*You said nothing, Mr. Yammeh*

By Baba Galleh Jallow

Mr. outgoing president and soon-to-be former Babili Mansa, we now have
occasion to have another conversation with you, this time about your
so-called new year’s message to the Gambian people, whom you have reduced
to a state of distress and anxiety they had not suffered for 22 years under
your brutal dictatorship. Since you are in the habit of grossly distorting
misrepresenting the facts to us and about us whenever it suits your
purposes, we are going to take this opportunity to give you a taste of your
own medicine by calling you Mr. Yammeh. We will quote a few parts of your
rambling “speech” to make it clear to you that you said nothing because you
have nothing to say and that you should just zip it and go, which is the
best choice you can make under the circumstances. First, you had the
audacity to spew the following from your horse’s mouth:

“It has become a tradition that when we enter a new year, we as God fearing
people renew our faith in Allah, our submission to his will and our pledge
to do good and avoid satanic temptations to do evil.”

Now wait a minute Mr. Yammeh. Do you really fear God Mr. Yammeh? Here you
are, holding an entire nation hostage, creating fear in the hearts of the
young and the old, the healthy and the infirm; and you tell us about
fearing God? You are a victim of the very satanic temptations you pretend
to advise us to avoid. What is your uncontrollable lust for power, this
lust for power for which you are willing to sacrifice our country but the
very work of the devil, a classic case of satanic temptation, of the evil
one blinding your heart to all common sense and all reason? Please give us
a break about your satanic hypocrisy. Pack your mountain of wealth and go
away; do not make Gambia and the peace-loving Gambian people a victim of
your satanic temptation to cling on to power.

And who are you to talk to us about strengthening our commitment to the
national anthem Mr. Yammeh? Don’t you think we know you deliberately
substituted national anthem for national constitution here precisely
because you know you are insulting the very letter and spirit of our
national constitution? You talk to us of justice, yet you deliberately spit
on the justice of our constitution and the justice owed to the peaceful
people of The Gambia by refusing to respect their desire for you to get off
their backs. You have always insulted our constitution and you can’t help
yourself even in this very last moment of your days in power. You have no
conception of the common good Mr. Yammeh. The only good you can conceive of
is your own, personal selfish good. And you are determined to pursue that
good even if it means holding an entire country hostage and dragging us
into a violent conflict simply because you have the backing of the
military. Here’s more of the selfish and self-justifying garbage you spewed
on your so-called new year’s message coming from your own horse’s mouth Mr.
Yammeh. You barked:

“Fellow Gambians, it is the pursuit of justice as provided for in the
constitution of the Gambia that serves as the basis of my protest and
rejection of the December 1st presidential election, after my initial
conceding of defeat and offer to guide and counsel Adama Barrow in the
execution of his duties. Given that all previous elections since I became
president of the Gambia were conducted with the undoubted competence and
impartiality of the independent electoral commission (IEC), I conceded
defeat with the belief that the results announced by the IEC on December
2nd 2016 were accurate and genuine. However, when on Monday December 5th
2016, the chairman of the IEC invited all political parties to the
headquarters of the commission to inform them of its counting errors and
its rectification of the figures, without specifying the number of votes
transposed and added to Adama Barrow nationwide, my suspicion of the
impartiality and honesty of the current IEC and the falsification of the
results was aroused. The findings of further investigations unearthed
abnormalities that vindicated this suspicion.”

Come on now Mr. Yammeh. Do you realize how empty you sound here? Have you
noticed that for the past 22 years, you have invoked the justice of the
Gambian constitution only when it suits your own selfish interests? The IEC
could have kept quiet about the anomaly it discovered. It was a mark of the
IEC’s honesty that they decided to call everyone’s attention to the mistake
they made. We are certain that if the mistake changed the results in your
favor, the IEC would have so declared accordingly. And let us just remind
you that electoral commissions do not cheat for the opposition in Africa.
And when you say you want another election, don’t you think we know that
you are going to be declared the winner of that election? No, Mr. Yammeh,
there will be no other election with you as a candidate in The Gambia. The
Gambia belongs to the Gambian people and we will no longer allow you to
monopolize ownership of our country. Your time is up and up Mr. Yammeh.
Your sun as dictator of Gambia has set once and for all. You are trying to
elect yourself to power again, as you did back in 1994. But times have
changed Mr. Yammeh and as you can see, 2016 does not look or feel like 1994
at all.

But in spite of the passage of time, you have been so busy enjoying your
illegitimate power that you still think Gambians will buy all your crap
about God-fearing when you say you want “a fresh, patriotic, Allah fearing,
honest, independent electoral commission just like it was under the
leadership of Mr. Carayol? Are you fantasizing that when this impossible
election happens (it never will), you will appoint Mr. Carayol again to
head the IEC? But you know what Mr. Yammeh? If they did even Mr. Carayol
cannot save you from an even bigger defeat because the Gambian people now
hate you even more than they did before the December 1st election. You have
demonstrated to the Gambian people that you are ready to sacrifice their
country, their peace of mind and their very lives to prove to them that no
elections will ever remove you from power and that you will never allow any
opposition candidate to be president of our country. Do you remember the
very many times you bragged that elections will never remove you from
power, Mr. Yammeh? Don’t you think we know that your rejection of the
results is only your way of trying to prove yourself right that elections
will never remove you from power and that you will never let an opposition
leader become president of our country? Yes, we do Mr. Yammeh. And no,
there will be no second election Mr. Yammeh. Gambians refuse to return to
the polls and if you don’t step down voluntarily, you will be forcefully
ejected and meet the humiliating end you deserve.

And please, Mr. Yammeh; please don’t talk to us about cheating. You cheated
in all the past four elections and for 22 years you have cheated us of our
national resources and our rights and freedoms. How come you came to power
as a poor lieutenant but are now one of the wealthiest men in the world?
How did you become so filthy rich, Mr., Yammeh? How come you are the
president of one of the poorest countries in the world but one of the
richest men in the world? How come you now own a personal jet, a
multi-million dollar mansion in Maryland, expensive vehicles, a zoo and so
many business concerns that it’s hard to count them? How come you live the
most flamboyant lifestyle in The Gambia you’re your supposed anger against
flamboyant lifestyles was one of your most visible excuses for illegally
toppling the Jawara government? Where you in fact dying to live a
flamboyant lifestyle back in the day when you were a near-starving
lieutenant in the Gambia National Army?  You certainly have become the most
flamboyant head of state in Africa, if not the world, wearing heavy boubous
under the hottest of suns and totting around a sword, prayer beads and what
looks like a religious book everywhere you go, and driving in one of the
world’s most expensive bulletproof limousines. You had no right to nullify
the results of our national election Mr. Yammeh. So please spare us the
crap about moral principles and cheating. You have been one of the world’s
biggest kleptocrats all your years in power and have presided over Africa’s
most kleptocratic regime since Mobutu’s in Zaire.

Yes, Mr. Yammeh. Cheating is indeed sinful and cheating elections is
prohibited by law, which is precisely why the entire world is asking you
stop trying to cheat and step down. Do you think everyone else is lying and
you alone are right, Mr. Yammeh, in the whole big wide world? Stop kidding
yourself Mr. Yammeh and redeem yourself before it’s too late. The campaign
against you that you whine about is a campaign for truth and justice that
you cannot escape this time around. Please don’t talk to us about change
for the better. You are capable of change only when that change is in your
own selfish interest, and we have told you this for the past 22 years. You
have no moral authority to talk to us of development programs and all the
hifalutin terminology with which your speech writer sprinkled your new year
ramble. You had your chance for 22 years and you blew it; now you just need
to zip it and get out of our faces.

And what in the world Mr. Yammeh, do you mean by “Development programmes
are modified to enhance efficiency, effectiveness and beneficiary
participation in program implementation. Legislations are amended in
response to emergent issues, and to buttress the efficacy of law
enforcement?” What kind of crap is that? For one thing Mr. Yammeh, we all
know that this is not your language. We know that for once, you are so
scared and confused that one of your minions wrote your so-called new
year’s message and put in all that linguistic garbage with zero practical
relevance to our current situation. Are you realizing for the first time in
your life that “court verdicts can also be subjected to appeals to ensure
that justice prevails?” How many times have you disregarded and even
insulted court verdicts in The Gambia? How many times have you trampled on
the rule of law in our country, carrying out extra judicial arrests,
incarcerations, and even killings without due process? How dare you talk to
us about the rule of law when you have asked the rule of law to go to hell
so many times during your 22 years of banal misrule? So now you are talking
about a “constitutional provision that should govern the resolution of the
current impasse”? You are no respecter of constitutional provisions Mr.
Yammeh; have never been. So please spare us your cosmetic hypocritical
appeals to constitutional provisions.

And then you claim that Gambians and ECOWAS and the rest of the
international community are asking you to step down because they fear a
military confrontation. No, Mr. Yammeh, that is not why everybody is asking
you to step down. Everybody is asking you to step down because you lost the
election and because if you don’t leave peacefully, there will indeed be a
military confrontation between you and whoever among the Gambian military
is foolhardy enough to support you in your manifestly unjust plot to hold
the Gambian people and their elected government hostage. All your rant is
premised upon your erroneous and sadly misplaced assumption that you will
still be president of The Gambia on January 19. No you will not be, Mr.
Yammeh, even if you remain holed up at State House. After January 19, you
will be an outlaw trying to stage another coup against the people and the
legitimate government of The Gambia. So if ECOWAS declares war, they will
not be declaring war against The Gambia, but against a criminal cohort of
soldiers including you who are bent upon holding an entire nation hostage
against their will. Members of the Gambia armed forces who will be willing
to die for you will not be dying in defense of the sovereignty,
independence and dignity of The Gambia. They will be dying in defense of an
outlaw and a rebel trying to sabotage the will of the Gambian people. In
order to drive this important and irrefutable point into your thick skull
Mr. Yammeh, let us quote you here for a moment. You said from your own
horse’s mouth:

“What is clearly incontrovertible is that the decision of ECOWAS on the
current situation to implement the results of the December 1st 2016
election by whatever means possible is totally illegal as it violates the
principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states,
which is an entrenched clause in the ECOWAS treaty.” No, Mr. Yammeh, it is
neither illegal nor in violation of the principle of non-interference in
the internal affairs of member states. Oh, so now you know what entrenched
clauses are when you have habitually trampled upon all manner of entrenched
clauses in the Gambian constitution? Anyway, we put it to you, Mr. Yammeh,
that The Gambia is a signatory to the ECOWAS Declaration of Political
Principles (the Abuja Declaration, 1991), the African Charter on Human and
People’s Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other
international protocols governing human rights and national sovereignty. As
such, we guess, perhaps wrongly, that you must have heard about “the
responsibility to protect” and “the right of humanitarian intervention” as
enshrined and adopted in the report of the United Nation’s International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Perhaps because you
considered The Gambia as your personal private fiefdom with no obligation
to anyone, you have remained ignorant of these protocols and important
aspects of recent international political culture and relations.
Well, allow us to put it to you Mr. Yammeh, that according to current
international protocols governing the question of intervention and state
sovereignty, where a legally constituted government is not able to protect
itself and its citizens – as Mr. Barrow’s will be after January 19 if you
don’t step down – then the principle of non-intervention gives way to the
international community’s responsibility to protect the Gambian people in
accordance with the principle of humanitarian intervention. ECOWAS has what
is called “right authority” to do just that because it meets all the
conditions required for international military intervention in The Gambia.
It has a just cause in that you will be trying to stage a coup against
Gambia’s legitimate government and you will be trampling upon and denying
the will of the Gambian people. It has right authority to intervene
militarily because if you don’t step down by January 19, all precautionary
and non-military options would have been exhausted; and ECOWAS has right
authority because it has the full backing of the UN Security Council, in
addition to the African Union to intervene militarily to protect Gambians
and enforce the will of the Gambian people. Finally, ECOWAS meets the
operational principles required to justify military intervention: It has a
clear objective, namely to protect the new Gambian government and the
Gambian people from a predatory military usurper of their national and
natural sovereignty; and it has unity of command in that the decision to
intervene militarily is unanimous and it has a military force ready and
willing to move in an extract or otherwise neutralize the offending
package. So in essence Mr. Yammeh, you said absolutely nothing in your new
year’s rant and your best bet is to swallow your hubris and negotiate your
way out, even if it means a little loss of face. The other option is too
ugly for us to even imagine. As the Fulani elders would tell you, half a
leg is better than no leg at all. No samaday, Mr. Yammeh!
*Author's Note: Please share as widely as possible. We are taking our
country back. #JammehMustGo!*


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