Essays and articles aside, the last Orwell book I read was The Road to Wigan Pier. Now, I remember this very well because of the utter indignation I felt at Orwell’s vain lampooning of the Leftist - albeit this was ages ago. I was very on much the Left then and by that, I mean a very soft Leftist without the radical or socialist credentials – even though this was a very fleeting flirtation, I hasten to add. Memories of the Orwell book stayed with me because for the life in me, I couldn’t fully fathom then or come to think of it, for the past 6 years why he had reserved so much visceral and obnoxious repudiation of the progressive especially of the Leftist type and not reactionary fogies who are loath to progressive advances? Indeed, it is a matter of literary record that middle and upper class socialists are Orwell’s literary pet hate. In The Road to Wigan Pier [an irony here – The Road to Wigan Pier was first published by the Left Book Club and I believe commissioned by Victor Gollancz, a renowned Leftist publisher for Orwell to look into the condition of the industrial working classes in the North of England], Orwell caricatures the Leftist obsessed with a "hypertrophied sense of order" – eager to see the back of reactionary fogies but when the tables turn, the Leftist also turns and distorts the meaning of progress.

It was not so much the message that Orwell had to deliver about the Leftist turn coat which had incensed me when I first read this book but the recurring theme that the vast majority of the socialist public intellectuals especially those of proletarian roots, are card-carrying hypocrites and the vain and florid caricature of the Leftist in The Road to Wigan Pier. When I finished the book, I came to the rather rash conclusion that Orwell’s inherited bigotry, especially from his bourgeoisie origins, has made him to turn too harshly on the progressive rather than the reactionary fogey. And also The Road to Wigan Pier is his worst book ever. I confess that after that I felt desire in reading another Orwell book again. Having grown older and wiser and in the light of recent developments in the Gambia, a revisionism of my earlier held views on Orwell and The Road to Wigan Pier are long over due. You see I took it upon myself to re-read the whole of the book again and I can certainly claim to grasp fully why Orwell chose the middle and upper class Leftist as his pet hate. A very vain and rather prejudice ridden but appropriate passage in the book should give you a clue about what I mean:

"It is not easy to crash your way into the literary intelligentsia [make that power or the corridors of power in the Gambia today] if you happen to be a decent human being… to be a highbrow, with a footing in the snootier magazines [power or the corridors of power], means delivering yourself over to terrible campaigns of wire-pulling and backstairs-crawling… by being the life and soul of cocktail parties and kissing the bums of verminous little lions [the powers that be – Jammeh]." [All additives and supplantations solely mine.]

The Palestinian scholar Edward Said this merely affirmed Orwell’s unexplored but unravelling bourgeoisie bigotry, whilst Norman Podhoretz tells us in a celebrated piece that in fact Orwell was the typical Leftist odysseying or lurching towards the inevitable neoconservative niche. Whilst the controversy still lingers over the seemingly conflicting and contradictory strands of Orwell’s legacy especially why he is more inclined to lampoon the progressive than the reactionary fogey, I propose that Orwell had grasped a fundamental moral truth: Progressives, because of their insistence on changes are the most hypocritical or indeed, most likely to turn out to be hypocrites in the political divide especially if the tables turn. Why is this so? Reactionaries are almost always forthright about why they believe changes shouldn’t occur because - and you guessed right - it will change their fortunes and they will be losers. With progressives and albeit their rhetorics on social justice and the usual litany, you can almost always expect U-turns that will leave even reactionary fogies dumbfounded.

Nowhere are these U-turns from one-time progressive Leftists more pronounced, celebrated, nauseating and the order of the day than the Gambia of Jammeh. To the dewy-eyed observer, the exchanges between SOS Sarjo Jallow and The Point newspaper on the gov’t’s efforts to reconcile Gambians after April 10 and 11, and the despicable statement read by SOS Sedat Jobe after the his gov’t threw the Coroner and the Commission’s Report into the April Massacres into the dustbin, are soundbites and yarns spun from a long and concerted gov’t lying machine effort to hoodwink the general public since the Gambia was accursed with the Jammeh Plague in 1994. However, the retrogressive and reactionary soundings coming from these two one-time self professing progressive Leftists has more to it than mere gov’t misinformation and insensitivity to the plight of the victims of April 10 and 11. After rubbing salt in the festering wounds of the victims of the April Massacre by stating that no-one is being held responsible for the April events and therefore none would be prosecuted, to sew the torn social fabric together again, Jobe declared that: "All PROGRESSIVE efforts should thus be geared toward preventing a similar tragedy from ever occurring." [Emphasis mine.] And how are they just going to go about achieving this given their remorseless gestures and postures since April 10 and 11 2000? Indeed, if their abysmal, abject and simply despicable record in showing their remorse pace April 10 and 11 is anything to go by, it remains to be seen how they are going to go about with this feat. Jobe tells us that it all boils to two unheard of words in the APRC’s lexicon: "RESTRAINT" [and this should not come from them, but from the media, which, as usual is held responsible for all the problems in the country] and "FORGIVEN-NESS". One sees here at once a deliberate emphasis of the words "forgiven-ness", "restraint" and "progressive". These words as I shall show later will unmask the hypocrisy these one-time professing progressives are engaged in. I’ll do my best and to cast my cynicism aside and attempt to figure out what Jobe’s gov’t’s "progressive efforts" were to reconcile Gambians since the April events. The national post mortem on April 10 and 11 simply asked why no "restraint" was exercised from armed soldiers towards young school children merely demonstrating their disgust of the APRC. Why on earth didn’t the armed soldiers let these kids merely quietly go ahead and wave their placards that they want justice for their compatriots? But then that is the whole point: Jammeh always has a problem with people openly expressing their disapproval of his regime. It is a matter of historical record now that in fact Jammeh was well informed of the planned demo and threatened reprisals if the students went ahead with their plans. Thus when defied, he gave the orders to Isatou Njie-Saidy [who has quietly transformed from a feminist to a plus Jammeh que le Jammeh: That a woman who has mothered children could spend a single second in the same room, talk less of the same gov’t with a man who brutally deprived other women of their children is a tell-tale sign of the pervasive toe curling hypocrisy the Gambian society is at present afflicted with] to "deal with them" who [Njie-Saidy] then relayed the presidential order to the two Badgies. The rest as they say, is history. It is becoming a tired phrase now to keep saying this: April 10 and 11 was avoidable.

Right after the April murders, with the gov’t still on the throes of a paranoiac trance, it went yet again on the rampage: George Christensen nearly lost his life in an arson attack on his station orchestrated by Jammeh’s hoodlums; the number of arbitrary arrests and detention increased; opposition activism was being curtailed, hindered and stifled in every conceivable way Cheyassin can think of; a day doesn’t gone by when Cheyassin doesn’t scheme to strip us of our civil liberties and further deepening the democratic deficit into a recessionary lurch; the judiciary lynched when it suits their designs; amendments to the constitution are being recommended that will effectively turn the 1997 constitution into a toilet paper constitution. You could literally just go on an on with what the APRC’s despicable idea of "progressive efforts" to reconcile Gambians are after April 10 and 11. More than ever, those who had suffered since April 10 and 11 2000 continue to suffer silently still traumatised by these heinous events done on the orders of a moron whose only motive in giving the orders was to make a statement to other would-be demonstrators.

Yet, we have two men, who once upon a time did believe in social justice, telling us that by refusing to prosecute anyone for the heinous crimes of April 10 and 11, remorseless and still harassing the opposition on a daily basis, the APRC has done enough to reconcile Gambians through its "progressive efforts". But then that is whole point about these one-time progressives: The ideals they used to believe in where just trendy labels to wear in the 60s and 70s just to look radical and be part of the fashion of that generation. Or in Jallow’s case we can just surmise those ideals were a convenient way of getting the attention of Jawara’s NSS so he can get pushed to exile and greener pastures in Scandinavia and milking the generous welfare State of Sweden.

In my book, the measure of the effective-ness of any dispensation of justice is to place oneself in the shoes of victims of a crime. I’m reliably informed that all of Jammeh’s cabinet ministers have either fathered or mothered kids. Let them imagine themselves at the receiving end: What would it feel like to have a loved one stolen away from you brutally and you occasionally have to share the same cabinet table with the perpetrators of such a heinous crimes and you don’t even puke your guts out? Do these people have blood running in their veins? To Sarjo Jallow: What would it feel like if your own blood son in Sweden gets lynched by a neo Fascist mob who then get exonerated by a bogus coroner and commission report and the Swedish gov’t turns around and tell you that your son’s death is his own fault because he happens to be black and should have stayed in Africa? Would you still go ahead and endorse any cabinet member of that Swedish gov’t? Talk less of the Swedish society that idly watches as your son’s murderers go scot-free! How would you react to being neighbours with these racist murderers?

It is about time we attack and demystify another false pose taken up the likes of Jallow, Jobe and the rest of intellectual prostitutes Jammeh’s cabinet is currently stuffed with and their closet allies in other walks of life. These intellectuals and their sympathizers [and in the unlikely form of Musa Jeng, the columns of Foroyaa and other phoney freaks that occasional show up here] parade themselves as the voices of reason and moderation in a wild jungle where extremism threatens all if they don’t prevail. And so their slogan goes: Moderation or Disaster. But what is it exactly this empty slogan done to modify Jammeh’s devilry? Can anyone positively point out to me how the moderation that Jobe, Jallow et al preached has made Jammeh more reasonable and has delivered justice after the April Massacres? What have they got to show for their continued participation in the most murderous regime in the sub-region? Zilch, if you ask me. Save tarring their reputation and integrity, they only helped confirm to me Barry Goldwater’s judgement that: moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Moderation cannot fight an evil like Jammeh. And none can successfully do anything positive whilst within the Jammeh gov’t to alleviate the suffering of the Gambian people. The war against Jammeh can only successfully be waged outside gov’t/cabinet and not within. But if an outsider like me can grasp this fundamental moral truth, what is stopping these men and women from getting the message? Hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy, the poet Milton reminds us in his Paradise Lost, is "the only evil that walks invisible, except to God." Up to a point. See, once you engage in hypocrisy, moderation becomes your morality card and everything you do is an attempt to finesse your hypocrisy with such moderation. This however has a problem of its own. Finessing hypocrisy is just akin to squaring a hole – the lie just can’t make it to the finishing line. Time makes every strand of such hypocrisy visible to every mortal being sensible enough to accept the truth. Alas we have arrived at such a juncture with those finessing the hypocrisies they have been living ever since they joined this stupid gov’t. And about time too.

This is why I agree with Brother KB’s judgement that Joseph Joof’s acceptance to be Jammeh’s next SOS for Justice is hypocritical and smacks of the unmasking of a closet life-long card-carrying hypocrite. Why? As KB astutely points out, not only was Joof as president of the Bar Association silent as a door nail as our civil liberties disappear in a every puff of smoke that Jammeh blows but more importantly, Joof was a mere spectator as the executive rode roughshod over the judicial sphere to the point where we can effectively say the notion of an independent judiciary is non-existent in the Gambia. Joof couldn’t have chosen a worst time in joining Jammeh: Coming immediately after his commission and the coroners reports were flung in his face by the same remorseless regime he vowed to serve to the best of his abilities. Doubtless – and this is gauging by the garbage his allies are peddling online – Joof would claim his is a mission of "moderation in the pursuit justice" in the face disaster. But others notably in the form of predecessors have there and done all that but to no avail. In the very end when they are past their usefulness and when the finessing is untenable, they are shown the door. Just ask Cheyassin.

Well, we’ll be around to unravel the hypocrisy he is no doubt finessing by joining Jammeh. I’ve always said privately that Joof’s silence as prexy of the Bar Association as Cheyassin inflicted all those damages on the judiciary was saying something loud and clear: He doesn’t think there is anything wrong with what Cheyassin was doing. There are three words that those finessing hypocrisy hde behind: nuetrality, apolitical and discretion [and they happen to be the most horrible excuses hypocrites offer when they fail to deliver]. Suffice to say these are the caveat emptor of finessing hypocrisy. If Joof  and indeed, the Bar Association were to argue here about the neutrality or apolitical nature of their org, will it be remss of me to remind them in so far as the rolling back of the of the frontiers of the independence of the judiciary and the deleting of our civil liberties, muted silence from the Bar Association and its prexy Joof under the pretext neurtrality or the apolitical nature of the association, is at best hogwash. What other independent body but the Bar Association need to be vigilantly monitoring how civil liberties and the independence of the judiciary are faring in any polity? On matters of the due process of the law and the health of the judiciary, the Bar Association cannot be neutral. It woud be ridiculous to suggest so. How many judges under Joof's watch as prexy of the association has Jammeh fired willy-nilly? Did he raise a finger? Did he raise concern? Not that i know of.. I''m all ears.  

The least one can do for cowards like Joof is to wish them luck in their endeavours with the devil. What can you say about someone who hasn’t completed a day in office, and he has already shown he is another feckless character who doesn’t have the moral capital needed to be a justice minister? In the very end finessing hypocrisy is just like squaring a round hole - somehow the lies and scams will never add up.

Hamjatta - Kanteh