Jammeh's Revolution Banjul's Nightmare
The Independent (Banjul)
EDITORIAL
July 23, 2002
Posted to the web July 23, 2002
Banjul
Gambians are no stranger to it all, past and present. They need not be
reminded that it is exactly eight years since the status quo changed,
ushering in a new generation of leaders to steer the ship of state
hopefully into a more progressive course and assuage the plight of the
toiling and suffering majority.
Gambians had witnessed the preceding thirty years under Jawara when little
was done in the way of developing the country. We had witnessed when the
then government paid attention to democratic and human rights issues as if
those very concept provided the food we eat and the money we spend to live.
We had all witnessed how a few perched up in the citadel of power in the
Quadrangle toyed with the country's future and fed themselves fat from the
meagre resources of the state. We all witnessed how they intoxicated
themselves into a drunken stupor from the national keg of power, which went
into their heads and caused them to treat ordinary Gambians with disdain,
even contempt. We all witnessed how corruption was tacitly condoned by an
establishment whose sensitivity to the peoples' plight diminished as the
years went by. The interplay of different interests by those in the
corridors of power led us into a progressive state of decline. Political
wrangling between members of the same party became rife and meant that
everybody wanted to drink from the keg of power.
After eight years the revolution that was supposed to have put paid to this
long and agonising national nightmare has led us into more darkness, more
uncertainty and more dilemma as pessimism takes hold firm grip of the
national psyche.
Today the APRC is celebrating what is not quite a departure from the
drudgeries of the first republic. The poverty, the misery and
disenchantment, the unfulfilled promises, the heavy-handedness, the
institutionalization of arrogance, the now deep-seated tendency of self-
righteousness and a shabby foreign policy, which has driven us at
loggerheads with our neighbours is indicative of how the leadership has
failed to learn anything substantial from the 'historical mistakes' of the
old order. It is demonstrative of how the rotten vestiges of the decrepit
past had carried into the so-called new dawn. Moreover it is a
demonstration of how things have managed to go terribly bad.
It may have a buoyant effect to look on only the good and positive side,
which the APRC would undoubtedly describe as a masterstroke in transforming
the lives of the people.
However, at the end of the day, what are beautiful roads, under-provided
health facilities, and static mumbo-jumbo edifice without a well-fed,
healthy and roundly happy people?
What are heavy generators and new but understaffed schools when the real
basis for these infrastructures are lost in the maze of depravity.
The simple fact is that Jammeh's revolution is another national chapter of
nightmare, that would continue to haunt our sorry selves even if a new
dispensation were to assume control today. Jammeh's rule is just like
Jawara's. It presents no difference to the desolate scene in our tumbling
landscape. The excuse for the revolution is no longer valid, although the
irony of it all is that the majority of the Gambian populace now mandates
his leadership.
While Jammeh and co curiously bask in the pomp and pageantry of what is
virtually a revolutionary nightmare, the disaffected poor continue to
wallow in squalor in their homes and misery in their forlorn hearts.
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