surely it is not
> because Americans are better human beings than Africans or that
> Americans are less likely to be corrupted by power; nor is it because
> Africans are less capable of being human or humble than Americans.
> Humility may be a naturally cultivated characteristic of human beings;
> but in situations of power, humility is more often than not an imposed
> virtue. An insultingly arrogant president of the kind we have in
> countries like The Gambia cannot long survive at the White House.  If
> there is one thing that every modern American president looks forward
> to doing, it is establishing a presidential library both to preserve
> their records in office and, as Bill Clinton put it at the Bush Library
> opening, to rewrite history. History of course, can both be
> re-rewritten and not be re-written. It is a joy of historical studies
> that while there are certain facts that can never be written or
> interpreted other than what they were, the stuff of history is the art
> of interpretation and reinterpretation. A hundred historians could
> write about the same event in different ways and all of them get it
> right. Which is why that part of the Bush library reserved for people
> to judge and say what they feel should have been done or not done by
> the Bush administration is such a good idea. American presidents care
> about how History will judge them. Most African presidents just don’t
> give a damn about history or anything other than feeding their sick and
> bloated egos.But it is not the fact of historical preservation that
> primarily drives American presidents to preserve their legacies through
> the building of presidential libraries. Their motivation derives more
> from the high premium that the American public, or at least significant
> sections of it, place on the value of knowledge and education.
> Americans recognize that ideas are the fuel without which the engine of
> development cannot start, not to say run smoothly. They recognize that
> preserving knowledge is preserving energy for the development of future
> generations. They recognize that their country is great because of its
> respect for a diversity of ideas and opinions, some right, some wrong,
> some outright ridiculous. They recognize that perhaps above everything
> else, they owe the greatness of their nation to the survival of a free
> marketplace of ideas and the individual’s inalienable right to freely
> express himself in any way he deems necessary. The high premium America
> places on the value of ideas and free expression is aptly captured in
> the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States which,
> among other things, prohibits Congress from making any law abridging
> the freedom of speech and of expression. Americans know that ideas are
> the building blocks with which great nations are built. Contrast this
> almost obsessive reverence for the sanctity of knowledge and ideas to
> the contempt with which knowledge and ideas are held in most African
> countries and you will get the key to the puzzle of Africa’s
> stagnation. If only African leaders and governments had treated ideas
> with the respect they deserve from the dawn of independence, Africa’s
> story would have been a whole lot different than what it has turned out
> to be after over half a century of independence. Above everything else,
> it is the insensitive strangulation of ideas that lies at the root of
> Africa’s poverty and stagnation. The stupefying mountains of seemingly
> intractable problems facing African nations today are nothing but the
> bitter fruits of African leaders’ selfish intolerance of differing
> opinion and their refusal to privilege the acquisition of knowledge as
> the most important path to a people’s advancement. Witness the closure
> of Citizen FM and Teranga FM in The Gambia for no other reason than
> they sought to enlighten the Gambian people by translating the news
> into the vernacular and encouraging open political discussion.African
> leaders build roads and hospitals and monuments to be displayed as the
> marks of their achievement; but they neglect building the most precious
> and powerful resources of their nations: their people’s minds. They
> know that building the people’s minds is building the people’s power,
> and therefore giving the people the opportunity to question their
> actions and boot them out of power if they misbehave. American
> president’s feel their power as a humbling experience because they feel
> the power of their people and know that while they occupy the most
> powerful office in the world, their success and very survival depends
> on recognizing the extent of the power of their people in general and
> their colleagues and opponents in Congress and the Judiciary in
> particular. American presidents cannot just wake up and decree the
> passage of a law, or have someone arbitrarily arrested and detained, or
> fire a judge, a secretary of state or a director without as much as a
> word of explanation. Being merely human, they might wish to do such
> things in their personal spaces; but they realize that their power is
> severely limited by the perpetual presence of the public eye and the
> people’s capacity to punish them. For this reason, their being
> president represents a humbling experience. This is as it should be
> everywhere in the world because all people have a right to be treated
> with dignity if not actually feared by their leaders. That is the ideal
> presidency that Africans must fight for and win if the continent is to
> escape the vicious cycle of poverty and stagnation it has suffered
> since independence.     
>
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