A Plea to President Barrow & V.P. Darboe
By Ousman Manjang
Gambians were not yet fully done thanking their stars for the way they were able to get rid of a twenty-two year virulent dictatorship without spilling any blood and without much collateral damage, when signs of disunity and much rumpus began to be noticed within the ruling circle in Banjul. Evidence of these were soon confirmed in front of the public by politicians from the different parties constituting the coalition government.
This sparked off the rumour mills into full gear when a cabinet reshuffle in early 2017that was considered by many to be premature, and many others to be imperative for a conducive cabinet make-up, led to the dismissal of some of the leading coalition partners from cabinet and with this, an end to the popular belief or illusion that there was any coalition government.
That cabinet reshuffling made many to give up on the hope of any final redemption being just around the corner, feasible and attainable and on the way coming. Though it is now only two years since the ouster of the Jammeh autocracy, its bloody structures of repression and its kleptocratic web of Kanilai Family Farms, we are yet to attain that quality of a successor-leadership that makes us sleep well when we go to bed.
Since the overthrow of the Jammeh autocracy our ship of state seems to have been caught in stormy waters with not a single week passing without it being rocked through to its hulk by all from bickering, back-stabbing and infighting among the politicians at the top, and allegations of official corruption, nepotism and self-enrichment by all below. If the alarm was not about tensions among the ruling circle itself it was of commotions within or between communities.
It was not fully even a year since the cabinet reshuffle, yet we are being forced to again hold our breath, this time , not in nervous anticipation of the outcome of a cabinet reshuffle but over fears of a break of the main axis of the coalition government, that is to say between the Father and the Son, namely Vice President Darboe and his Excellency President Barrow. Such a rupture threatens not only the amicable ties between the two most important men in our politics but, but stability in our government and peace in our country and sub-region.
It is now only two years since Barrow’s government came to power. Though Barrow government has brought us some major achievements like improving the supply of electricity, ending our international isolation dismantling Jammeh’s system of repression, bringing about the rule of law and, reducing budgetary allocations to the presidency, reducing domestic borrowing and beginning to spur growth figures that we had not seen since 2013 Most other things remain the same and the prospects for more and better jobs for the chronically unemployed young remain as elusive as ever.
Elusive also are the chances of revitalizing agriculture, raising tourist arrivals and occupancy rates for hotels, reforming the civil service, the security services and the school system and revamping the health and medical sectors, to mention only a few.
Right now, as this article is being authored, groundnut farmers groundnut farmers wonder what to do with their stock of newly harvested groundnuts. Groundnut farmers, everyone’s punching bag, are being compelled to sell their products on credit as the so-called Food Security Agency or whatever the former Gambia Groundnut Corporation, GGC, is now called, continues marking time and doing nothing. All these continue while our elected government quiver and wobble as a muddled administration without any direction and out of touch with the realities of life in The Gambia.
Coalition governments everywhere and under all circumstance are not without their own sets of problems. But ours seem more prone to problems than what is usual. though many say such shortcomings are not out of order. From start the coalition partners looked a hopeless lot. They could not even agree on how long the new administration was to stay in office, the terms of its office, the purpose and programme of its mandate, etc, etc.
Coalitions everywhere are prone to being rocked astray by disagreements, rivalries and endless squabbles. This is often particularly so if government offices are almost always thronged full with favor-seeking personal friends, relatives and other idlers.
True, not much water has run under the bridge yet. But there is now little doubt that things, as they now develop between Barrow and Darboe are not all that well. They even look like they can go for each other’s throat at any moment. For those of us who have and their ilk for nearly two decades, through half a dozen attempts, tried to coax these politicians into an effective opposition alliance (with all praises due to the memories of blessed people like the late Hon. Alhagy Assan Musa Camara) the current woes rocking their attempts at even transient unity come with only a little surprise.
The parties, or better say, groups, groupings and even quasi-groups, with some of a make little better than a one-man show, were made of different clay; propelled by deferring dynamics and heading for different goals. and purposes. Bringing such parties together anywhere has never been easy, even in more developed societies.
But Gambian attempts at coalition or alliance-building since the legislative elections of the 1940s had looked for ever untenable, delicate or bristle. Anthropologists must help explain why certain people or cultures, like Gambians, are not that good at partnering with each other. Gambians are not good at partnering with each other, or with any other one, even though the tiny nature of the country, the scarcity of its resources dictates syndicating and partnering. Try to remember other commercial or business partnerships or syndicates apart from Cham & Secka of the mid seventies or Quantum Associate of the nineties.
Cultures or societies that are not good at hosting partnerships or syndicates in economic endeavors very often would not be good at doing so in other sectors like politics, arts, or in other human affairs, many observers agree.
Twenty-two years of the type of bloody tyranny we underwent, particularly one steeped in magic, witchcraft, tribalism and obscurantism and rampant state-supervised thievery is no small matter. Few countries or even communities, in Africa or elsewhere, could have gone through such protracted trauma like what we went through with Jammeh yet come out of it with so little damage.
In some it would have been sufficient cause for decades of civil wars, inter-ethnic conflict, national disintegrations, system collapse or hosts of other nonsensical inter-communal wars. But alas! Gambians were able to survive it with territory intact, courage emboldened and faith in the future strengthened.
Cheers are definitely due to our cadre of opposition politicians for all their efforts in the ouster of the Jammeh regime but do let us not forget that not all cheers are owed to them. Let us not for once forget that without Jammeh and his Electoral Amendment Act of 2015 no coalition of the Second Republican opposition parties could have been possible.
It was Jammeh’s overplay of his card and own downfall not the sober and mature approach of the opposition leaders. The politicians could not look beyond themselves to see the bigger picture of the nation andits long-suffered people.
Without the introduction of the 2015 Electoral Amendment Act 2015,the murder of Solo Sandeng and the imprisonment of Ousainou Darboe and his resultant disappearance from the political scene it is doubtful that any grand coalition could have been possible. What nearly twenty long years of mediation, coaxing, dozens of conferences and scores of meetings could not bring about Present Jammeh succeeded in doing almost instantly with his electoral amendment act.
By the close of 2014, Yahya Jammeh had come to believe that Gambians in general and their voters in particular could never be talked into voting or pushing him out of power.
If religion is the opium of the masses, the absolute exercise of power and its cult is the opium of tyrants. But opium befuddles the mind, so when President Jammeh , out of the blue, came up with the 2015 Electoral Amendment Act, he did not see it as a possible shot to his own foot.
The whole package of amendments called for by the Act would have abruptly made most parties unqualified for registration under the new provisions and perhaps ended the career of a whole generation of career politicians.
On top of that only a few of the parties had even the financial resources to be registered much less to pay for the fantasy sums required for nominations in elections. So coalition building now remained the only viable option as far as the opposition political parties and leaders were concerned,
The second shot the then president took on his foot was to arrest Ousainou Darboe and sent him to jail. Ousainou Darboes’s absence, behind bars, made the whole project of coalition-building more feasible.
Personally, Darboe’s principle-steadfastness, his stern disposition that is easily mistaken for haughtiness or even snobbishness, made him an uneasy bed-fellow in the eyes of many of his opposition peers.
As leader of the biggest opposition party, built by a group of people who then searched for a person to lead them, second only to the PPP of earlier years, unlike the rest of the parties which were formed by and around individual personalities who could decide over everything concerning the party, Darboe faced a big task convincing a stubborn group of original members who were dead set against coalition with many of the other opposition parties so Darboe had to spend lots of time and effort to win their support.
Few among the opposition peers were aware of these difficulties so many wrongly suspected him of being against coalition building, even a former class mate and personal friend, O.J. Jallow of the PPP, happened to have been the most skeptical and critical of the UDP leader.
No wonder, the two were rumoured to not have been on talking terms at the time of the forming of the first post-Jammeh cabinet. This was because in the wake of Darboe’s arrest many among UDP supporters had blamed Hon. O. J. Jallow (together with US-based Diaspora anti-Jammeh group called DUGA) for misleading the young UDP party militant, Solo Sandeng, into a reckless, unauthorized demonstration, that led to Sandeng’s arrest and eventual murder followed by the arrests and detention of the whole UDP leadership in April 2016, Darboe included, and about another two dozen party militants who were badly brutalized and some of the women raped.
This is enough to make anyone go haywire! But if this was why Vice President Ousainou Darboe really went so, and that this was why he came out from jail vehemently denouncing the three-year term agreement threatening even to take it to court, and also if he was behind the 2017 cabinet reshuffle only to get rid of O. J. from the cabinet, Mr. Darboe might have been sent out of his normal element. Leaders must rarely lose their calm, be able to forgive and even forget so that they are able to master all their reactions to political happenstances though we are all only humans.
Even if he had known Mr. Barrow personally and sufficiently enough to trust him that was no justifiable reason for seeking to dismiss the three-year term limit that was a centerpiece of the coalition manifesto for the past presidential election. May be the Vice President looked at the matter with legal lenses that I cannot see with but in my layman’s perspective no constitutional provision can deprive a president from resigning from his position before sitting for five years. Shortening a presidential term is a small sacrifice citizen’s can pay for peacefully doing away with an autocracy as bad as that of Jamme’s.
I have utmost respect for Vice President Ousainou Darboe, having had several chances of observing him from close quarters as he manages several important push and pulls inside his party, I must say I have utmost respect for Mr. Darboe personally.
As for the enigmatic President Barrow, I have never had the honour of meeting him. But in between September and October 2016 many UDP militants then closed to UDP founder, Alhagy Jobe Kanteh were calling me to have me file an application for nomination to be a UDP candidate for the flag bearer of the coalition. I was then sick in bed at a Swedish hospital and my doctor advised against it.
When I was informed of the selection of Adama Barrow as their candidate and my informant replied that only Barrow knew who he himself was. To this I laughed but said, “Give Barrow another six months as president and he wouldn’t even recognize himself.” On New year’s eve, one of the men who called me in 2017, called to remind me these words of mine, adding that he thought Barrow would be sacking Darboe in his New year’s address that same night.
One thing I must pray His Excellency Barrow to have in mind is that: Though we could become better learned by other men’s learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom. Many of those who now pose as well-wishers and do throng his offices most of the time are up to no good despite having a say on everything.
The President must ask where were they when the UDP and the rest of the opposition was being denounced, persecuted and suppressed? What are they really up to? Only two years ago when the President released Darboe and his mates from jail, he called Darboe his father I wonder what changed him to look like someone who can sack the UDP leader from cabinet if he is caught sabotaging his government’s performance?
What made him think Darboe could be involved in such mischief? Is he not being falsely led into such a suspicion? If that person is not Gambian is there a reason why the president should not take it that the person has some design on The Gambia’s sovereignty? Or is it just a normal lust for power. Pray, Mr. President, think of it all again and remember, it is the fate of a whole nation, please do not let Yahya Jammeh have the last lagh.
The dramatic deterioration of relations between our president and his vice can pave the way for Jammeh’s return; cripple the state so much so that it will become unable to build a more stable and prosperous Third Republic, implement its development plan and preserve national unity and sovereignty. This is a very serious matter that can affect the lives of generations to come.
The matter is taking a direction it should not assume at all. My hopes are that this is fake news, but the other day someone sent in a video strip in which men and a lady dressed in Senegalese army tunics, escorting a lady said to be the President’s mother openly embarked on a pro-Barrow political campaign at the Jimara village of Sara Boche. Both President Barrow and the official voice of the Gambia government must be seen condemning such activities. This is a definite prelude to illegitimate and unwarranted interference in our affairs. This can be treacherous and even treasonable
By way of conclusion I am calling on both Barrow and Darboe to hold their fire and to instead call on people like Algh. Ba Tarawalley, Alg. Bakary Sidibeh, Alhg. Abou Wadda and Alhg. Jobe Kanteh to mediate between the two gentlemen.
Or
Call a joint convention of all the original Coalition stakeholders to straighten the mess hindering the smooth running of the coalition and preventing a new Senegambian marriage of confusion that a may take a whole generation to unfold.
The end
