¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.htmlThe 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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