Thanks Saikou. Glad you enjoyed the piece.

Baba

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 3:27 PM, Pa. Saikou Kujabi <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> A great piece Baba, as always. Summed in one word............. A DUMB,
> SICK,  and  WORTHLESS MIND.
>
>
> On Tuesday, May 10, 2016 11:27 AM, Baba Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> *Jammeh’s way*
> By Baba Galleh Jallow
> Occasionally, the excesses of a dictatorship get so outrageous that people
> get tongue-tied as to what else to say. How do we make sense of a
> consistently senseless pattern of behavior of a man who prides himself in
> going his own way, even if that way is patently self-destructive and
> destructive of so many innocent lives? The unfolding drama in Banjul over
> the Jammeh regime’s murder of Solo Sandeng and its subsequent arrest of UDP
> leader Ousainou Darboe and members of his party executive is revealing. The
> saying that fools hang themselves when you give them a long rope may be
> manifesting in the Jammeh’s determination to deal with this sensitive
> situation the only way he could possibly think of – with heavy handed
> insensitivity. Rather than manage the situation sensibly by allowing
> Gambians to protest peacefully and go home peacefully from the very start,
> Yahya Jammeh has ignited and is fueling a firestorm that would hopefully
> consume his tyrannical regime and rid our dear country of a political
> cancer that has been spreading in its body for the past twenty-two years.
> Apologists for the regime’s blatant injustices have argued that members of
> the UDP had broken the law by not seeking a police permit to hold their
> peaceful call for electoral reform and subsequent demands for an
> explanation as to what happened to Solo Sandeng. That law would have
> deserved respect in an environment of law and order – an environment where
> the police and security forces are not mere appendages of a callous
> dictatorship. In the Gambian situation, the police have repeatedly denied
> requests by the UDP and other legitimate applicants for permits to hold
> peaceful rallies for the simple reason that Mr. Jammeh does not approve of
> them. The idea of seeking permission to hold protests and  rallies is
> legitimate only under a system characterized by respect for human rights
> and the rule of law. In a situation of utter disregard for human rights and
> the rule of law, it is well within the rights of the citizens to go right
> ahead and hold their peaceful protest and rallies without suffering the
> pain and indignity of applying only to be refused their constitutionally
> guaranteed right to freedom of expression. Let the unjust regime eat its
> heart out or do its worst. Moreover, if the ruling party needs no permit to
> hold its rallies, why should any other legitimate political party or group
> of citizens need any such permit to express their legitimate public
> opinion? The idea behind permits is merely to inform the police so they
> could provide security and maintain order while the protests unfold. In
> Jammeh’s Gambia, protests are considered privileges that may or may not be
> granted and enjoyed by the citizens as the government - which to say the
> head of state – wishes.
> By trying to prevent people from even attending the court hearings of Mr.
> Darboe and Co., the Jammeh dictatorship is finally completing the process
> of political suicide it started back in 1994. The more it bullies people
> who choose to attend the hearings, the more people find the bullying and
> insults they have been subjected to for the past two decades unbearable.
> Jammeh had always banked upon the notion that Gambians were cowards who
> were so afraid of dying or going to jail that they would take everything
> and leave everything in the hands of God. That is precisely what the
> dictatorship hopes would happen again. But this time around, things are
> likely to get out of hand because the UDP-inspired crisis happens at a
> point in the country’s history when people are sick and tired of the
> suffocating stranglehold of the Jammeh regime. Thus, rather than drive
> people into their customary silence and passivity, the bullying will elicit
> exactly the opposite reaction. More people will get emboldened, more  outraged
> and more determined to insist that The Gambia does not belong to Yahya
> Jammeh and his security forces – that it is a mutually owned and mutually
> shared home for all Gambians regardless of party affiliation or status. And
> the harder the regime cracks down upon the people, the larger the crowds
> are likely to grow.
> Of course, the bottom line is that Jammeh has long been a victim of hubris
> – which is the fate of all tyrants and demagogues in history. For over two
> decades, hubris has rendered him deaf to the voice of reason and blind to
> the light of truth. He has doggedly chosen ignorance over knowledge,
> darkness over light, injustice over justice, and truth over lies. Hubris
> has caused him to commit heresy and utter such blasphemies like “I will
> rule The Gambia for a million years” – a statement he knows to be
> manifestly false and against the natural laws of the God who created him
> and his power. Hubris has caused him to ignore exhortations to observe
> justice in dealing with the human beings under him, to allow Gambians to
> enjoy their God-given rights, and among many other things, not to attempt
> imposing Sharia law on the Gambian people. In “Gambia: Why Sharia is not an
> option” (2013) we outlined the many reasons why it was a very bad idea for
> Jammeh to attempt imposing Sharia law on The Gambia, one of which was that
> people – Muslims and Christians alike – would kick back against the idea.
> But of course, being afflicted with blinding hubris, his arrogance wouldn’t
> stop itching until he proved all his critics wrong. He had to show that his
> critics always lie about him; that in fact, he could do whatever he wanted
> to do with our country and all its people. Now we have seen the backlash
> against his ill-fated declaration of The Gambia as an Islamic state in the
> fact that current protesters include people carrying banners saying “no to
> an Islamic state” among other manifestations of refusal to comply. Scanning
> the crowds of protesters, one notices a few women wearing the veil, which
> they perhaps wore before the Islamic state crap, and one notices women
> wearing their traditional head dress or no head dress at all.
> Now “the genie is out of the bottle” as one writer recently put it. The
> spell of fear is broken. Jammeh has reached what we may call “beyond crisis
> point”. The only way he can go now is down and out. Whatever the outcome of
> the current UDP case, Jammeh is doomed to historical infamy and notoriety.
> He joins tyrants and demagogues like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Muamar
> Gaddafi, Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Sani Abacha, Jean Bedel
> Bokassa and all the evil dictators and tyrants in history’s hell. He has
> willfully carved for himself a cold, perpetually nose-offending niche in
> the infamous dustbin of history where he, of course, will forever languish.
> He probably never heard Aristotle say “Man perfected by society is the best
> of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law
> and without justice.” And he had refused to hear those who heard Aristotle
> convey the unassailable truth of the ages to his hubris-afflicted ears.
> Well, we just say all praise be to God, the Lord of Truth and Justice, to
> whom all power belongs, now and forever.
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