OPINION
By Cherno Baba Jallow
From his haven in distant Central Africa, ex-President Yahya Jammeh has succeeded, to a large extent, in subverting this time-preserved cliche: ‘’Out of sight, out of mind.’’ Invisibility, or more to the point, exile, hasn’t banished Jammeh from the center of Gambian political life. His occasional missives to his supporters, a self-serving psychological need to remain relevant from afar, have kept him buoyant in the national imagination. So, he keeps talking. And inevitably, Gambians keep talking about him, too. This fathomless talk has now reached decibel levels with the former president’s recent vow to return to the country this month. (As of this publication, he has still not arrived in The Gambia.)
Jammeh’s probable return has animated his supporters, unsettled his victims, and thrown those in the middle into uncertainty about what to make of all this unfolding drama. So, a nation awaits, not with certitude, but with an assortment of discordant voices, preconceived mindsets and obscure expectations.
But on the important matters of yesteryears, retrospective minds and judicious souls are agreed: There is a certain amount of recentness to what once was. ‘’The past,‘’ said the American writer William Faulkner, ‘’is never dead. It is not even past.’’ Time was, and just a little under nine years ago, The Gambia was on a knife’s edge. Dictatorship ran rampant in public life. Jammeh, who forced his way to power, had turned the country into his own private property. He quelled dissent, jailed, exiled and killed journalists, arrested and detained political opponents, oversaw extrajudicial killings in the military and civil society and single-handedly plundered the national treasury.
The Gambian story, from 1994 to 2016, is a primer on how one man can hold hostage an entire nation, blighting its once cherished peace and stability and introducing it to unprecedented levels of villainy. Consider the number of lives snuffed out during Jammeh’s tenure in office; the killing fields, the widows and orphans left behind. Consider also, the disappearances, the forcible expulsions of citizens and the refusals of burials on Gambian soil. The last one is shocking for its barbarity. What kind of evil drives humans into an unyielding campaign of vindictiveness against the lifeless bodies of their own fellow humans?
In 2016, Gambians, or precisely those who voted against Jammeh, came to the thoughtful calculation that their country was on the brink of total disintegration, and thus needed rescuing before it turned into a smoldering wreckage. Make no mistake, had Jammeh won and remained in power, The Gambia was going to be pushed into a bloody confrontation; a civil war would have happened. Such a ghastly scenario never came to pass, thanks to the intervention of participatory democracy.
But Jammeh barely lost the elections, meaning he had a robust support in the electorate to continue his management of national affairs. For the entire duration of his presidency, Jammeh endeared himself to the voters because of his infrastructural accomplishments and his strict disciplinarian personality. His reign of terror and authoritarian impulses didn’t bother his supporters. His countless victims —- dead, imprisoned, exiled, orphaned, widowed, disappeared —- didn’t matter. His embezzlement of state money didn’t matter either.
If Jammeh’s crimes were unclear to some, and needed evidentiary proof attached to them, the commissions of inquiry have provided it. Both the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission and the Janneh Commission have revealed the gross human rights and financial violations during Jammeh’s presidency. Gambians were shocked by what they had learned about their former president and his lackeys. But years after the end of these inquiries, justice continues to elude the victims, and the perpetrators have gone entirely unscathed. The Barrow Administration has failed to address the wrongs of the past.
So, Jammeh and his supporters feel emboldened by the nation’s vacant leadership and the public’s growing disengagement from the campaign of retributive justice in the service of national redemption. Perhaps, Jammeh and his accomplices will never get their just desserts because in a sleepwalking nation like The Gambia, national resolve is fly-by-night. Indecision and procrastination pervade the halls of decision-making. And the public’s thirst for the new, the next, the other, offers no guarantees of an issue’s longevity in the national discourse, and therefore, its potency to push those in power and authority to take necessary steps.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Fatu Network’s editorial stance.
OPINION By Cherno Baba Jallow From his haven in distant Central Africa, ex-President Yahya Jammeh has succeeded, to a large extent, in subverting this time-preserved cliche: ‘’Out of sight, out of mind.’’ Invisibility, or more to the point, exile, hasn’t banished Jammeh from the center of Gambian political life. His occasional missives to his supporters, The Fatu Network
