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Alagi Yorro Jallow.Fatoumatta: I do not usually post predictions of the outcomes of elections on social media. My limited knowledge of the fickleness of the human species has taught me that it is difficult to make an informed prediction of how an election will turn out. For example, I have watched some presidential candidates who appeared invincible in the Gambia and other countries badly lose an election, contrary to the predictions of the most informed pundits and pollsters.
However, this coming December 4, 2021, presidential polls unpredictability is an aspect of democracy and elections by ballot. So next time you meet someone who seems sure of the outcome of an election yet to be held, ask him whether the election has been predetermined.
I searched and could not get an audacious pastor, a presumptuous Jahanka marabout, a witchy Serere clairvoyant, a psychic sheik, or a Jola prognosticator who saw anything remotely close to the December 4, 2021, presidential elections foretold. So I do not have to ask social media wailers and hailers, “how Gambian will decide on December” They are all in the rain and drenched.
Nevertheless, a particular writer is foretelling the Presidential election results. He wrote about December 4, 2021, presidential polls in the Gambia. Who will win between incumbent President Adama Barrow and several other presidential aspirants? (In all seriousness, all other names on the ballot).
The question is not whether incumbent President Adama Barrow will be reelected into office as the Republic of the Gambia. President Barrow will be reelected, and whether you like it or not, Barrow will inevitably be reelected into power by hook or crook with a significant majority. The question, therefore, is what happens after he returns to the office?
Fatoumatta: The young man writes books and journal articles like the old, but he is very loud on social media, as of today’s young man. Rafting not along the rivers of fictional detective narration of his father, he delivers his message raw and moves on to other chores. At the same time, some were preparing to kill and die for the December 4, 2021, presidential elections.
Adama Barrow’ second time after December 4 2021presidential polls:
Matters will be worse than ever before now.
Things will be harder.
The times will be tougher.
The sea will be stormier.
The clouds will be thicker.
The fog will be foggier.
The days will be gloomier.
The nights will be longer.
The market will be slower.
The valleys will be deeper.
The hills will be steeper.
The rivers will be drier.
The winds will be colder.
The sun will be hotter.
The moon will be duller.
The weather will be harsher.
The journey will be more complex.
The struggles will be stiffer.
However, the rich will be more prosperous.
The poor, poorer
The pain, the agony, will be worse for the lowly and the humble.
The sick, even sicker
The sad, sadder.
The mad will be madder.
The hungry, hungrier.
Blame the messenger all you will.
Fatoumatta: But whether it is your will or against your will, Adama Barrow is returning to the office to rule for five more full years. I thought of the sea getting stormier when our government flew the kite of fuel price hike, and all hearts beat faster than normal. However, unfortunately, in my prediction, there is no remedy for what is unfurling before us – and that there is no escape from what may yet come. The forecast and prediction suggest clairvoyance and projection mean cartography, and I would ordinarily agree that no single political party or an independent candidate can win a presidential election in the Gambia. Still, suppose any candidate ends up joining in a Grand Coalition or Alliance. In that case, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), the National People’s Party (NPP), and other periphery political parties led Grand Coalition will grab votes up a massive centerground for its flag bearer President Adama Barrow.
Fatoumatta: Writers are literally prophets. George Orwell saw and foretold the animal farm of today’s primal existence. Many starve and work so that someone percent could eat big and fart loud. Jonathan Swift wrote of lawmakers, law executors, and law interpreters colluding to subvert and pervert the law. He should come and see 21st century the Gambia and hail the pinpoint accuracy of his crystal ball. One Gambian writer recently wrote and telling us of the unending conflict between the devilry of the rich and powerful and the naive single-mindedness of the working class ideologue. It is a story of the futility of hope in a society of politics ruled by a lethal combination of blackmail, intimidation, and betrayal. Because the tragic hero would not bend and eat with power, they were told to tread with great care in the midst of thorns, and they would not listen; power broke him and all he had. An elder who walks in the rain must not say he will not soil his feet with mud. If he does, he will fall, soaking his eyes and mouth in that mud. That is storytelling us that leaders of the poor without tact, who exceed their limits, are doomed to be completely shut out of life. Look around you – such stories are unfolding every day. Stories of darkness coming out of light; stories of double standards in the administration of justice, of blackmail, and betrayals. Stories of the past and the present and the future and the grim repercussions of all we do.
Successful writers do not die like embers supplanted by ‘cold, impotent ash.’ On the contrary, they are like banana trees, perennial and regenerative. They give the key to their room of wisdom to someone somewhere for the message to stay alive. This particular writer has a father who traverses the global space of ancestral knowledge with the ease of conviction. The sucker bridges the past with the future, supplying shoots of warning and knowledge.
Fatoumatta: On January 20, 2017, Adama Barrow stood on the steps of the Gambian embassy in Dakar, Senegal, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to execute the office of PresidentPresident of the Gambia faithfully and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the Gambia. Did he keep that promise? Instead, President Barrow has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and the civil liberties enshrined in our Constitution. His presidency has purposefully inflamed the Gambia’s divisions. He has set himself against the Gambia idea, the principle that all of us—of every ethnicity, gender, and creed—are created equal. This is not a partisan judgment. Many of the President’s fiercest critics have emerged from his political family, the United Democratic Party, his Godfather, and some other coalition 2016 partners, as well as tafyengal diaspora activists who helped him be elected. Even officials and observers who support his policies are appalled by his policies. Those with firsthand governance experience are also the most alarmed by how Adama Barrow and his coalition government govern. The oath of office is a president’s promise to subordinate his private desires to the public interest, to serve the nation as a whole rather than any faction within it. So did President Barrow displays such a piece of evidence that he understands these obligations.
Fatoumatta: In a buildup to December 1, 2016, presidential elections and electing Adama Barrow as the third PresidentPresident of the Gambia, they warned of unimaginably complex life after the poll. They predicted that rice and bread would not yield seeds/chicken, would be without grains, and livestock would be without feeds after that election. If you are given the literal interpretation of prophecies, ask livestock farmers how life is today. Be patient to hear their stories of burying millions of chickens and eggs daily because buyers have gone with the COVID-19 pandemic.
We saw more than literal and metaphoric chickens without grains. The writer warned darkly that 2021 is a probable bridge built toward moaning and gnashing of teeth. Of course, some will snap their fingers and rejected my talk of gloom: Not our portion, we affirmed as we viciously attacked a prophet of doom. However, President Barrow will keep his peace. He will come back on December 4, 2021, with a darker message of the Gambian humanity entering “a more profound, grimmer, and longer tunnel without light, nor a glimmer of hope and after this year’s election.
Fatoumatta: The second leg of Barrow’s second coming will be on December 4, 2021. There are still three large oceans to cross before we wave adieu pour Toujours to the bad luck of the first term. President Barrow’s sad sail will take everyone to a confluence of misgovernance and a pandemic sea of sickness, sorrow, and deaths. Deep-structure prays against having a share in whatever fate has in its tray of sadness. However, everyone appears holding a part of the very heavy tray of sorrow with Gambians as an impossible country plus a disease called coronavirus pandemic. Men and women who are not dead yet are dying slowly personally or by proxy; friends, close and distant, are dropping dead in a jolt of tears; tired mortuaries and fatigued cemeteries present an era of torrential misfortune; thriving businesses of yesterday have long passed the threshold of life and living; job losses are competing with loss of health and wealth. How many shouted happy new year on January 1, 2021, are not weals of sadness today?
However, we see government at all levels using the misfortune of these times to feather privileged nests.
Armed robbery, banditry, crime and punishment, disobedience, and consequences have ethnic and political smells in Adama Barrow’s Gambia. An assessment of President Barrow’s years will not be about his never-ending bridges, road, and mega infrastructural project line contracts. It will not be about the recent establishment of school campuses of education but schools without education. The sleaze of the COVID-19 pandemic is choking the public lung and, it is scary looking at the sky and seeing that these rains are just not in a hurry to stop.
Fatoumatta: We will celebrate almost five years of the end of dictatorship to democratic rule. However, there is a storm of hunger complemented by blistering insecurity and disease across the land. Depressing stories of badness daily clog the air in the length and breadth of the country. In Adama Barrow’s five years, the stench of death has fouled the air while a nervous president wrings his hands that COVID-19 may be devastating the world, but it was not his people’s concern. Armed robbery and banditry had so far distressed people. As a result, there is a pall of darkness over the land, length, and breadth. At the same time, rank incompetence continues to define the governance of our affairs.
Nevertheless, President Barrow and his courtiers will dance at the dawn of December 4, 2021. We know, of course, that the gods do not cheat the idler twice. If they deprive him of his arms, they endow him with a sharp mouth.