By D. A. Jawo
President Yahya Jammeh’s address to the recently concluded Elysee Summit convened by President Francois Hollande of France, once again saw him pass the buck for the present mess that Africa still finds itself to western hegemony rather than accepting the failure on the part of African leaders, including himself,
to tackle the continent’s problems with sincerity, due mainly to their greed and insatiable lust for power.
It was indeed a shame that President Jammeh singled out the western media’s role in fanning wars across Africa while failing to acknowledge his regime’s hostility towards the existence of a free media in the Gambia. We have seen how he has virtually decimated the Gambian media through the frequent intimidation and harassment of journalists and the arbitrary closure of their media houses with complete disregard to the rule of law. Recent good cases in point are the arbitrary closure of Teranga FM, The Standard and The daily News, simply for those media choosing to report things as they saw them rather than singing praises of the regime. We have also seen that due to his regime’s hostility towards the media, virtually all the western media that used to maintain foreign correspondents and stringers in the Gambia have now withdrawn them because of the constant dangers they had been exposed to. Therefore, it is quite unfair to now turn round and blame these media for not reporting “positive developments taking place in most African countries under the pretext that they have no information on these developments.”
Of course, no professional media would allow itself to be used as a propaganda tool by any despotic regime when it is not allowed to report freely on other issues, and that is exactly what is happening in the Gambia. While the regime would be quite ready to use the media as propaganda tools to sing its praises, it would not hesitate to intimidate and harass journalists who choose to talk about its appalling governance and human rights record.
“The characterization of African Leaders as corrupt dictators must stop and external interference in our continent needs to be stopped immediately, if there is going to be any form of genuine and sustainable peace and security in Africa,” he said. Of course if African leaders like him, for instance, fail to tell their people how they acquired the huge sums of money that they frequently dish out to sycophants and praise singers, then the people are left with no alternative but to characterize the leaders as corrupt.
We have seen for instance that President Jammeh now seems much richer than the Gambian state in the sense that he virtually donates vehicles and other materials to the various departments and other government agencies worth millions of Dalasis. For instance, an article carried by his own mouth-piece, the Daily Observer of 2nd December, 2013, entitled; “Jammeh bankrolled 2012 meningitis campaign with over D37M – Health Minister” quoted the Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Omar Sey, speaking at the launch of a nation-wide meningitis campaign saying that President Jammeh sponsored it to the tune of 37 million Dalasis.
Even though President Jammeh’s salary is now kept as a state secret, contrary to the provisions of the Constitution, but there is no way that he gets all these huge amounts of money from his own salary. Therefore, unless he comes out clean to tell the people where he gets all that money, then they would be quite justified if they accuse him of engaging in corruption. Even the proceeds from his numerous farms where civil servants and other state employees are compelled to work, as well as his numerous other commercial enterprises are not sufficient to yield for him all the huge amounts of money he often brandishes around. Therefore, he definitely must have other undisclosed sources of funding.
President Jammeh also genuinely questioned “why the Western financial capitals allow African leaders to pile up wealth in their foreign bank accounts only to turn around and accuse them of corruption and freeze their wealth at the end of the day?” However, if it is true that he has also purchased an expensive property in an exclusive suburb of the US capital, Washington DC, then one wonders whether he has the moral justification to condemn those leaders who stash away money in western capitals.
“If we are serious about peace and security in Africa then we must respect African leaders and African independence. The idea that any outside institution or body can take African leaders to courts in Western countries for corruption is an insult to Africans which cannot be accepted. Africans know their leaders better than outsiders and have the power to vote such leaders out. Therefore the notion that any group can take an African leader to court for what he is alleged to have done in his country cannot and will not be tolerated,” he said.
Of course if African leaders want to be respected by the west, then they must first respect their own people rather than treating their opponents like criminals who can be harassed and locked up at the whims and caprices of the head of state. We have, for instance, just seen how some UDP militants are being harassed simply for organizing a town-hall meeting. We also witnessed how a few years ago, Femi Peters of UDP was sent to prison for one year for merely “organizing an illegal meeting” without a police permit, when the ruling APRC would not even require permit to hold meetings where and whenever they choose, and no police officer would have the guts to even question it, let alone dare refuse them permission to hold their meetings.
Of course he is quite right that Africans know their leaders better than outsiders, but do Gambians really have the power to vote him out even if they do not support him, when virtually all avenues of dissent have been closed? For instance, while the independent media has been gagged, the public media has been completely out of bounds for the opposition, while the socalled Independent Electoral Commission is controlled and manipulated from State House. Therefore, it would be quite dishonest for anyone to say that Gambians have the power to remove President Jammeh under such an unlevelled political playing field.
Under such circumstances therefore, it is incumbent on the international community, including those in the west to subject African leaders to some form of scrutiny when they are seen to trample upon the rights of their own people. It is even ironic to hear President Jammeh urge the world to “respect the institutions that we have set up under the AU and other regional organizations” when his government not only failed to respect the AU’s moratorium on the death penalty when he disregarded international appeals and went ahead with the execution of nine prisoners in 2012, but he also failed to obey an ECOWAS Community Court judgment with regards to his government’s culpability in the disappearance of Chief Ebrima Manneh. We are also next week observing the 9th anniversary of the assassination of Deyda Hydara while his regime has flatly refused to carry out any serious investigations into the matter.
Therefore, considering the situation in the Gambia, it is hard for anyone to see President Jammeh’s address as anything but an attempt to hoodwink the international community when it does not reflect the reality on the ground.