By Momodou Olly Mboge

"Democratic living is not given in nature, like gold or water.  It is a social construct, like a skyscraper, school playground, or new idea. Accordingly, there can be no democracy without its builders, caretakers, and change agents: democratic citizens. These citizens are constructs, too" (Walter Parker, 2003).

The Gambian people like many post independent peoples are in the process of constructing a durable and dynamic democratic system of living together within a diverse multiethnic and multi-religious society.  These democratization processes by African peoples have been characterized by academics, politicians and other commentators as the new drive for the second liberation of Africans from their oppressors, be they internal or otherwise.  I call it the real project of the true liberation of Africans in every sense of the word.  This time around Africans must look each other in the eye and be ready and willing to tell each other the truth without fear or favour.  This time around African liberation must be directed and controlled by those who are sincere and clear with what they want.  The democratic citizen and personality Africans are crafting must do away with the mentality associated with parochial affiliations and affinities.  The common good must be about honesty, truthfulness, courage, conviction that will be tools to confront poverty, destitution and all the forces that hamper dignity, progress and prosperity of all Gambians and Africans.  The driving seat in this second African liberation must be occupied and responsibly steered by Africans.  Any help others want to provide must be according to our terms.  There are no short cuts to freedom and democratic development.  Only a democratic citizen is capable to craft such a space.

The democracy Gambian people are trying to evolve will hopefully be strong and dynamic enough to resist the exigencies of the messiness of such a system of governance (ie democracy) and will inaugurate cultural ideals which internalises unity in diversity.  This sliver of nation-state in this process (of democratizing its society) is battling various forces.  These forces come in different guises and are situated both within the camp of those who perceive themselves as the true ‘builders, caretakers, and change agents’ and those considered reactionaries and enemies of the ‘democratic citizen’.  I must accept as others have already noted that Gambians are witnessing interesting times.  In these interesting times the Gambian diaspora has been quite vocal and within its ranks there is a crop of quite belligerent and pretentious lot who claim to be the touch bearers if you will, and the true representation of democratic values and principles. These people have difficulty in seeing any perspective different from theirs.  Notwithstanding and oblivious of their contradictions, they loudly pollute us with high sounding narratives of their democratic credentials waxed around some perfidious self-proscribed intellectual clarity and positioning, thus ordaining themselves the Mandela-like saviors of The Gambian people. 

I am part of the diaspora and I want to associate myself with those who dare ask questions about the integrity of those claiming to be suffering for the people.   

I am peeved by the unwarranted hyperbole of Mathew Jallow’s hubris disguised as a defense of his friend whom we are told suffered in the name of the Gambian people. Mathew Jallow and the banality of his self-claimed intellectual clarity on things Gambian is mind-bogglingly baffling.  Mr Mathew Jallow, the lead pretender whose claim of being the most ready and focused in the struggle against the tyranny of the ‘MAD’ President of the Gambia, in his latest attack, at those scrutinizing a former ‘enabler’ of the present regime, Dr Amadou ‘Scattred’ Jammeh and Co is exemplary in its puerility and vapidity.

Mr Jallow began his futile and tedious defense of his friend by falsely claiming that Janneh, that is Professor Amadou S Janneh,  was motivated and still driven to be Gambia’s Madiba to the point of being possessed by his convictions to save Gambians because, “…a hopeless sense of collective apathy and defeatism have permeated every aspect of our lives to make it difficult to extricate our country from an overpowering political quandary that has devalued our self-esteem and bankrupted our sense of moral rectitude, much of the blame for our collective apathy rests on our puerile naivety and callous indifference towards our country and to each other.”  Now, one may ask if this statement is an exaggeration or simply the truth.  Granted there are notable elements of apathy and indifference in the fight for democracy in the Gambia, I maintain it is an exaggerated assumption that most Gambians are ‘morally bankrupt’ or are callously indifferent to prevailing conditions in their country.  In a situation like the Gambia rather than callousness many people are more concern with their daily challenges about survival issues.  Gambians are dealing with immediate life and death issues (which of course should be reason for them to rise against Jammeh). Many do not have the luxury of sitting behind a computer and tipsily keying stuff in their computers claiming to be more angry and concern about the poor and oppressed.  Until the crucial moment comes when the democratic citizen is ready to die rather than live a humiliated and undignified existence, all the flatulence that Mathew Jallow releases is only useful in confusing the ranks of the ‘builders, caretakers, and change agents’ involved in the construction of the democratic Gambian citizen.  

The parochial mentality according our cute Mathew Jallow which the critics of Janneh are possessed with to me seems to be mirrored by him when he intellectually hallucinates when he states: “The parochial mentality exhibited by a handful of Gambians in Dr. Amadou Janneh’s arrest and detention, even as a majority of Gambians and the international community are rallying behind the man with the fortitude to stand up for what Gambians only dared think, is under-whelming to say the least […]”. What I keep asking myself whilst going through Mr Jallow’s piece is what possessed him to try to hogwash people by throwing some nasty debris to those asking questions to the one’s claiming to be suffering in their name, when in really the facts contradicts some of their claims. If the claims by Mathew and his friends are really to usher in a democratic and free Gambia, I just wonder who is drawing Gambia towards ‘dangerous depths of malicious, prejudice self-serving interests’. 

Mathew continues on in his fatuous defense of his endowed ex-Professor and with phantom believe that by informing Janneh’s critics that; ‘like it or not, Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh has become the first real symbol of resistance to the dictatorship in our country; the Lui Xiaobo of Gambia, if you will.’ Mr Jallow and his friends should stop this intellectual dishonesty and infantile comparison of ex-Professor Dr Amadou S Janneh with personalities like Madiba or Lui Xiaobo.  Janneh is no Lui Xiaobo or Mandela, period.  Lui Xiaobo has always been consistent in his fight against the Chinese authorities. He has never compromised his principles and does not at every opportunity remind everyone that he is suffering for the Chinese people.  He is still in prison because he rather dies with his dignity intact than be out of China claiming to represent others.  It is a great disservice as well as profound disrespect to the ‘builders, caretakers, and change agents’ involved in the process of crafting the new Gambian democratic citizen.  The little we ask is let us be allowed to asked questions without being called malicious or trying to chase away other people from joining the opposition to President Jammeh’s tyranny.  After all in mature democracies where Mr Mathew Jallow lives, leaders claiming to represent the people must epitomize democratic values and culture in all what they do or say.  That is why their utterances in public and even in private are important to their constituents. 

And finally, it is a travesty and untruth at another level to claim that ‘Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh has become the first real symbol of resistance to the dictatorship in our country’.  This statement degrades the honour of the martyred school children killed in cold-blood by Jammeh’s regime. It is an insult to those who have been in prison and suffered inhuman sadist torture well before Scattred Janneh. It disregards those efforts relentlessly standing up against the harassment of the regime by refusing to succumb to indignity.   Gambians will build a durable and dynamic democratic space, yes it may be slow and delayed but it is inevitable.  Yes, we dare to build a future that is prosperous, free and dignified without the likes of Dr Amadou S Janneh, his friends and supporters.  We will always question the integrity of former ‘enablers’ and their new found ‘born again’ fervor to rid Gambia of tyranny and despotism.  This is a nonnegotiable basic exercise of our human right.