Mariama Denton For President of National Unity
By Baati Jollof
Unite or Perish! so ran an inscription on a mythical marble, once said to adorn the foot of Mount Olympus. Also on that marble was the image of a big snake suddenly dismembered from the middle by an
angry goddess. On Mount Olympus students of Western mythology will remember lived Zeus, the patriarch of the Greek deities. Unite
or Perish were the words the goddess uttered to the snake after
dismembering it into two. It was a challenge to the snake whose two
parts must unite and live or remain separated and Die.
Comrades,
Countrymen and Countrywomen, our beloved country, The Gambia faces one of her greatest challenges as a nation in the next few days to come. The September 22 presidential elections in the Gambia
will without doubt be recorded as the second most important event in
our national history after the attainment of our independence from
British dominance on February 18, 1965. Whatever the outcome of the
elections there are bound to be very significant consequences. A
victory of a united opposition against the brutal and inhumane
murderous regime of Yahya Jammeh will herald a tremendous vibration of
joy, freedom, liberty, justice, self respect, pride and peace through
out the length and breadth of the country. On the other hand, an,
intimidated and manipulated victory for Yahya will spell doom to our
beloved country. With
Yahya at the helm of things for another five years our country will
go through the path of what most of us do not wish to see or hear
about, but which in the analysis of all indications is the absolute
reality- an armed struggle to oust Jammeh .
At
this juncture, our country is at the brink of crossing the Rubicon and
for the Gambia to regain her pride and dignity amongst the nations of
the world, we as honest Gambians must stand firm and choose Good over
Evil, irrespective of religion, tribe, gender, greed and all such
negative affiliations that had for the past twelve years crept slowly
into the fabrics of our society. As I have said before on this forum,
the twelve years of Jammehs misrule had breed incompetence in our
country. The stagnant, derailing and half dead economy, the collapsed agricultural, finance, education
and energy sectors, are basically as a result of incompetent policies
that are orchestrated by incompetent personalities in the Jammeh
cabinet, who, over clouded by greed, self-centredness, personal
aggrandisement and the search for cheap popularity continue to
disregard their human dignities and values by continuously prostrating
at the alter of sinfulness in order to satisfy the whims and caprices
of an atheists and animist self proclaimed demi-god.
The
opposition must iron out their differences and present a single
candidate in order to oust Jammeh in September, failing which, they
stand no chance. Since the inception of NADD there had been a lot of
disagreement on the issue of the flag bearer. Well
as politicians there have been an urge for these veterans to have a
final go at it, and hence the desire to have one more chance at the
final round. However, we have come to a point when the need to
sacrifice had to out weigh any such personal ambition, if we are truly
determined to oust Jammeh through the polls. Hence
if the members of the political inner caucus cannot decide on a flag
bearer among themselves then there is nothing wrong in looking at the
larger caucus. In this regard and in my humble view, lawyer Mariama
Denton can serve as a suitable presidential candidate for the all
important September elections and to lead the nation through the
transition stage after the Jammeh era. Thus,
Mariama Denton, like the great Madiba, Nelson Mandela, should be seen
and utilised as the unifying factor and the common denominator that
will cement and bound the opposition and the oppressed people of The
Gambia together, in our ultimate desire of rooting out evil,
extrajudicial killings, corruption, injustice, tribalism and
incompetence. Hence, Mariama Denton for President of National Unity.
Recently,
I was deeply troubled by the opinions of a friend, who kept telling me
that voting or no voting Jammeh has already won the elections. I
could not just phantom this grave and deadly defeatist mentality, so I
decided to tread cautiously among some of my nephews, grandchildren and
their friends at the attaya vous and at the street junctions on the
Bang warrus. I was stunned by the level of consciousness displayed by some of these youths. Our
discussions were just wonderful and hopeful. These desperate youths
told me Uncle we have now also learn how to play the survival game. We
will join in the bandwagon, attend the barbeques on the beach, don the
t-shirts and the asohbis, collect the monies given for the ataya, and
yet still our minds have already been made up. Jammeh has simply failed
this nation and there is no way that we can vote for him. The
majority of those you see at the beach shouting jammeh jammeh have no
love for him in their hearts, for in their silent moments they do pray
that Allah will give him a speedy and timely dead in his sleep, for
this is the president that had killed our school mates, tortured our
brothers and loved ones to paralysis, forced our brothers and sisters
to go to exile, maimed a number of civilians and continued to instil
fear in us with the threat of death. The sooner he goes the better. We know where to put our votes.
This is indeed a welcome revelation. The
majority of the citizens definitely do not want Jammeh as president
anymore but fear just cannot allow the majority to demonstrate this
openly. Like the leaders of the failed states,
Yahya Jammeh has proved to be maddeningly uneducable and has compounded
the nations problems with his wastefulness, draining the countrys
finances and deliberately looting the treasury with the help of the
sinful and shameless acolytes like former convict, Lang Conteh and
presently Alieu Ngum and Farama Jatta, to the point that we are at the
brink of economic catastrophe. Despite the hardship that we experience
daily in this country, struggling to feed our families, Jammeh had
somehow succeeded through his propaganda machinery in staving the
citizenry from the truth and feeding us with a diet of lies. He has
entangled himself in a cobweb of lies and self contradictions, shifting
the blame for failures to his shameful secretaries of state, project directors and to some extent senior civil servants. Most of the time we at the civil service carry the burden. Like
the conscious youths therefore, we also know where to put our votes.
This time around, the price of the bride has been paid and accepted,
but there will be no wedding. No matter the
type of manipulation and intimidation, Jammeh cannot just withstand a
united opposition. There is hope, as the writing is very evident on the
wall.
Presently,
there is no sane Gambian that has not noticed the visible cracks within
the Jammeh administration, and most especially his most adored
institution, the military. It is becoming more apparent that the centre
can no longer hold and things are beginning to crumble rapidly in
Jammehs face. Jammeh no longer has complete control of the military,
neither does any of his stooge officers command any respect from the
gallant rankers. The
continuous disappearance of seasoned commissioned officers from the
national army and the callous and brutish extermination of some of the
nations finest officers have begin to wield a strong bond amongst the
rank and file of the military and some senior officers who have seen
their superiors and colleagues severely tortured and brutalised to
death under the orders of Jammeh. Jammeh and his
inner circle of murders under the leadership of Captain Musa Jammeh are
not only evil; they are the mindlessness of evil made flesh.
Fallen
officers like Major Kalipha Banjinka, one time henchman of the Jammeh
regime and the chief arsonist, had finally gone into exile signalling
that Jammeh does not even trust those he called his friends and that
he will always find a way of eliminating you after you have done a lot
of nasty things for him. The obvious reason is that you know too much
and hence you are branded as a dangerous element. This has been the
fate of Lieutenant Ebrima Camara, Almao Manneh, Sergent Dumbuya, Daba
Marena, Abdoulie Kujabi, Kemo Balajo and most recently Bamba Saho and
some others whose fate are not known. So
is killing for Jammeh worth it after all? This is a vexed question that
the senior members of the security forces should try and answer for
sooner rather than later those that have perpetrated injustice in the
name of orders from Jammeh will be tried in a court of law and
brought to justice.
The Gambia
cannot afford to be ruled by Jammeh for another five years. This is a
fact. Jammeh has already messed up the sub-region by dinning with
rebels and trading in arms with dissidents, while at the homefront he
continued his blackmail about patriotism. The Cassamance situation has
been intensified and fuelled by Jammeh for the past decade, by giving
arms and shelter to misfits like Alexandra Gibba and Salif Sadio. Jammeh had also meddled in the political affairs of Guinea Bissau by channelling arms to dissident groups in that country. He
has been an associate and accomplice of Charles Taylor and most
recently he has started to finalise his plans to design an axis of
evil in the sub- region by shamefully inviting Chavez and Ahmandinajad
to the Gambia.
If
the opposition therefore fails to put up a single candidate for the
upcoming election, then Jammeh will have to be eventually tackled by
our gallant sons in the armed forces, who will send him out through the
same door that he came in. This is inevitable. It
is a very threatening and disheartening prognosis, but it cannot be
ruled out in the present circumstances. A popular uprising against
Jammeh is bound to occur in the spate of more killings and
disappearances. Jammeh MUST go in the interest
of national and regional peace. The opposition, therefore, have a very
crucial role to play in shaping the future of our dear country. A
failure to unite and present a single candidate for the presidential
elections, is a signal to the armed forces to move forward by any
means necessary to oust Jammeh once and for all and give back to The
Gambia her Dignity and Pride.
History will never forgive the opposition, if they pave the way for the second emergence of the military in the Gambias political history. Let us act now and fast.
Editors note:Thanks Baati
Jollof, for the master piece. As a point of observation, Baati Jollof is
expressing his personal opinion on the current state of affairs and his
views do not represent the position of the Freedom Newspaper. He is
entitled to his God given right to free expression. Baati speaks his
mind and we commend him for that. Meanwhile, a close relative of Mariam
Jack Denton says the veteran human rights lawyer harbored no Presidential ambition. The said
relative named withheld told the Freedom Newspaper that Baati
Jollof's piece was pretty good, but clarified that Maraim was not
eying for the Presidency. Mariam Denton Jack suffered all kinds of
persecution and humiliations under Jammeh's rule. Paranoid Jammeh hate
the lady because of her commitment to fight injustice and human rights
violations in the Gambia.