Apathetic And Pathetic

What's shocking, and in no small measure, is the painful realization that in
scant six years of Yahya Jammeh's presidency, a lot has gone to wrack and
ruin in The Gambia. Not since the tremors of 1981 and the consequential
monstrosities, have The Gambia wallowed in so much political decrepitude
with hopes for rectitude and salvation so fleeting after bouts of heightened
national optimism.

Jammeh's overthrow of a corrupt and decrepit leadership, and its propensity
to perpetuate the misery and hopelessness of old rather than usher in
momentous changes, leaves Gambians concluding, perhaps to the point of
vertigo, that leaders can be worse than useless, and as a consequence,
destructive to the national collective. Jammeh, once thought of a redeemer,
now has his abject failures slake the public thirst for an immediate
altering of the status quo.

The Gambia is in deplorable conditions. When citizens suffer the way
Gambians do, the ultimate effect is loss of credibility and legitimacy for
leaders. Today, Jammeh is a leader short of credibility yet surfeited with
arrogance and power to perpetuate himself and damn the consequences. His
continued grip on power while unleashing a can of worms on the people is an
affront to the sovereignty of the citizenry. Democracy teaches that leaders
are servants not masters, and when they fail to render services, they must
submit to rational public consensus and pave the way for fresh impetus.

Has Jammeh failed the Gambian people? Yes, in ways unimaginable. Better
still, does he know it? Yes again. And does he have the conscience of a
democrat to listen to rational public opinion and submit to corrective
measures or that failing, vacate the political scene? Absolutely not. He
remains impervious to the miseries and concerns of the common man. Anchored
in the obscurity of his home village, Jammeh is a leader out of touch with
his people. Donating tractors received from the Taiwanese as pork-barrels,
to farmers in the hinterland, is what translates into
leadership-effectiveness for Jammeh.

But if foreign hand-outs and vainglorious projects were what assuage
political and economic decadence, dollops of foreign cash sloshing in
Jammeh's litany of leviathan projects, would have created economic growth
and prosperity. Well, newsflash: Gambians are poorer today than they were
before. Employment opportunities are harder to come by. Job seekers
hopelessly roam the streets like itinerant salesmen. Many Gambians have been
dismissed from their jobs mainly for political reasons. As a consequence,
numerous families are mired in economic depravity. Abject poverty is
battering Gambian lives away to vanishing points.

Yet the cushioning effects are in short supply. The political sector is
harvesting a bumper-crop of leaders, corrupt and incapable of instilling
verve and enthusiasm in the economic lives of the people. While the led
dabble at the game of survival, the leaders perfect that of flamboyance and
ostentation. Plush, expensive cars lit the streets. Representatives in the
National Assembly avail themselves whopping salary increments, while the
common man toils with beggarly incomes barely enough to eke out a living.
And:

Jammeh, as if insatiable in his wont to insult Gambian intelligence,
recently bragged about his wealth, sufficient enough, he announced, to last
him and his descendants. He is turning his native village into an oasis of
bliss, while the rest of the country continues to sink into the abyss of
economic hopelessness. Yet, indifferent to the plight of the people and
lacking the sponginess required of leaders in times of simmering mass
discontentment, Jammeh just waxes provocatively villainously. He threatens
to bury his opponents six-feet deep. He incites his militants to wreck havoc
in the community. His soldiers massacred innocent schoolchildren, and he
shows no remorse but disrespect to the dead and their families.

So, this is the leader The Gambia elected in 1996? Pity the Gambian people!

Cherno Baba Jallow
Detroit, MI
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