The anticlimactic end of the melodramatic political hysteria

By Mathew K Jallow 

The guessing game is over. And the National Reconciliation Party’s (NRP) firebrand, Hamat Bah, has emerged as the face of the splinter coalition, and frankly, it was not unexpected. But the conclusion of this ostentatious, if not dramatic chapter of political rivalry is unsettling in its cruel audaciousness. Yet it was all a storm in a tea pot, which in its evident superficiality, had the air and the aura of political deceit and manufactured grandiosity. The recently concluded corrosive and polarizing political drama injected venom into the political discourse and stirred up an ugly ideological mudslinging between supporters and opponents of the tripartite camp of renegade parties and the dominant United Democratic Party (UDP). 

In the end, narrow political expediency driven by the Peoples Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism’s (PDOIS) ideological heterodoxy, and supported by the NRP’s uncharacteristic brilliant lack of objectivity and pragmatism, sank any prospects for an opposition coalition. In any way one looks at this historic political fiasco, it is evident that the mastermind, PDOIS, in its persistent inability to accept the public verdict that like the ill-fated primary, a convention of the kind originally envisioned by PDOIS’s pedantic, opportunistic and limelight seeking leader, Halifa Sallah, was for more reasons than one, unnecessary, time-consuming and costly.  

The so-called “national” convention of the trio of rebellious saboteurs, in the end, turned out to be the biggest political charade of the year. By choosing a course of action that is inimical to Gambia’s interest, with delegates plucked from Hamat Bah’s Saloum constituency, and the rest corralled from the Greater Banjul and Kombo areas, convention participants exhibited a provincial mindset that has broken faith with the Gambian people and betrayed a cause in which the rest of the country is heavily invested in; Yahya Jammeh’s removal. The convention itself seemed more like a beauty pageantry held for a small catchment area of the western part of the country. No broadly representative national convention can be effectuated without UDP leading the effort; a truism that is perceptibly obviated by the fact that only UDP has a truly broad organizational infrastructure, nationwide support-base and logistical capacity to mobilize Gambians around the divine cause of removing Yahya Jammeh. But the convention itself was baffling in more ways than one; specifically relating to PDOIS dual representation as a member of NADD as well as a standalone party on its own. Besides, the fact that Assan Martin’s representation qualified him as a “political party entity,” was a hoax aggravated by the despicable dishonesty and wholesale mockery of the political process.  

The questionable gimmicks deployed by the convention call into question the legitimacy of the entire convention process as a dubious exercise in crookedness and jingoistic political maneuvering. In its need to mirror a semblance of public support, the PDOIS led nihilistic rebellion against UDP leader Ousainou Darboe, resorted to artful ingenuity that inflated the number of convention participants and employed Houdini’s eye-popping trickery and hair-splitting logical gymnastics to justify and give legitimacy to the convention process. Beyond that, Halifa Sallah, the brain-child of the primary and convention ideas, has proven to inherit a notoriously unhealthy infatuation with the old Soviet Union socialist bureaucratic formalities, a condition which is borderline psychotic. And PDOIS’s stubborn dereliction of duty to its political constituency has hindered any progress towards the formation of a truly broad-based national coalition. The insistence on convening an unnecessary and time-consuming convention has made it difficult, if not impossible to arrive at a consensus agreement despite UDP’s innumerable concessions to accommodate the fears and concerns of other opposition members. Clearly, events of last week speak to the characters of politicians whose bluster has demonstrated a morbid inability to subordinate their egos to the greater good of society.  


It is hard to imagine that a political spat over a convention can trump the need to oust Yahya Jammeh from his celestial parchment, a concern that calls the coalition formation suspect, and questions the motives behind the their collective thinking. It is clear that both Hamat Bah and Halifa Sallah, the once political nemesis, have broken their covenant with the Gambian people for acting in ways that satisfies their egos, but Gambians will long remember their stained characters and lack of moral rectitude. But the NRP/PDOIS love affair will soon be tested, and the obvious mismatch will emerge as the novelty wears away under the pressures of a Bah/Sallah character conflicts. For one, Hamat Bah, despite his lackadaisical attitude and buffoonery, is fiercely independent-minded; a personality characteristic he jealously guards. Unlike the weak personalities of Sidia Jatta and Sam Sarr, who have allowed Halifa Sallah to walk all over them, he has a mind of his own and uses it. Hamat Bah will never degrade his pride to a point of becoming anyone’s pushover puppet, and if the pseudo-intellectual and so-called “Sociologist” Halifa Sallah, the biggest fraud in contemporary Gambian politics thinks he can use the stridently independent Hamat Bah as a doormat, a rude awakening awaits him. Halifa Sallah’s tyrannical predisposition is clearly exemplified in how he lords over PDOIS and Foroyaa, even chastising Sidia Jatta as “unauthorized to speak for PDOIS” sometime last year. Hamat Bah will not stand for any crap from Ayatolla Halifa Sallah, and any effort to micromanage him, will usher in a second round of melodramatic political hysteria. Take that to the bank. 





                                          

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