They are the flagships of a regime perpetually hovering over the edge of complete collapse and certain disintegration, on the one hand, and willing collaborators in a cabal desensitized to the particularly gruesome human rights violations of the last two decades. They project narcissism and self-interest; with material greed at the heart of their irreverent decisions to serve a regime that offers neither the joys of work nor the joys of job security. And to many Gambians, it seems working for the regime is, at its worst, only a benign miscalculation unworthy of drawing conclusions beyond patriotic motivations to serve, but the reality is colored in consequences that challenge the cores of our beings, and question the values of our common humanity. The toxic interface of an ignorant regime and citizen insensitivity has bent the moral codes and changed Gambia into the catastrophic embodiment of a people, who, once so steeped in the sanctimony of our traditional values; now remain devoid of any moral scruples or senses of self-esteem. The pull to service in the regime, under Yahya Jammeh, may for so many, likely have been compelled by elemental patriotism and the condescending desire to help navigate a ship of state in much lack of intellectual capacity and technical professionalism. But, what makes the Gambia’s case so particularly unique is the persistence of absolute power in the hands of one individual; Yahya Jammeh.
In a country with a system that harbors little or no regard for the practices of good governance, Gambia’s anachronistic descent into amateurism forced the previously imperfect democratic government to slowly slide into the regime’s current state of utter dysfunction and absolute chaos. Today, the Gambia is cast as a total failure by every matrix that measures effective bureaucratic functionality and government efficiency. Clearly, the foundering of the regime is not quite without valid reasons; but more significantly; it is explainable by the way a perpetual state of social and political instability is built into the governing protocol to ensure the regime’s maintenance of unfettered control of the mechanisms of governance. And in disregard of the citizens’ constitutional rights, decisions as to who gets hired and who remains unemployed and destitute, are used effectively as instruments of control, resulting in deleterious repercussions to the nation. Thus the withering criticisms of Gambians, who continue to deliberately blind themselves to the severe economic hardship, the traumatic psychological impacts, and crippling indifference to the shameful abuse, are not without moral justifications. The reason Gambians continue accepting positions in the regime, despite the certainty of victimization, continues to mystify citizens and challenge the deep denial by regime collaborators, and their mendacious efforts to obfuscate the reality of Gambia’s ostentatious history of state savagery.
Gambia’s renegade collaborators continue to draw bruising criticisms from fellow citizens, and invite the not entirely undeserved scorn of countrymen and women left to speculate how religion and our collective moral foundation, have lost their divine force in our society. Yet, it is patently false to conjecture that every Gambian who has accepted employment with the regime did so for selfish ulterior motives. And for a country that lacks an educated workforce and professional expertise, the circle of talent has dwindled dramatically as professionals flee to safe countries. In a climate of professional shortage, the regime is compelled to hire the majority of its civil servants from an available pool of low education and highly unqualified cadre who commit not to a national interest, but to the unwritten goal of entrenching the regime. But among the Gambians ensnared in the regime’s political and tribal machinations, is an educated minority who are the subjects of often abusive, but always fiery rhetoric condemning their roles in prolonging the deadly regime. The riveting Ad-Hominem attacks of educated collaborators projects frustrations towards educated Gambian’s subservience to dictatorship. The timeless assumption that education empowers a sense of liberty and independence has turned out not to be a defensible truism in Gambia’s case as the highly educated line up for job offers in the regime even before the ink on dismissal letters of their predecessors runs dry.
The vehemence, with which regime collaborators are held in absolute contempt, is matched only by Gambian citizens’ asinine hatred for Yahya Jammeh. The unflattering disenchantment with the regime’s enablers is the single most important question swirling in Gambian minds. Do Gambians who accept work in the regime and, therefore, enable the torture, murders, mass incarceration, forced disappearance and exodus of other Gambians, really care about their fellow citizens, or are the financial incentives and ostentatious show of social class too great to resist? From the highly educated to intellectual nonentities, the challenge to accept or reject positions in the regime is a decision each individual has to make for themselves, but the risks are great. For, history has proved that working in Yahya Jammeh’s regime is not unlike playing cat and mouse in a crocodile pond; for sooner or later, one will get devoured. Those who escape scotch free from Yahya Jammeh’s grip and live to tell it, are few and far apart, for cavorting in a crocodile hole is like walking into a death trap, a risk only neophytes, acolytes and the cabal of political charlatans can wish for themselves. Yet despite the undeniable hazards of working in Yahya Jammeh’s regime, soulless Gambian dare to line up for their certain disgrace, incarceration or even death. For no matter what happens, in the end, Yahya Jammeh will always have his last hurray with the weak of heart and mind. The overwhelming historical evidence against collaborators, notwithstanding, Gambians still refuse to learn, and in so doing, contribute to prolong the regime’s executions, murders, mass incarcerations, and exodus from that hell-hole that is Gambia.
By Matthew K. Jallow