The High Treason of Elizabeth Renner, Speaker of The Gambia’s Assembly

By The Watchman

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the coven of 3 witches confuse the ambitious general by manipulating his desire for power. He eventually commits murder, loses his even more ruthless wife and eventually perishes in battle. The Gambia’s version of 3 witches includes the muzzled Fatou Jahumpa Ceesay, the consummate survivor and cabinet insider Isatou Njie-Saidy and the newly minted House Speaker Elizabeth Renner. Of all these high profile female boosters of APRC infamy, Elizabeth Renner by dint of her intellect, conscience and background should be deemed the most dangerous and repulsive.

History is replete with examples of brutal regimes killing hordes of intellectuals and other elites upon assumption of power. The Khmer Rouge did it during a killing spree that lasted from 1975 to 1979 and Stalin’s thugs in the NKVD executed a significant chunk of the Polish intelligentsia during the Katyn massacre of 1940. Because of the evolution of international law and other external, uncontrollable forces such as an alert, ubiquitous international press, African strongmen like Yahya Jammeh have been coerced to choose from 2 options: brutalize stubborn members of the bourgeoisie at the risk of severe global isolation or co-opt them into the fold that is the oppressive nature of their fiefs. The APRC chief has chosen the latter and so far his calculus has been proven right as shown by the impressive haul of once respectable public intellectuals into his wide conspiracy to overrun the last vestiges of Gambian democracy.

Enter Elizabeth Renner the former vice principal and eventual head of Banjul’s legendary Saint Augustine’s High School. During her tenure at this Gambian institute of leadership development, Ms. Renner impressed students with her poise, confidence, ability to hold her own within a male dominate bastion and most of all, her effortless intelligence. One had to prepare for her classes especially on English Literature. One had to be well spoken and articulate if one had an issue (pressing or not) to present to her in her official quarters. Due to her awareness of the influence her actions can have on impressionable, testosterone-filled young men, she also conveyed a sense of moral authority by her demand that students work hard, play fair and be exemplary citizens their country can be proud of.

The so-called “Honorable” Elizabeth Renner through her work syllabus at SAINTS is very familiar with the theme and realities of oppression. One of the books she analyzed with attentive pupils was Mariam Ba’s “So Long a Letter” which explores the issue of male domination, how it impacts African women and the social construct of Senegalese culture at the time which the protagonists of the book find severely wanting for the progress of women. Taking into consideration the salacious behavior of Yahya Jammeh towards women, his demeaning use of women to feign respect for their role in government, his disgraceful and unwarranted persecution of women journalists like Fatou Jaw Manneh and his insane habit of using women as biological props in his “cure” for AIDS, it behooves one to ask why a supposedly enlightened Elizabeth Renner closed ranks with a misogynist, shameful APRC government."

One could attribute this alliance to an urgent need to fill a much needed civil servant vacancy, a supposition which would have carried much weight had it not been for the grim truth that no one is indispensable in the musical chairs that is Yahya Jammeh’s penchant for schizophrenic staffing practices.

One can speculate that Yahya Jammeh’s entreaties to Ms. Renner for her acceptance of the role of Speaker came with an undercurrent of menace that made it hard to refuse, which on the face of it might be somewhat credible except for the fact that Ms. Renner has a gravitas and class that would have made the stupid APRC honcho balk at treating her that shabbily.

One might be tempted to conclude that Elizabeth Renner entered a Faustian Bargain with the Devil in exchange for her soul but her actions make one suspect that she lost her soul a long time ago, prepping herself to join an evil regime without hesitation or remorse.

In throwing in her lot with the painfully embarrassing APRC Gambian government, Speaker Renner has betrayed the admirable values she espoused and inculcated in thousands of young men and women in her ward. She has retarded the growth of Gambian women by explicitly sending the signal that it is okay for women to play second fiddle to men and encourage the brutish exploitation of restless Gambians by a resented totalitarian system. And apparently she has never heard of Joan of Arc.

The sum of these actions by Elizabeth Renner is treason, treachery and criminal neglect of the democratic aspirations of The Gambia’s silent, suffering majority.

And no amount of equivocation on her part will obscure the truth.

Gambiaswatchman@gmail.com