Principles Out, Hypocrisy in (part Two)

The Independent (Banjul)
EDITORIAL
May 7, 2004
Posted to the web May 12, 2004
Banjul

It is worrisome - deeply frustrating - that amoral tendencies continue to
gnaw away at the moral layers of our social fabric with such mindless,
reckless and relentless vigour and intent that we are in a country where
emphasis on fine principles, revolving around virtues such as modesty,
morality, truth, honesty, reliability and steadfastness is a dead thing
belonging to the sweet but now distant past, to which we can only
nostalgically cling onto.

More than ever before the nation's conscience is dead to anything unseemly
as Gambians exhaust themselves scheming, plotting and aligning themselves
to one group or another in the fierce jockey for strategic positions of
power and prestige, with money as the underlining factor. Hypocrisy, the
game of flattery, and the deft art of waxing convenient lies to please one
set of influential people is the mind-boggling name of the game. Thus in
the Gambia today the most successful in the eyes of this system already
overrun with contradictions are those who through stealth, craft and
subterfuge have stole their way to the top with all its moneyed promises in
power, prestige and influence. They receive the praises, the respect and
the pomp and gaiety attending to the flattering and panegyric scenes around
them. Other craftier individuals have been quite adept at pretending to run
with the hares, when their ultimate aim is to hunt with the hounds.

Amadou Scattred Janneh may be singled out for specific mention because his
attitude draws attention to the latest case of blowing hot and cold at the
same time. However, we cannot pretend not to have noticed that it is
intimidation, liberally sprinkled with hypocrisy that is deployed and used
to run this our small and feeble country of chequered fortunes.

Hypocrisy has so liberally characterised all rungs of society that, people
no longer think of it as they used to - leprously demeaning, shameful, and
reprehensible. Public functionaries and ministers, past and present have
been nurtured in them and the "success of tenure" was measured and
determined by their longevity of service, wastefully spent pandering to the
whims and caprices of one man. But should we also forget that there was
once upon a time when people who today serve this government as its
obsequious ministers were yesterday its most inveterate and incorrigible
critics. Should we forget all what they have said and written virulently
critical about the self-same regime they identify with today. Should we not
ask what had happened to principles, since of course the basis of their
active opposition to the regime was based on their ethical judgment of the
country's political leadership?

Should we also refrain from inquiring what had happened to their "honest
feelings" for the dregs and underlings of society whose groan under the
weight of a social gridlock and an economic abyss seemingly without bottom
was the greatest indictment for the people who took over the reins of power
almost ten years ago to supposedly reverse our fortunes from the helpless
and hopeless to the panoramic glamour and glitz of national prosperity.
Should we also forget that these feelings had condemned and crucified
Jammeh's policies at every turn and written-off the regime as untenable to
maintain itself from a moral perspective.

These cyber warriors had forgotten that the permanence of history always
ensures that we will go back to yesterday's details to compare elements of
the past and the present. The verdict supplied by our knowledge of the past
and the reality of the present does not arouse any inspirational feelings
for our dear country's future - at least from the moral and intellectual
perspective.

Ordinarily what drives the engine of life is a fine mixture of thinking and
feeling, which we generally prefer to call awareness. Thinking and feeling
were very much integral parts of Amadou Scattred Janneh and his ilk before
they accepted to join the government. Now what seems fashionable is to go
through the window of U-turns, where principles fly out and hypocrisy
coasts in - a time for them to be detached, insensate, unthinking and
unfeeling. Suffice it to add that all those anti-Jammeh rhetoric from these
cyber warriors have been transformed overnight into impotent, pseudo-
intellectual claptraps, against the backdrop of much the same or even
worsening circumstances of governance presided over by President Jammeh.
The uncaring laxity of this regime towards recurrent question marks around
our ailing economy, which continues to hold us all to ransom, the seedy
value of our local currency, which epitomizes the morbid social misfortune
of more than three quarter of the Gambian population, and the iniquities of
a system, unfavourable to the professional dispensation of journalists
present some of the most morally unsettling tests for the leadership and
those toeing its line.

But those with conscience will have realised that to be perfectly happy
about this government and the situation in which it presides, one has to be
utterly lacking in feeling over the heart-rending mass scramble for
survival. It is an ugly world where we never stop being selfish and stupid
as if the sheer anguish visited on our pauperised masses was not already
enough burden for the leadership to shoulder. But should we really expect
anything different when people readily dump principles on the sidelines for
a chance to partake in the ungodly spoils? The answer is so thick in the
air that it can be sliced with a knife.


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