By Mathew K Jallow

Dr. Amadou S Janneh conviction

For once, the cynics proved me wrong. I admit. It was just that given the extraordinary amount of unsubstantiated prosecutorial evidence, I felt that no judge could find grounds on which to convict Dr. Amadou S Janneh. Or so I thought; rather, I hoped. I was holding our hope that at the very minimum; Dr. Janneh would come out this fracas wounded by the blatant abuse of his citizen rights, but still a free man. I was wrong; very wrong. Quite frankly, I was thrown way off guard by the allure of fair-play; charmed by some of the comments and observations Judge Emmanuel Nkea made during the trial. But these turned out to be mere rhetorical flourishes weaved in sadistic deception and delivered with provincial embellishment to project a false sense of fairness.

In hindsight, it was all empty bluster manifesting the worst of Judge Nkea’s  human instincts, but, it also sadly turned out to be the scornful amplification of the his maniacal impulses. In truth, that Judge Nkea was unmoved by moral imperatives to do the right thing, was not completely unexpected, for Gambia’s history of judicial misconduct under the imported Nigerian judges is a well documented story of unparalleled Constitutional coup that has turned our country into a lawless wasteland held captive to executive control and interference and suffocated by the corrupting power and influence of money. But, what was more astounding still was the lackadaisical manner the judge regretted not being able to impose the death sentence on Dr. Janneh. That was a devastatingly mortifying glimpse into the character of a man who with all intents and purposes has become desensitized by the imperatives of materialism to desecrate our Constitution and defecate on our law books. The idyllic life of luxury and recognition he enjoys in our country, which in his native land would, forever, remain an in-achievable dream, has taken precedence over the even-handed dispensation of justice. The mercenary character of The Gambia’s justice system is alive and well and Judge Nkea has become the true personification of this negative media characterization. Needless to say, this is compounded by a culturally entrenched system of patronage which rewards relationships at the expense of justice, and is, therefore, incompatible with the true spirit of the law. I will at a future date devote a blistering indictment of the Nigerian judges, including the clown-looking circus oddity so-called Chief Justice Emmanuel Agim who is already a felon; but for now the Coalition of Change Gambia (CCG) will concentrate on working with rights organizations and foreign government to secure the release of Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh.  The Gambian regime must be pressured to overturn the shameful condemnation of Dr. Amadou S Janneh to a life of prison for merely exercising his Constitutional rights as a patriotic citizen.

Yahya Jammeh’s African Union position bid

From the outset, it was never going to happen, and delusional as he is, no one knew that better than Yahya Jammeh himself. His brief foray into noble territory was meant to rub it on the face of the ECOWAS president the Hon. James Victor Gbeho and the Gambian people, but together and collectively we had a different idea. As soon as news of Yahya Jammeh seeking the African Union’s coveted Presidency leaked out, it created hysteria of disbelief and galvanized Civil Society Associations Gambia (CSAG) and our regional and international partners into action. It would have been an insult to Gambia’s political martyrs, Gambia’s disappeared and the entire Gambian people to reward Yahya Jammeh’s criminal behavior with a leadership of the African Union. But Yahya Jammeh withdrew his disgraceful candidature to avoid the most humiliating defeat the African Union has ever seen; this despite his readiness to do what he does best; corrupt other African leaders with millions of our national wealth in order to buy their votes. If Yahya Jammeh’s candidature was meant to humiliate ECOWAS, it will not succeed and we are waiting to present ECOWAS with a damning report before May 2012, about Gambia’s rubber-stamp National Assembly when that body takes up a case of political grievances about the November 2011 elections which Gambia’s National Assembly’s submitted for adjudication.

 The Suruwa Wawa B Jaiteh  and Dr. Badara Loum trials

Finally, this morbid chapter has come to a painful closure after years of unprecedented judicial foot-dragging. Over the years, I have intermittently mentioned the sad odysseys of Mr. Jaiteh and Dr. Loum from dedicated civil servants to victims in Yahya Jammeh’s undeclared war against Gambian intellectuals. For, due largely to the intellectual limitations posed by his minimal education, Yahya Jammeh is unwilling to populate the Gambian bureaucracy with the educated and the intellectuals; the class most likely to counter his moral and political proclivities and erratic rule with disfavor. Today, from the military and the security services to senior administration officials, Yahya Jammeh has purged the bureaucracy of Gambians with minds of their own and who in the case of our military, could eliminate him from his celestial parchment in a New York minute. In their places, Yahya Jammeh has maintained a cadre semi-educated Gambians and foreigners lacking any moral scruples, who wake up each day pinching themselves in disbelief for landing jobs they would otherwise never dream of ever getting. Today, it is my firm belief that both Mr. Jaiteh and Dr. Loum are beneficiaries in the Dr. Amadou S Janneh conviction. Because, Yahya Jammeh did not want to compound Dr. Janneh’s conviction with other high profile convictions of Mr. Jaiten and Dr. Loum, he uncharactistically let them walk despite his overwhelming propensity for sadistic vengeance on Gambians who pose a threat to his tyranny. And, now that they are free once again, the travel documents of Mr. Jaiteh and Dr. Loum must be returned in short order to enable them travel to make a living elsewhere should they choose to do so.

Secretary Hillary Clinton Vs Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wada

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. How so true! A particular picture in Maafanta Newspaper this week really embodies this truism. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sitting next to President Abdoulaye Wada of Senegal at the inauguration of Liberia’s President says it all. The way Secretary Hillary Clinton grimaced, turned her face away and ignored the aging senile Senegalese presidential candidate, is downright priceless. Hillary Clinton has a point and a good reason to be extremely steamed by the octogenarian Senegalese president for insisting on contesting elections in total disregard for the Senegalese Constitution. And needless to say, the Senegalese people agree and more still; the democracy and freedom loving people around the world will cherish the picture as an enduring piece of priceless political artfulness and a monument to liberty for the Senegalese people. Way to go Hillary!!

And President Yusu Ndure?  An absolute No No

Sometime in 1994, just before the July coup, a friend of mine; promoter extraordinaire, the connoisseur of beauty and the glamorous, a man of social sophistication and taste for the exquisite, the person who singlehandedly set the trend for Gambia’s nightlife today, the indomitable Mr. Abdul Aziz Willan, invited me from the Daily Observer to host a press conference at the then brand new Waw Nightclub near Senegambia Beach Hotel. The subject of the interview was the music superstar Yusu Ndure. I had, of course, seen Yusu Ndure in concert once long before that at the now long defunct Bambo Nightclub then located on the Serekunda-Sukuta highway not far from the Serekunda police station. Yusu Ndure was starting off with his music career and was still not yet the full-blown star he is now; not in The Gambia and not even in Senegal. But there was no doubt he had the talent and the gift of music the world has come to acknowledge. I agreed to moderate the press conference and went to meet Yusu Ndure at Badala Hotel and later proceeded to Waw Nightclub. Abdul Aziz Willan has recently completed building Waw Nightclub from scratch and he often invited me there before and after his friend, late George Senghore, Waw Nightclub’s proprietor returned from Germany. The Gambian media was on hand and the press conference concluded after an hour. We socialized and chatted for a while after that, and Yusu Ndure left for Dakar, Senegal the following day. The story here is that I like all the people of my generation love Yusu’s music and some of us met and socialized a little with him and we would prefer he stay moored to his music and expand Africa’s presence in the world musically. But for him to dabble in politics is an absolute no no for me too. In this regard I stand humbly on the side of the distinguished Professor, Sulayman Nyang of Howard University, who in a recent Freedom Newspaper story made his views about Yusu Ndure’s political aspirations known to all and sundry.

Oh Christ; it is Halifa Sallah against the world

I do not know the genesis of the tiff embroiling Foroyaa’s management and its writers, but what I do know is that Halifa Sallah’s bare-knuckle approach and his emotional and aggravated response to the demands of his staff has exposed a side of Mr. Sallah hitherto cleverly masked behind the legendary façade of messianic infallibility and virgin-like  perfection, which, both Mr. Sallah and his hardnosed in-doctrinaire supporters had peddled with gusto and chronic mindlessness over all these years. After thirty year of docile subservience by his army of intellectually vulnerable followers, Halifa Sallah has shown himself unable to withstand any opposition to his “moral and intellectual personification of the perfect being.” Welcome to the real world Halifa Sallah; the world of human foibles and imperfections; the world of Yeses but also of Nos. Halifa Sallah has ridden the cloud of fantasy for far too long, now is time for him to come down to earth and deal with the real world where we all live in with our shortcomings; the world where we are adored but not worshipped; where we are looked up to but reviled as well. To any longer pretend to take the aura of a deity sitting on a celestial cloud where only fantasy and human imagination can reach, will only erode his standing and what is left of his political clout. For some of the things attributed to Halifa Sallah are so revealing in their pettiness, it is hard to believe a man of his age would stoop so low in dealing with young people who have had high regard for the Halifa Sallah they no longer know or recognize.

The Parliamentary election of 2012

The fiasco of the recently ended presidential elections still hangs in the air and ECOWAS is adamant that the political climate in the country is not conducive to holding a free and fair electoral process, and Gambians agree with this assessment. It goes without saying, therefore, that one would think the opposition will refuse to participate in any elections until the issue of the last elections are resolved with agreeable finality. Gambians at home and abroad were, therefore, taken aback when the main opposition UDP opined it will be a participant in the coming National Assembly elections, ignoring the need to resolve the issue of stolen election of November 2011. In any elections that the Gambia’s opposition participates, will be a legitimization of the regime of Yahya Jammeh. Consequently, one would think that it stand to reason that given the unresolved issues surrounding the last elections, the opposition would boycott the parliamentary elections. Apart from that, a dark cloud hangs over what is left of The Gambia’s democracy and this was echoed by Yahya Jammeh’s Maid-in-chief, Isatou Njie-Saidy who recently called a total sweep of the forty-eight electoral seats in the Assembly by the ruling AFPRC military party of Yahya Jammeh. Given the level and depth of the voter intimidation and the emasculation of the Gambian electorate by the regime, it is possible that after the Assembly elections, not a single opposition parliamentarian will in the National Assembly, effectively turning The Gambian into a one-party state. Moreover, there is absolutely no upside in opposition participation in the Assembly elections unless the parties know something they are not telling us. It is not our responsibility to pass moral judgment; we believe led by the Hon. Ousainou Darboe, the opposition, should take a position, stick to it and espouse it loudly and persistently for the entire world to hear. That in my opinion is what our opposition leaders ought to be doing rather than contesting elections that will only legitimize Yahya Jammeh and his regime and leave ECOWAS leaders and Gambia’s Diaspora dissidents like holding the bag.

Question of the day

We know Yahya Jammeh has completely Jolanized the upper echelon of Gambia’s entire civil service, but has he also Jolanized the military and ancillary security forces or is he still doing so? We will find out.