Baba, an excellent and well thought out piece. You spoke on the core
issues, sometimes funny but nonetheless excellent. Thanks
Suntou
On 11 Jun 2015 01:07, "Baba Jallow" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> *A Gambian Hypothesis*
>
> By Baba Galleh Jallow
>
> For once, we feel some level of confidence in hypothesizing that the end
> is near for Yahya Jammeh. Perhaps he might live a long life. But he might
> just be at or near the end of his days in power. Recent trends in his
> increasingly erratic behavior, his irresponsible and hubris-driven
> pronouncements, his chest pounding and his increasingly bold insults and
> assaults against both local individuals and institutions and global
> institutions points to one possible conclusion: that the fate that befalls
> every dictator is about to befall Yahya Jammeh. Of course like all
> hypothesis, the evidence will determine the thesis. However, if history is
> anything to go by, Yahya Jammeh has probably reached the end of his days in
> power. We can only say amen to that because Yahya Jammeh has long outlived
> his usefulness for our country and has wrecked damage on our national
> conscience and institutions that it will take many years to remedy.
>
> Yahya Jammeh habitually brags that he will be in power for a million years
> which, we think, is just his way of saying that he will be in power for as
> long as he likes because he knows he cannot live even for a hundred years.
> If he did he would be so old and senile that we would simply lift him up
> from the throne and set him in the yard to enjoy some sunshine. This
> ‘million years’ statement projects the tragic hubris of a man who is so
> power drunk that he claims mastery over fate and human destiny. The
> blindness of the heart and the mind of which the holy books warn has
> afflicted Yahya Jammeh and as such, he no longer sees himself or knows
> himself as we would say in our local Gambian languages. We hear echoes of
> the Pharaoh of Moses’ day or those of Idi Amin Dada, Saddam Hussein and
> many other tyrants of the human race whose power had rendered mind-blind.
> You do not know a thing about how long you will stay in power Mr. Jammeh,
> or when indeed you will no longer be breathing the airs of this world. No
> human being does, unless they are diagnosed with a terminal illness,
> physical or political. In spite of all our insights into what the future
> may hold, we are as blind as a blind bat when it comes to knowing what will
> happen tomorrow, as in tomorrow, the next day after this. Jammeh has become
> so paranoid that he sees enemies lurking everywhere – even and especially
> among his own close confidantes and members of his government, including
> the human robots of his shadow state. And so he lashes indiscriminately out
> at literally everybody in this world! That looks very much like the sign of
> a fatal political illness.
>
> The Peul Futa say that if you violently shake every tree you see, you will
> one day shake a tree full of hornets. Yahya Jammeh has already or will soon
> shake such a tree, since he has the very unwise and hubris-driven habit of
> shaking every tree he sees. He foolishly insults everybody he wishes and
> thinks that he can get away with anything he says or does. From ordinary
> security officers to  government ministers and other civil servants,
> Yahya Jammeh lashes out with unprovoked invectives, calling people names
> and doling out all mighty threats of death and destruction to anyone who in
> his estimation, is not doing what they should be doing according to his
> standards which, incidentally, are world class low. There is a widely
> circulating rumor that he even habitually insults the mothers of his
> cabinet ministers at cabinet meetings. One can only hope that this is just
> a rumor; but it is not beyond the realm of possibility knowing that we are
> talking about a half-wit or maniac who happens to be wielding the most
> power in his country and commands the power of life and death over 1.8
> million people.
>
> Yahya Jammeh consistently insults Gambian journalists, human rights
> advocates and members of alternate parties, all of which groups he
> considers, for reasons known only to him, as illegitimate and not deserving
> of constitutional rights and protections. He has called journalists
> illegitimate sons of Africa, among other ugly names, and has declared that
> members of alternate Gambian parties are donkeys. This is coming from the
> mouth of a man who habitually invokes the name of Allah, who in the holy
> scriptures explicitly forbids such behavior. He habitually proclaims that
> neither the ballot nor the bullet can remove him from power. While the
> bullet issue is anyone’s guess, conducting elections while claiming victory
> before the fact constitutes one of many disrespectful and outright
> insulting behaviors towards the Gambian people by Mr. Jammeh. Why does he
> hold regular elections if he can declare before the polls that he will
> remain in power until “20 million 20” in his own words. Beyond the crudity
> of the obvious contempt for the Gambian constitution he expresses with such
> a statement, Jammeh’s pronouncements that no other party will rule The
> Gambia in a million years reveals the extent of his blinding hubris. It is
> also another way of saying that suppose the majority of Gambians vote
> against him in an election, he would not hesitate to use force to steal the
> elections or insist on staying in power. And he will do it if he thinks he
> will get away with it, which he might not next time around.
>
> Yahya Jammeh, the man who proclaims his Muslimhood at every possible
> opportunity, also practices blatant tribalism by habitually insulting
> Gambian Mandinkas. When he insults Mandinkas in general, he of course
> cannot leave out anyone belonging to The Gambia’s largest ethnic group,
> whether they support him or not, whether they are respectable elders or
> not, whether they are women, children or even babies. While he claims to be
> a unifier of Gambians on one hand, he singles out an entire people for
> insults and threats for no conceivably good reason. Surely, the All Mighty
> Allah whose name he invokes all the time does not approve of such ungodly
> behavior. One of many conclusions we can reach on this issue is that Yahya
> Jammeh is no Muslim or even a believer in the God in whose names he
> castigates all who care to listen. A Muslim cannot be so rude as to
> habitually subject an entire people to a barrage of insults like Yahya
> Jammeh does for the mere fact that he feels he can.
>
> But Yahya Jammeh’s hubris-driven rudeness knows neither tribe nor age or
> social status. As is now common knowledge, religious elders are a common
> target of his insults and bullying. While some of these men of God perhaps
> deserve such maltreatment owing to their aiding and abetting of Jammeh’s
> tyranny, the majority of them are innocent of any wrongdoing. Witness the
> recent case of the elderly Sheikh Muhideen Hydara, who endured seven months
> of state bullying in the form of arrests, bogus charges, and repeated court
> appearances for allegedly disobeying Jammeh’s order to perform the Eid
> prayers on a particular day. The elderly Sheikh is just the most recent
> example of Jammeh’s unjust bullying of religious leaders. The cases of Imam
> Ba Kawsu Fofana and Imam Baba Leigh are also well known. Both these latter
> two Imams were arrested and subjected to painful and humiliating treatment
> because they dared to express an opinion on their country’s political
> affairs. Having totally personalized both the Gambian state and the Gambian
> nation, Yahya Jammeh sees any comment critical of his words and actions as
> a personal affront and proceeds to bully those responsible. Well, it is
> safe to imagine that these men of God also claim friendship with Jammeh’s
> All Mighty Allah and may well be asking Him for justice against their
> persecutors. There is nothing Jammeh can do about that. Even within the
> confines of a tight prison cell, a person can ask for God’s intervention
> either verbally or in their minds. For is not God the all-hearing,
> all-knowing? Judge Thou with truth, they could pray, for You are the Best
> of Judges.
>
> Yahya Jammeh’s favorite target for abuse and insults is of course the West
> and Western countries and institutions. The reason for his obsessive hatred
> of the West is not far to see: the fact that they criticize his rampant
> abuse of the rights of his own people and anyone who resides in The Gambia.
> Jammeh’s favorite hobby horse is of course long dead colonialism and in
> this respect, it is amazing just how similar Jammeh’s regime is to the
> worst of the colonial regimes that existed in Africa. Like colonialism,
> Jammeh’s regime is “bula matari” to borrow Crawford Young’s memorable
> phrase: it is based on foundational violence that brooks no opposition and
> mercilessly crushes its critics. Like colonialism, Jammeh’s regime regards
> itself “as the sole power to judge its laws”; and like colonialism, the
> supreme right of the Jammeh regime is its assumed right to deny others
> their rights. And like colonialism, the Jammeh regime considers its
> “subjects” as mere things of power, to be treated with contempt and
> impunity at every possible opportunity. The parallels are legion that the
> Jammeh regime is not at all different from the most brutal colonial regimes
> in Africa. In fact in some respects, the Jammeh regime is more brutal than
> many African colonial regimes. But of course being mind-blind and
> intellectually corrupt, Yahya Jammeh has no way of seeing this blatant and
> cruel irony of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. Mind-blindness
> and intellectual corruption are behind Jammeh’s arbitrary decision to pull
> The Gambia out of the Commonwealth and most recently, to expel the EU
> representative to The Gambia. Self-destructive hubris keeps him on the
> verbal assault against Western nations and pure foolery keeps him shouting
> that he will never allow the West to colonize The Gambia again. His recent
> threat to deal mercilessly with the European Union and other Western
> countries demonstrates the extent of his alienation from reality. How
> tragic that beautiful Gambia could be sadly with such ugly leadership.
>
> Until recently, Yahya Jammeh only indirectly attacked his fellow African
> rulers. But since the issue of term limits was raised a few weeks ago, he
> has turned all African Union and ECOWAS leaders into stooges of the West
> who are being used in an attempt to recolonize the continent. Here is
> segment of his rant on the subject a couple of days ago as published in the
> June 6, 2015 online edition of *The Standard* newspaper: “Now they [West]
> are trying to use Ecowas. They said Yahya Jammeh cannot be changed by
> elections. They want to use their stooges in Ecowas to impose term limit
> because that is … a Western agenda. Where were the so-called Western
> leaders today 20 years ago when I became head of state? Let me warn Ecowas
> - Gambia is nobody's colony and our development is not dependent on Ecowas
> that has already failed because it has been hijacked by the West. Even if
> the whole world introduced term limit, I will not have a term limit and let
> me see what you can do. Democracy is power to the people and not power to
> the West. I am a pan-Africanist, but I will not subscribe to any
> institution that is hijacked by the West and be used against Africa. If it
> is the AU, I will leave AU; if it is Ecowas, I will leave Ecowas, but I
> will not be given lecture by any of these institutions on behalf of the
> West. Tell me about one electric pole here which was installed by the AU
> (African Union) or Ecowas or by the British or the Americans. We are not
> fools! Let them mind their own business.”
>
> Indeed, indeed Mr. Jammeh. And you, of course are Gambia in absolute
> terms. And you, of course choose to forget your very own words back in July
> 1994: “We are not here to stay and we will not allow anyone to be in power
> in this country beyond ten years. In fact, ten years is too long.” I guess
> you will now say that ten years is too short; even twenty years is too
> short for you. You will be in power for a million years, long after you are
> dead, gone, and remembered only in history lesson discussions of Africa’s
> worst dictators. Anyway, suffice it to inform you sir, that your
> ill-conceived attack on the African Union and ECOWAS marks the end of you
> in a very real sense. You have now not only lost the respect of the entire
> big wide world; you have now become the most visible pariah, the laughing
> stock and the butt of unfunny smutty jokes of all your fellow African heads
> of state. I guess if they are stooges of the West some of us on this side
> of the paranoid and self-righteous equation might well be usefully
> described as stooges of the Rest, who incidentally, are just as bad if not
> worse than the West in many crucial respects! The AU and ECOWAS are
> probably thinking of a forced exit for all those who refuse term limits and
> insult them with impunity. They are probably thinking that the ECOMOG model
> would do the job just fine with a slight tweak in its mandate. The
> Johannesburg meeting is fast coming up and word on the street is that term
> limits will be on the agenda again!! And many more “Western stooges” will
> be in attendance!! And who knows, the West might perhaps be thinking that a
> small group of Special Forces might be a good way of colonizing our small
> part of Africa again as a way of convincing us that no one can be in power
> for a million years or refuse to deliver on their term limit promises. In
> any case, one has a feeling that the end is always near for those who would
> violently shake every tree they see.
>
>
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