Thanks Haruna. Your comments are often inspiring.

Baba

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:16:02 -0400
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Real July 22nd Revolution - Political AIDS
To: [log in to unmask]


Great Galleh. I like the precision of D-Section. Thank you for bringing proper focus and energy to The Real July 22nd Revolution. So by efforting to find a cure for HIV, Yahya was suffering from PIV. I am informed the Anopheles cannot be relied on to give us a cure for Malaria. HIV and PIV are one and the same disease for the ill-lettered and uncouth Yahya.


 


Haruna.




-----Original Message-----

From: Baba Jallow <[log in to unmask]>

To: GAMBIA-L <[log in to unmask]>

Sent: Thu, Jul 22, 2010 10:12 am

Subject: The Real July 22nd Revolution - Political AIDS











The Real July 22nd Revolution – D Section: Political AIDS


By Baba Galleh Jallow


 The real July 22nd revolution submits that Yahya Jammeh needs to quit his oppositional and conflictual politics of either/or and embrace the politics of both/and, for only in the holistic approach inherent in the latter can both state and nation exist and advance in harmony. Yahya Jammeh’s politics of fighting offends our national sensibilities, which is why we speak out, we recall, we condemn, and we warn of the dangers of his hostile domestic politics. The presence of political opposition to the state should not be read as the presence of malicious enemies of the state. The state is not, and can never be a mythical creature to be feared and worshipped. It is, and can only remain a public institution, part and parcel of the body public, devised by imperfect public intelligence, for the orderly conduct of public affairs. And being the creature of imperfect human intelligence, the state remains naturally imperfect and so stands in perpetual need of examination, re-examination, and regeneration. It is in this light that the continuous catalogue of public diagnoses, critiques, and recommendations directed against the state must be seen. These diagnoses, critiques, and recommendations are not meant to insult the head of state or tarnish his image and the image of his government, which is how Yahya Jammeh reads them. They are meant to render the head of state and the state less deserving of insult and less prone to the tarnished image consequent upon bad political judgment and action.


The real July 22nd revolution submits that The Gambia’s supreme national interest requires that that the Jammeh state tolerates and even encourages and accepts not only sincere public critique, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the fact that the state is merely society’s organizing device; that its very existence and the essence of the power it wields are meaningless in the absence of the public. As the head to the human body, so the state to the nation body. As the body needs the head, so the head needs the body. The state should represent the brain of the nation, capable of constructive and holistic reflection, as well as the selective accommodation of contrary opinion. The state’s good health and survival is squarely premised upon its sincere regard and respect for public opinion, which may be likened to the stream of blood pumped from the heart into the head and other parts of the body. 


The real July 22nd revolution submits that by its very nature, public opinion expresses public preference; and public preference may often only be expressed in the collective. Individuals and public institutions cannot express strictly individual or institutional opinions. Moving out from the individual person to the mass organization, opinions are always shared. Even Yahya Jammeh’s characteristically prohibitive opinions are shared by some of his supporters. Some of them merely pretend to share them for purposes of self preservation. It is cruelly irrational for any person to demand that everyone agrees with them on everything. To so expect betrays an embarrassing narrowness of mind unsuited even to an ordinary person, not to speak of a head of state.


The real July 22nd revolution submits that Yahya’s Jammeh’s relentless war against the flowering of a healthy Gambian political culture is further manifested in his political murder of two other mediums of Gambian cultural discourse – Sud FM radio and The Independent newspaper. At least in the case of Citizen FM, his earlier victim, Yahya Jammeh had enlisted the support of a ghost colonial legal code. In the cases of Sud FM and The Independent, no ghost was needed, colonial or otherwise. In Yahya Jammeh’s mind, these two media were callous subversives of state security and interests. And as the personification of state security and interests, Yahya Jammeh felt justified in invoking his favorite  martial norms of self defense and self preservation. Being the political wrestler that he is, and certain of his overwhelming power-advantage over these two media, he knew all he had to do was say the word and voila, it’s done! No more Sud FM and Independent! In both cases, as in many other cases, no legal procedures were observed and no reasons given. The Gambian public was left to speculate over why the two media were so unceremoniously killed and, in the absence of state disclosure, the public asserts the right to draw its own conclusions.


The real July 22nd revolution submits that Yahya Jammh closed Sud FM partly because the staff there often talked about their late colleague Omar Barrow. A young, promising and beloved journalist, Omar Barrow met his untimely death alongside a dozen or so school children at the hands of trigger happy security forces during the April 10 and 11 student massacre at the Red Cross compound at Kanifing Estates. Yahya Jammeh knows that his arbitrary and manifestly improper handling of issues surrounding the events of April 10 and 11, 2000 is a matter of widespread public anger. Instead of allowing the judicial process to run its course and end with an acceptable resolution of that crisis, Yahya Jammeh orally declared that in the spirit of national unity and conciliation, the hatchet must at once be buried. Public discussion of the issue must cease. Everyone must forgive and forget. The dead are dead, the wounded, wounded; that’s it. No more talk of April 10 and 11. The detained students will be released and no charges will be brought against the soldiers identified by the commission of enquiry and the coroner’s inquest to have been responsible for giving the direct order to shoot Barrow and the children. And so by imposing such a draconian peace of the iron grid, Yahya Jammeh sought to thrust the events of April 10 and 11 under his iron carpet. Happily, these events are too big to be thrust under any carpet, even one as iron and as large as Yahya Jammeh’s.


The real July 22nd revolution submits that Yahya Jammeh’s appeal to the spirit of national unity in this case was merely a smokescreen for what he saw as his more serious concerns. He feels that talk of Omar Barrow, which is inseparable from talk of the April 10 and 11 student massacre, represents a threat to the security of his personal state. Talk of Omar Barrow and April 10 and 11 2000 always raises questions over the extent of Yahya Jammeh’s involvement in the brutal massacre. Widespread public opinion holds that charges were not preferred against the soldiers responsible for the massacre because they were merely carrying out orders from above. And since Yahya Jammeh represents the only above, he could not possibly turn around and punish the soldiers for carrying out his orders. If he tried, the soldiers would have certainly testified, in their defense, that they were merely carrying out his orders. That Sud FM represented a healthy cultural presence in Gambian society was of little or no consequence to Yahya Jammeh. It had to be sacrificed on the altar of Jammeh’s security. And so using the national interest as a convenient smokescreen, he promptly vanquished the malignant enemy. In spite of his overweening love for ear-splitting noise – especially raucous clapping, drumming, and dancing - Yahya Jammeh is madly in love with a certain silence: the silence that usurps and stands in lieu of honest public opinion, which he bitterly hates.


The real July 22nd revolution submits that a state that refuses to appropriate and assimilate at least some measure of critical public opinion is a state that suffers from intellectual malnutrition and severe political psychosis. It is a state that is P.I.V Positive, afflicted with Political AIDS and surviving only on account of the large doses of Coercive ARV it consumes. Such a state must either wake up to the reality of its severe predicament and take effective remedial action, or face the inevitable prospect of a fatal fall. Declaring that no coup can remove him from power does not necessarily mean that no coup can remove him from power; it is merely a measure of the dangerous extent of his arrogance, which has now reached the precarious heights of hubris, the last, final stage before the fall.


The real July 22nd revolution submits that under the Jammeh state, the rule of law is so violated that it elevates political authority over social critique and accountability. The head of state raises himself high above the laws of the land. Constitutional provisions outlining and protecting the rights of the individual and the responsibilities of public officials are conveniently ignored whenever they clash with the president’s desire to enforce his personal will, often behind the convenient veil of the national security or the common good. The real July 22nd revolution regrets this unhealthy state of affairs and proposes to conduct further enquiry into it.




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