Posted by 
Alagi Yorro Jallow.
Fatoumatta: The presidential vote on December 4 is increasingly becoming a question of conscience. It is no longer a simple matter of political affiliation and preference. The voter’s choice easily finds itself on the weighing scales of conscience, making it a moral question. The voter is invited to reflect on the uprightness of the candidates on offer. Moral foundations are, of course, supposed to be weak in politics. That is why we have been told politics is a dirty game. Thus, I have watched and listened to the cries of average Gambians with shock and disbelief on the matter of corruption and good governance and why the government appears strangely silent on sky-high rising prices of basic essential commodities.
Let me give you the context if you are visiting our country. The Gambia is a marriage, a forced polygamy. It has been unwell with it right from the beginning. The story of the Gambia is told every day in customary and Shari’ah courts in Banjul and Kanifing, where embarrassing divorce cases will not stop shaming our existence. Almost every case sounds like a satire of the Gambia.
Not long ago, there was a certain Ajaratou Aminata who wanted the dissolution of her 14-year-old marriage. Her husband, she said, was interested only in acquiring more wives and breeding ill-bred children: “His harem or seraglio is full of wives and children whom he has failed to take care of. “I play the role of father and mother to my children under his nose, and he is not perturbed. I feed and clothe them and also send them to school out of the little I make from my trade. Anytime I tabled the children’s needs before him, he would ask me to attend to them myself.
Though he is alive, I regard him as dead. I live like a widow because my husband is dead to his responsibilities. All he knows to do is to make babies. He has four wives and is still planning to have more. He often boasts that the least number of children his wife can have is four…” The husband, Arfang Bakary, had his own story to tell. Yes, he has four wives – each having four children for him – and he takes care of them (with D100 per wife) every day: “I am also fed up with her. I agree with her plea of divorce. My lord, my wife is an adulterer. I know two of her lovers living in our neighborhood. They sleep with her on a regular basis and give her money. I became cold towards her when her illicit acts became known to me. She misbehaves in the home and addresses me anyhow because other men are giving her money.”
Fatoumatta: Every divorce case speaks to the Gambia’s troubled existence. The Gambia is amongst the highest fertility rates in the win Africa. It also has the unenviable reputation of acting rudderless in critical moments, putting its future in jeopardy. The World Population Prospects 2019 has predicted that the Gambia will overtake Nigeria to become amongst -the most populous country in the continent by 2050, surpassing the 2 million people mark by that year. The Gambia frustrates, so held the Economist in a recent piece. It will not stop being a country of vast potentials held down by “perverse incentives” and engagement with unproductive activities – “making money through political connections, speculations, round-tripping, and arbitrage.” It has no concrete plan for anyone, including itself. The Gambia is precisely like that husband of four wives and 16 children with no other ambition beyond marrying more wives, sleeping with more women, and having more kids with no thought on how to cater for them.
The Gambia is in the throes of an acute food shortage. Prices have gone through the roof. Essential commodities being the staple food is a challenge. Thanks to the belief that politicians have pliable ethnic crowds that will vote for them anyway, the top brass in government and the leading political class flounders in arrogance, impunity, and unbridled lack of accountability. To ask for accountability is to be “trivial” and to pose “unfair questions.”
There is virtually no household that is happy. There is almost no individual that is not living in fear in the Gambia today. School fees and hospital bills are becoming difficult for most people. Even one square meal is becoming a luxury for most. The value of the Dalasi against the Dollar is the worst in the history of the Gambia. The cost of essential commodities, where available, is the highest in the history of this so-called smiling coast country. The endurance level of ordinary people has been stretched to its limit. Is President Barrow is not aware of this?
Now, I ask: with all these negative words flying about, what does the future hold for the country? Will threats and counter-threats give us the Gambia that will guarantee a good life for our kids? Will muscle flexing and influence-peddling make better our awful situation? What do you think will happen to a marriage ruled by threats? Kim Buehlman, John Gottman, and Lynn Katz researched why marriages collapse. They coded the behavior of 52 couples over a period of three years to determine what qualities predicted divorce or marital stability. They found that “how a couple views their past predicts their future” and that “couples who eventually divorced were low in fondness for their partners, high in negativity, low in “we-ness,” high in chaos, low in glorifying the struggle, and high in the disappointment of the marriage.” All these tendencies are present in the Gambia’s house of discord. However, can we make it work for its members? Will it work and work well if mutual respect, equity, and fairness are its mainframe? Or should we wait for the day of judgment?
Fatoumatta: The road to the future collapsed long ago. Our political engineers are not on the road. They are very busy in the palace fixing their thrones and building fortresses around their inheritance. Because nothing is as lucrative as power in The Gambia, the elite will not stop at anything to protect their monopoly. As I write this, there are fears of rising insecurity, banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, and killings in the country; there is no smile, no laughter again.
Furthermore, I am talking about the potentates who hold the bread and the butter in the country. The vivacious high-fives and the bear hugs that climaxed in the adoption and election of Adama Barrow five years ago have vanished. It is not yet war, but between them, there are peals of thunderclaps and blinding lightning.
While I do not speak for the political Opposition, I find it reprehensible that this government is in the race for a second five-year term. If this is how it superintends when the incumbent still needs a second term, what will it do when he no longer needs an additional term? I agree with the wag who said that African democracy is about counting heads and not counting inside them.
Fatoumatta: What happened in this political season? Power-addicted politicians masquerading as democrats and patriots are scented, arsonists. They spray petrol on naked truth, set it alight with falsehood, and swear they have no hand in the ensuing fire – or that the blaze is for the public good. Obsequious sycophancy and political arrogance are their synonym – or their surname. So, instead of wasting our limited energy on verbal abuse on both social media and traditional media in political rallies, we should start looking for a permanent cure for the ailment. The Gambia needs prayers.