By Mathew K Jallow
The concurrent meetings were bound to happen; and to happen at this time, at this moment. With the festering economic hardship and international pressure mounting on Yahya Jammeh, Gambia’s feckless regime needed saving grace, and they got it; not once, but twice. Certainly, the agreements the European Union and the Senegalese government reached with Gambia’s sanguinary regime are still unclear, but Gambians remain tepid, yet securely tethered to the hope that they will not again be victimized by the EU and Senegal’s lowering of rights standards or gratuitous surrender of their core beliefs to banal pressures of diplomatic expediency. The crushing weight of mounting political pressure and the unflattering irreverence of the Gambia’s corrupt regime, resonate with a history that has crossed every known boundary of acceptable behavior. The Gambian regime, in deep denial of the smoldering bitterness over the total lack of freedom in the country, has osterchized itself into a pariah nation by the force of its political rigidity and undeniable misantrophism. Additionally, Yahya Jammeh’s mortifying indifference to Gambians craving rapid political change, exemplify his total disregard of the social, cultural and economic realities that have reduced normal daily life in Gambia into dreamful aspirations.
By themselves, the EU and Senegal’s meetings with the regime were striking examples of Yahya Jammeh’s insidious disregard of the intellectual depth and competency Gambia requires in the art of governance. In the bilateral meeting last week, the EU delegates demonstrated high level of professionalism, and their group sharply contrasted the hodge-podge cabal of Gambian delegates, most of who looked more like oddities at California’s Disneyland theme park. Under Yahya Jammeh, the Gambia has come to symbolize the assault on competence and excellence, thus reducing the civil service and bureaucracy to unnerving intellectual mediocrity. Yahya Jammeh’s unilateral decision-making and Gambia’s brilliant manifestation of incompetence, which runs deep in every level of the bureaucracy, are hamstringing Gambia’s development to further plunge the country in terrifying apocalyptic economic distress. Further, the prosecution and maligning of innocent Gambians with high levels of education and intellectual depth, are Yahya Jammeh instigated subterfuges that speaks to his dangerous tribal xerophobia. Yahya Jammeh’s regime has demonstrated deep commitment to institutionalized bigotry towards the Gambia’s embattled majority tribes, the intellectual class and dissident Jolas who understand the pernicious ramifications of vilifying innocent Gambian tribes; in particular Fulas and Mandinkas.
The absurdity of Yahya Jammeh’s intransigence and the hopelessness of his one dimensional thinking, insults Gambians’ primordial instincts for freedom; the holy grail of human existence. Beyond that, Yahya Jammeh’s Ghaddifisque political undertones are more a manifestation of Napoleonic intellectual deficiency and the catastrophic embellishment of his political standing than a true reflection of the reality of his political isolation and susceptibility to removal from office. Since coming to power, Yahya Jammeh populated the bureaucracy with often barely literate individuals, and sometimes with persons who lack the education and experience to handle positions assigned to them. In Gambia, the culture of mediocrity has seeped into every level of the civil service, making failure a function of the absolute lack of intellectual capacity. And today, Gambia’s severe economic challenges are textbook signs of failure to address the jarring poverty and the impoverished population’s fearsome ability to vent their frustration. Last week, just after EU delegates met their Gambian counterparts to hash out important national issues, Yahya Jammeh showed his underhandedness and contempt for the European body by passing a draconian media Bill that seeks to muzzle speech and censure the use of the Internet. This divergence from international norms only adds injury to the culture of musical chairs, intellectual midgtry, and pernicious mediocrity in Yahya Jammeh’s Gambia.