As was mentioned here last week, a devastating blow was dealt The Gambia when Prime Minister Tony Blair blatantly snubbed the country and went all the way to Senegal and refused to visit Gambia. This clearly shows that Gambia is still NOT in the caliber of Democratic countries like Ghana and Senegal. This shows that the recently concluded presidential and parliamentary ‘elections’ in the country were nothing but a charade. The British and all other civilized countries for that matter, know that Gambians still live under a Dictatorship. Cosmetic gimmicks like appointing SM Dibba speaker of the parliament and giving ‘amnesty’ to Jawara is neither here nor there. That does NOT mean that the elections were not stolen. That does NOT mean that our children were not slaughtered in broad daylight by some trigger-happy thugs that are still roaming the streets of Banjul scot-free. Yaya’s ‘magnanimous’ actions towards Dibba and Jawara do not mean that we no longer have political prisoners like Dumo in the country. The international community sees through these gimmicks. Window-dressing would NOT suffice to bring Gambia into the fold of civilized countries. We still have a barbaric and callous regime back home. No one can deny that our children were massacred by this regime in broad daylight and the regime continues to deny justice to the families of the victims. What civilized nations think of Gambia and the leadership of the country is very important. Why? 90% of our ‘Development Budget’ is financed by international grants and loans. Without these grants and loans, Yaya himself will be eating grass. Without these loans, there would be no roads, hospitals, schools, markets and dump trucks. Think of the plight of the poorest Gambians if the country cannot attract these funds. Talk about generating taxes from Gambians and the people being self-sufficient is utter nonsense. The reality is that the country is surviving because at a micro level people in the Diaspora send money to their folks and at a macro level, civilized nations give us grants and loans. That is the bottom-line. Silly talks about ‘Allah’s Bank’ is just ludicrous. So, one can convincingly argue that the best asset Gambia has is the ‘goodwill’ of civilized nations. With Yaya and his cohorts at the helm, Gambians should forget about portraying a good image for the country. Just since the ‘elections’ this illegal government has done a number of things that would further isolate Gambia. As usual, Yaya went on a firing spree and engaged in a number of politically motivated sackings. This put the government on a collision course with both the World Bank and the EU (two of the major donors and lenders in the country). Do we need an erratic person like Yaya Dictating to impotent civil servants like Alieu Ngum and Famara Jatta to alienate the international community? But perhaps the most disastrous dent to our image since the presidential elections is the entry of Baabaa (‘Blood Diamond Dealer) Jobe to parliament. We do not just have an internationally proscribed criminal in our Assembly, the APRC made this thug their leader in parliament. It is pathetic to watch old men like SM Dibba defer to this common criminal. You have all the APRC cronies/rubber-stamps in parliament cheering as Baabaa (‘Blood Diamond Dealer) Jobe attempt to silence people like Halifa Sallah. We have a criminal government that hugs common criminals in defiance of the United Nations. Does this government behave like a government that wants to join civilized nations? Even nations like Libya, Cuba and Iraq are making ‘smart’ moves to rejoin the ‘League of Nations’. When Liberians were sanctioned with Baabaa (Blood Diamond Dealer) Jobe, even the Liberian government was acting rationally and tried to put together a coherent case to the international community. But what did our illegal government do? They blamed the diamond smuggling on the Sarahulehs in the country, wrote an ill-advised ‘protest’ to the United Nations and to top it off, the government now makes a common criminal their most ‘important’ parliamentarian. Clearly, this government does NOT know what it is doing. There is talk that the British and the French are looking into having joint embassies in certain parts of Africa, including West Africa. Now, if these plans come to fruition, can people guess where the joint embassy is going to be located between Gambia and Senegal? Do people think that when an important British diplomat like Bharat Joshi (who was expelled from The Gambia by our illegal regime) is asked to make recommendations about the location of the joint embassy, the man will have difficulties making a recommendation? Of course the man will NOT want their diplomats to go to a Dictatorship where some erratic leader will just wake up and give diplomats few hours to pack their bags and leave. This illegal government has burnt many bridges. I need not tell anyone what it means to not have a British embassy in the country. I will just let this government continue to shoot itself. That way, Gambians will eventually get tired and get rid of them. What we can do from our end and what we will continue to do is expose the illegal behavior of the criminals running our country. We have a visionless bunch of criminals lording over incompetent and impotent civil servants that do not have the wherewithal or the guts to do what is right. We will continue to be isolated so long as Yaya and his cohorts are at the helm. Blair and the international community have served us notice in no uncertain terms. Dictators like Yaya, Mugabe, and Charles Taylor will no longer be tolerated or appeased by the British government and its allies. It is the duty of the Opposition to expose the terrorism and corruption our callous leaders engage in to the detriment of defenseless citizens. That way, the international community will isolate these leaders and hit them where it hurts the most: their Swiss Bank Accounts. Without aid money Yaya will have to use some of his loots to ‘donate’ to Gambians to ‘develop’ the country. This is simply pathetic. 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