Well Dr. Jammeh, we ended our last conversation by saying that you stand accused of starving the Gambian Nation Mind. We say this so categorically because, among other reasons, you have stubbornly been refusing to address all the unpleasant questions that have arisen in The Gambia since 1994. Instead of feeding the curious Gambian Mind, you have been shoving all unpleasant questions under your iron carpet and insisting that contrary to the evidence of our senses, everything’s been going on just fine under your watch. You have been slamming forced victories on anything smacking of the unpleasant, hoping that it would just go away. Perhaps the tragedy of this situation, Dr. Jammeh, is that the unpleasant is often pleasantly nourishing food for the mind of society – in our case Gambian Nation Mind. That truth is characterized as bitter is no mere accident of history. It is why history happens the way it does. It is why dictators act the way they do: because they are too meek to stomach the bitter truth that can only set them free from their delusions of eternal grandeur and their self-destructive tendencies.

Gambianism advises that you beware the bitter truth, Dr. Jammeh. Disagree with it, talk back to it, even refuse to personally accept it. But do not attempt to kill it because you can’t. For truth is a Divine Attribute and he who seeks to kill it seeks to kill an attribute of the Divine, an undertaking that is not only hopelessly futile, but borders on the profane and the sacrilegious. He who recognizes the truth but willfully denies it denies an attribute of the Divine and therefore is guilty of apostasy. He who insists on the truth of lies and punishes the truth as lies is a heretic because he causes that disorder in the world that God so abhors and warns about in the Holy Books: “Do not cause Disorder in the Earth.” He who thinks it not important to explain to the less powerful why they are being punished is guilty of gross injustice and has joined the party of the Devil. Of course, being of the party of the Devil means losing your powers of righteous sight and therefore seeing the world through the eyes of evil; it means losing your capacity to find fault with any of your thoughts and actions and therefore maintaining supreme confidence that all of your actions are just and righteous. He who becomes possessed by the great deceiver runs the risk of being deceived in everything that matters to his fellow beings if it doesn’t matter to him. Whatever doesn’t seem right to him must be wrong, and whatever seems wrong for him cannot possibly be right for anyone else. That is the kind of quagmire into which dictatorship leads; the kind of quagmire in which, believe it or not, you now find yourself almost intractably trapped in. One is almost tempted to say, God save your soul Dr. Jammeh . . .

Let us propose a few points and examples to back our position that you stand accused of starving the Gambian Mind. First, could you please note that what may be unpleasant to you may not necessarily be unpleasant to the Gambian public? What you see as being against the “national” interest may not necessarily be against the national interest. It is only so according to your own, fallible-person estimation. The national interest is too big to be determined, delineated, and enforced by one man, even by a group of men constituting an entire government. While people elect leaders and appoint representatives to talk and act on their behalf, these leaders and representatives cannot be mandated to exclusively determine what is in the national interest. They may be right in some cases; but they cannot be right in all cases. Moreover, their rightness cannot simply be assumed and imposed; it has to be weighed against other contending views and ideas on the national interest. The final decision should not be made on the basis of the pleasant or unpleasant, but on the basis of rational thinking, debate, and deliberation. What is in the national interest should always be determined through a process of healthy national discourse, an enlightened discourse conducted by informed- and even uninformed - members of the general public. A country is not a compound or a personal estate to be owned and run according to the whims and caprices of a single individual, which is what dictatorship does and which is why dictatorships are always fatally sick political creatures. Mahatma Gandhi sums it up succinctly when he says: “What may appear as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker.” Sadly, a dictator is a seeker only after his own selfish interests, not the seeker after truth that Gandhi references. Gandhi also teaches that in any situation of disagreement or conflict, it is healthy to always remember that each side has some portion of truth in its possession. The solution to conflicts or disagreements over matters of common interest is therefore not to impose forced victories - which are always illusory - but to entertain the possibility of human error and be willing to concede error – at least in some cases. Dictators, unfortunately, are too weak to ever entertain the possibility of any error on their part. NAPOLEON IS ALWAYS TIGHT! Dang!

To further argue our point, we propose to cite the case of Baboucarr Gaye of Citizen FM. We trust you remember that back in 1998, Gaye was charged under an old colonial law of 1913 – 1914 of failure to register his radio station. He was dragged to court by your government and in the final verdict, he was declared guilty. His popular and hard-earned radio station and newspaper were confiscated by your government, and Gaye spent the rest of his life trying in vain to regain his rightful property. He died with the pain of unjust dispossession in his heart, and perhaps tears in his eyes. You must know, Dr. Jammeh, that what you did to Baboucarr Gaye is inexcusable by any standards of the imagination. It was a clear case of brutal state-bullying of an innocent and enterprising Gambian.

We all know, Dr. Jammeh, that Baboucarr Gaye was not punished because he failed to register under the outmoded Telegraph Act of 1913-14. We all know that he was punished because he so loved the Gambian people and so identified with the sorry plight of the illiterate Gambian masses that he sought a way of helping them out by lifting up the oppressive veil of everyday “ignorance” that tormented their minds. There is no doubt that Gambians would like to know what their sons and daughters, their brothers and sisters and other relatives, their fellow countrymen are writing in the newspapers. So that when he started translating the newspapers – including government publications – into the local languages, Baboucarr Gaye was motivated not by a desire to oppose you or your government, which he had all the right to do, but by a desire to help feed the starving mind of the Gambian Nation. The groundbreaking popularity of the news translation program series was so palpable that at the times it aired, a certain silence descended upon Banjul, Serekunda and throughout the Greater Banjul Area. Small clusters of people – men, women and children – could be seen in small groups all over town surrounding a transistor and intently listening to the newspaper coverage in the vernacular. The starving Gambian Mind had instantly recognized its food and eagerly partook of it at every possible opportunity. But then, suddenly, you were stricken by crippling paranoia born of the prospect of a national awakening. And since you cared more for your personal safety that the health, safety and enlightened progress of the Gambian people, you thoughtlessly pounced upon Baboucarr Gaye and closed Citizen FM. Not finding any law in the contemporary books under which you could forge a charge and manufacture a conviction, you turned to the books of the colonial regime that you so purportedly hate, and settled for the Telegraph Act of 1913-14 to snuff out the light that had begun shining on the Gambian Nation.

By silencing Citizen FM, you demonstrated your utter lack of interest in the enlightenment of the Gambian Nation. You would rather rule over a Nation of uninformed illiterates. You would rather not the vast majority of Gambians know what the papers are saying about you and your government. You would rather not the vast majority of Gambian people know that you or your government have done something deserving of some form of criticism, deserved or undeserved. You were so obsessed with your personal interest that you could not see that the newspapers also wrote about many other events and issues of world historical significance that had nothing to do with you or your government and that the people were interested in learning about. In ruthlessly silencing Citizen FM, you stand accused of denying the Gambian people a free opportunity to become not only better enlightened citizens, but also more alive to their local and global environments, and more alive and empowered as human beings. What Baboucarr Gaye tried to do was open the world up to that majority of Gambians for whom the written word represents an oppressive and suffocating world they could never hope to penetrate without the benefit of translation. But no, having an enlightened Gambian citizenry would rob you of the privilege of maintaining the socially useful lie of divine kingship with which you continue to baffle them. The image of Mansa Jammeh must remain perpetually untainted by impudent questions. Only questions of adoration and adulation with their attendant visions of an all-powerful, all-generous, all-righteous and never-mistaken, never-wrong monarch of legendary proportions must be allowed to invade the ears of our illiterate masses. The image you seek, Dr. Jammeh, is the image of the Divine and should not be sought by an ordinary mortal. So beware!

As you can see Dr. Jammeh, the problem of Baboucarr Gaye and Citizen FM – like many other unpleasant issues that litter the landscape of your regime – is just too big to be swept under the carpet and forgotten. You may have killed the medium, but the truth that the medium spoke cannot be killed because, as we indicated earlier, Truth is of the Divine Essence. Having once been assimilated into the essence of the Gambian Nation Mind, the truth of Citizen FM will always remain part of the Gambian Nation Mind. Long after all of us are gone, the story of Baboucarr Gaye and Citizen FM will be remembered and studied, and guilty verdicts will ceaselessly be announced against you.