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Alagi Yorro Jallow.
Fatoumatta: The Gambia and Gambians must begin to re-define for themselves what genuine Democracy really looks like and chart forward a grassroots, people-driven movement that will ensure, amongst others, the right to decent housing, the right to universal healthcare, free education for all, the right to work and earn a decent income, the right to rest and do recreational activities is a dream. However, it can turn into reality for everyone with exemplary leadership to translate vision into reality—the December 4 presidential election. Yes, elections do have consequences.
William Butler Yeats should not have lived in 20th century Irish society. He should have lived in the Gambia of today with all the turmoil, corruption, cheap death, double standards, misogyny, narcissism, tribal bigotry, ethnopolitical chauvinism, religious fanaticism, blackmailing, hypocrisy, and expensive investigations and commission inquiries that lead nowhere. The expose of the outrageous corruption by senior government officials is quite simply an affront to the sensibilities of Gambians. With endemic corruption and mega sleazy politicians plundering the government’s wealth of billions of Dalasis every year and aiding and abetting foreign companies, particularly the Chinese, to annihilate and overexploit our natural resources, together with so many other cases of venality in government, if anyone was in doubt as to whether the government is losing its war against corruption, they best be advised to take back their benefit of the doubt and be rest assured that the folks behind the rock are continuing to do their best down that greasy path of corruption, ultimately dismantling Democracy.
The poet W.B Yeast belonged to an age of artistic beauty, rhyme, and poignant symphony. However, amid the resonant harmony in the art of those days, general insecurity, death, tears, and blood blighting the face of the earth. So, it was against the background of disharmony between the art – space and the chaos on the ground that he wrote his famous “The second Coming” popularized by Chinua Achebe ( Things Fall Apart): – Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity/… Indeed some revelation is at hand;…
Fatoumatta: Would you please read the last three verses above and agree with me that W.B. Yeats is today in our midst, alive? Whatever “anarchy” informed his poetry has paled into nothingness this moment when violence and abuses against journalists throughout the world. Journalists and pro-democracy activists were missing in a careless, carefree, celebratory space, senseless wars waged by the deranged world over, making millions not just homeless but strangely stateless. In times like this, when ravening clouds take over the sky, what should we do? Now that horrifying and horrific events compete for space everywhere, every time, and there is just no indication that anyone has the will or the capability to do just anything to stem the tide, what do we do?
People die daily of COVID-19, but not all of humanity will die of it. As it was in the past, so it is now. In the same parish register where the baptism of William Shakespeare (Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere) was recorded on April 26, 1564, the Latin words ‘hic incipit pestis’ soon appeared. It means ‘here begins the plague.’ Furthermore, after that entry, what followed were recordings of deaths after deaths of parishioners. That was a pandemic that killed millions and wiped out whole families – across the world.
Fatoumatta: How many will remain when these torrents stop? As of yesterday, the coronavirus pandemic had killed 4.3 million people worldwide. The Gambia had an official share of 242 in that figure of the dead. Before anyone says our figure is low, let the person put himself in the position of any of the families of the deceased. Imagine mourning orphans who long in vain for the protective airs of parents; husbands waiting beside the covid-19 corpses of wives; wives nursing gasping memories of husbands as they slip into eternity. How do we walk through the mines of these difficult times of Covid-19 and live after it? We must listen to science and do like those with knowledge tell us: wear a mask, avoid crowds, wash and or sanitize hands; and more importantly, stay generally safe – at home.
Across Africa, governments are struggling to contain militant groups that have capitalized on widespread anger over problems like corruption, inequality, and abusive state security forces of African insurgencies in Nigeria, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Mozambique, and Somalia. In some countries, like Nigeria, these groups have already created large-scale humanitarian emergencies, killing thousands and displacing even more. In others, like Mozambique, the worst may still be yet to come how Nigeria lost its way in the war against Boko Haram. Why an insurrection by the Anglophone minority in Cameroon’s west is roiling the country’s politics.How the army in Burkina Faso is playing into jihadists’ hands.Why it has been one step forward and two steps back for stability in northern Mali. And much more, including analysis of insurgencies in Somalia, Mozambique, and Chad.
In troubled Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, people are killed with human parts of people thrown apart. Among those parts. With that international sorrow came, still mourning the killing of a Saudi Arabia journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who was a Washington Post columnist, killed and dismembered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The CIA has reportedly determined that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likely ordered the killing. However, wait outside the shores of the Gambia. In the Middle East, almost thousands of people, the majority of them, women and children, are killed, murdered in a needless, mad war between Israel and Palestine. Tragedy, death, and blood are everywhere, and yet, the end is not here.
The reigning currency in the Middle East, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Syria, and Yemen, continued seizure of land for new Jewish settlements, crammed population, open-air prison, wanton cruelty, protests, crackdown; horrifying scenes. The Palestinian question in more than 40 years.
As it is abroad, so it is at home.
Apart from the outrage, most Gambians felt at the tenacious sit-tight attitude of the government of President Adama Barrow after numerous corruption scandals under his tutelage. The Gambia was ruled for over two decades by former president Yahya Jammeh, who consistently violated political rights and civil liberties. The 2016 election resulted in a surprise victory for the coalition opposition candidate Adama Barrow. Fundamental freedoms, including the rights to free assembly, association, and expression, initially improved after that. However, the progress toward the consolidation of the rule of law is slow. In addition, the Barrow government has faced increasing criticism over corruption.
The Barrow government has undertaken limited initiatives to reduce corruption, which remains a severe problem. Allegations of corruption by officials at all levels of government are frequently lodged, and both state and semistate agencies face allegations of improperly funneling money to private citizens. While legislators adopted anticorruption legislation in 2019, an envisioned anticorruption commission has not yet been finalized. In October 2020, news outlet Malagen reported that the Fisheries Ministry’s permanent secretary, Bamba Banja, accepted bribes from Chinese fishing companies over three years. Banja was suspended from his post, and a police investigation remained open as of December.
Government operations are generally opaque. Government officials must make asset declarations to the ombudsman, but declarations are not open to public and media scrutiny. There are widespread allegations of corruption in public procurement. Key licensing processes, especially for industries reliant on natural resources, are not transparent.
Under President Barrow, everyone is losing money in this country, apart from a few family businesses and tenderpreneurs who raked in millions of dalasis — thanks mainly to political patronage. The private sector is brewing losses instead of creating wealth. Companies are sending workers home to stay afloat, while small businesses are shutting down mainly because of executive myopia. The people losing jobs are joining hundreds of desperate youth who have never known a job, despite having an education. This growing army of disgruntled youth and middle-aged people poses a grave risk to the country. Unfortunately, the government seems to understate.
Fatoumatta: Corruption has become an endemic problem in the Gambia’s new political dispensation. It has also become a growing concern among foreign investors who would otherwise like to do business with the Gambia but are effectively locked because of it. The persistent and flagrant violations of the open tender process, otherwise designed to encourage and promote competition among prospective bidders, are proving to be the bane of Adama Barrow’s administration. In addition, the acceptance of an anonymous donation of fifty-seven pickup trucks by members of the National Assembly channeled through President Barrow was a troubling sign of bribery of elected officials.
Gambians support the presidency as the symbol of national unity. However, they will not sit back and cheer when the very pillar of nationhood threatens its mere sustenance. President Adam Barrow, there comes a time when the rhetoric must stop, and some work gets done. Gambians challenge you, Mr. President, to walk the talk of executive probity and nationhood rather than asking for a second term.
Those who are to act against fear do not have the time and the will. They are moving with frenetic speed towards the next election that will refuel the vehicles of their reign of devastation. That is all that matters now across all political parties. Fear, naked fear, may impetuously strut the land like NASA’s Rover does the red surface of planet Mars; who cares? From this week on, all energy and attention are converging. They will soon, undoubtedly, clash in a country where, in less than five months, an epochal, defining electoral politics will take place. The blood pressure of the National People’s Party (NPP), the coalition of opposition parties, and the United Democratic Party over that state have already reached crisis level. Why? Is it all about the people or just about power for its own sake or about money or the conquistador keeping his property or about some little-minded, rapacious local Vladimir Putin looking for his own Crimea to annex? The steam that oozes out of (and into) that place induces fear of the unimaginable. Those who have the wings “and the soaring swiftness of the eagle” are out, fleeing already. They stoke the fire of fear, tears, and blood, then deftly step out of the war front for the disinherited to do mutual destruction. They leave the battle for the unfortunate to fight and lose to the power class. However, after the storm, the powerful will be back to inherit the land and the throne with its repulsive riches. Now, what should he do, the ordinary man with nowhere to go?
So, in the coming months, electoral politics is not just about Adama Barrow and the United Democratic Party (UPD) and other 18 political parties; it is about the Gambia. December 4, 2021, presidential elections will not just be about a president, some National Assembly members, and politicians. They will be about the vast uncharted future of the country. These raised the stakes very high for the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. Yeats wrote about “indignant desert birds” dropping shadows over the earth. If the poet was a prophet, I think his prophecy has come to pass here. The birds are here. Hawks and Falcons of war have descended everywhere, Gambian home and those in the Diaspora, feasting not just on the dead but more on the living.
Fatoumatta: Moreover, they are not done with us yet. Even their children are queued up behind them, bidding their turn to more than take a bite. I hope the victim knows clearly, who the enemy is. I hope so.