By Mathew K Jallow
When vote count announcements ended abruptly, after mid-night, there was a sense that sinister shenanigans were at work behind the deafening silence. And sure enough, they were. The Gambia, plunged in massive social media blackout, compelled diaspora citizens to utilize alternative platforms of accessing information from the motherland. By early morning, however, evidence of a political earthquake in The Smiling Coast of West Africa left Gambians and non-Gambians alike completely speechless. The Coalition of political parties had won the elections. Gambia was at last free.
And in so many ways, it felt like Berlin revisited; or better still, Abidjan, 2011. The invisible wall of political tyranny in the Gambia came tumbling down, crashing to the ground like the thunder of thousand ocean swells. And before long, the overflowing streets and alleyways turned into a giant canvas of groggy and sleepless mass of humanity, celebrating a rare, but well deserved victory, in a land of pain and unfathomable misery. The celebrations of coalition electoral victory quickly transformed the reveling crowds into a rhapsody of jubilation, where joyous citizens absorbed the significance of the political quake, which heralded in the sudden end to Gambia’s cruel autocracy and totalitarian regime. As total strangers hugged, embraced, kissed, wept for joy, just stood dazed, or stared listlessly into each other’s faces, the dawn of new life in Gambia, suddenly turned years of hope into a moment of joy and bliss. The political nightmare in Gambia had come to an abrupt end. A nation subverted by political acrimony and self-serving tribal divisions, was again on the path to self-redemption. The sights, sounds, and smells of the new Gambia permeated the sensibilities of a people long lost to the dementia of tribalism and political hostilities. And on the alleys, streets and avenues of Greater Banjul and the large Serekunda metropolis, the symbols of tyranny; the larger than life billboards and stone statues of Yahya Jammeh’s image were plunged to the ground and broken into a thousand little pieces, or incinerated to ashes and into total oblivion. In a strange kind of way, Banjul was reminisce of Bagdad, where the nauseating sight of the marble statues of Saddam Hussein, pelted and crushed to the ground, have forever disappeared from the conscience of history. Read More