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NADD: The End of Secret Diplomacy
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NADD: The End of Secret Diplomacy
NADD: The End of Secret Diplomacy
By Foday Samateh
State and sub-state actors share a multiplicity of overlapping interests on a wide range of common issues covering national, bilateral, and multilateral concerns. That reality puts diplomacy necessarily among the first order of business of governments.
But diplomacy, while a fact of governance, is not an end in itself. It is a means, the outcome of which depends on the approach. From the vertical measure of time to the horizontal experience across nations, the lesson is: governments that use diplomacy responsibly and legitimately find it an invaluable asset for securing national interests and at the same time strengthening democracy. The converse is also true: governments that use diplomacy recklessly or deceptively incur in it a costly liability at the expense of the long term interests of their respective nations.
In the three-way race in this September presidential election in The Gambia, NADD is the only candidate for the progressive order of diplomacy, while the APRC and UDP belong, regrettably, to the undesirable elements. Facts? You bet there are plentiful and they are overwhelmingly strong.
Twelve years in the State House, Yayha Jammeh’s Town-boy diplomacy is worse than any other form. It is disconcerting, disenchanting, and depressing. Thanks to unintended candor in his never-ending temperamental tirades, one sees through his penchant for secret government a stuffed effigy blindly bumping the vacant bright space of absent leader into dark hollow and with it, the natural order of things. Again and again, he acts the role of the “poor player that struts and frets …upon the stage,” and so we eagerly wait for the hour he will be heard no more at the helm. We are sick and tired of watching a display of the man lost in his own bubble. His total disregard for judgment is the undoing of diplomatic pragmatism and his stubborn defiance against reality is a self-defeating brinkmanship. He brags that he is a mature man and has no use for policy advisers. He vows to kill twenty thousand Gambians and sleep in his bed like a baby. He swears that the ultimatum for warning has been passed, and the promised lesson to discipline Gambians must come to pass as well. Compatriots, this is a small sample product of the man 12 years in power. Give him 12,000 years and he would only get worse. We deserve better!
Those who can’t wait for this out-of-control storm to subside must realize that the danger it carries may not die off with it. The intensity may be less frenzy, the velocity less speedy, and the direction somewhat different. But the danger may survive the present storm. And not to be beaten hard and shy twice, The Gambia must prepare in advance to prevent the cyclonic wind of the UDP gathering to blow secret diplomacy on the path of deception. We do not need the weatherman to tell us the devastation this new wind will leave in its wake. Lawyer Darboe and Hamat Bah have made a secret deal to contest the election on a single ticket. They signed no communiqué. They invited no journalist to report the proceedings of their conference. They issued no press statement out of their meeting. The nation was left in the dark, but was told to believe that the two men made an unconditional gentleman’s agreement. Never has any great situation arisen when politicians tell the people trust us but we can’t trust you. Lawyer Darboe and Hamat Bah do not want to be transparent. They have no desire for accountability. And they would not set any benchmarks for performance. Remember, they want power and would not tell the people their true intentions. Then how could we possibly expect them to tell us how and why they exercise power when they have it? Two men agreed in secret concert to take charge of the fate our nation, but they would not tell us the terms of that secret agreement. Trust us but don’t bother about verifying our commitments, they say by their deafening muteness. These are men of secret diplomacy. The Gambia beware, two Cassius are too dangerous for any Rome!
Members of the jury, this coalition is not only built in a cloud of mystery, but it operates in a deliberate pattern of secret negotiations. A case in point? Hamat Bah, in his eagerness to impress people with nonbinding lofty promises, is on record that he has signed a secret contract with a secret British company to solve Gambia’s electricity problem, adding for good measure that this secret company already has a secret history of success with two African countries, whose names he keeps in secret. Remember Laurent Kabila, the last man who did such a secret thing before coming to power in the DR Congo. But more importantly, remember the endgame for Kabila. What mandate has Hamat Bah to sign anything on behalf of the Gambia, and especially in secret? This calls for official investigation. Did Hamat Bah not publicly take the Secretary of Interior, Momodou Bojang, to task over a no-bid contract only a few short years ago? Few years can indeed be a very long time ago in politics.
And while Hamat Bah was traveling across the United States making those impressions and attacking the character of the NADD leaders, Lawyer Darboe was soliciting secret negotiations with these honorable men for a much needed comeback into the unity opposition from which he unconscionably broke away. But it is by now clear to all and sundry that in UDP/NRP dictionary, double standard is plain shrewdness, and contradiction, a policy of consistence. Two Cassius are too dangerous for any Rome!
Where APRC is completely reckless, the UDP/NRP is intentionally deceitful. The Gambia deserves better! Look to NADD. Vote for open diplomacy. Vote NADD this September.
(This is the Second in a series of Ten Articles.)
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Posted on Sunday, August 13, 2006 (Archive on Monday, August 28, 2006)
Posted by PNMBAI Contributed by PNMBAI
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