My Brother President Yaya Jammeh, The Final Hour is Here! My brother president, I say hello to you. I am addressing you at this point in time because I know life is hard for you. You are literally seeing your world crumbling in front of you, and there is nothing you can do about it and no realistic help is coming your way. You feel like the whole world has abandoned you. People you thought who were there for you are nowhere to be found anymore. As you rightly put it, “people who were green suddenly turned yellow!” You must be asking yourself “what have I done wrong?” I am sure you do not sleep well at night; you do not eat well and nothing in this world gives you happiness or satisfaction anymore. My brother president, this is the sign of the time!
When you conceded defeat on December 2nd, there was a lot of sympathy for you, especially from those who hate you or are critical of you. This is simply because we know nothing lasts forever and when you lost the elections and conceded defeat we thought you were smart to accept the realty! At that point in time, I was expecting you to start coming clear, clean and make peace with Gambians.
First, I expected you to come forward and extend olive branch to Gambians by releasing all the political prisoners and all the disappeared people who may still be alive somewhere. You may interpret such scenario in your own head as weakness and signal of panic. Yes, it is. In realty you are not only weak but very weak at this point in time and you are very panicked and fearful of what is to become of you and for very good and obvious reasons. After twenty-two years of suppression and fear, nearly sixty percent of Gambians came out and voted against you? Going back to the prisoner release, instead of humbling yourself and acting appropriately, you did not. Rather you indirectly allowed courts to grant bail to some of these detainees. You know when, and not if, the new president takes over in January he is going to do exactly what you had the opportunity to do but blew it!
Secondly, I expected you to use the remaining one month of your term to apologize to Gambians for the crime of all forms you have perpetrated against them during your reign of terror from murder, disappearance without trace, torture to economic crime. Again in your head, these evil acts are necessary for your so-called development as you discretely alluded to in your concession speech to president-elect when you shamelessly said “in Africa you cannot achieve anything unless you have security.” That was a massively coded statement. Of course not everybody is going to forgive you for your crimes, tell that to a child you orphaned like the Sandeng children! However, a sincere apology, even out of fear, is a starting point.
Thirdly, I expected you to give such unprecedented help to the incoming president and his team, who are by and large going to decide your faith, so that they can recognize your goodwill and take that into account in dealing with your mess after they takeover. My brother president, you missed a big opportunity here as not only did you failed to provide security to the president-elect but refused to let him access the public media (GRTS) to talk to his fellow countrymen. My brother president, do you expect Mr. Barrow and his administration to provide state security protection for you after January 18th? Maybe you are dreaming that you will be controlling a private militia of your Junglers to provide security for you in a new democratic Gambia. Hell no! There will be a new commander-in-chief called Mr. Adama Barrow. He is definitely going to provide you with state security protection otherwise the people you wronged will inflict poetic justice on you in minutes. You may even need to be in protective custody.
My brother president, after having failed to initiate any of the appropriate steps above, real fear must have overcome your sanity to push you to insult Gambians one more time, hopefully the last time, by saying you scrapped the election results and there will be another election that you can properly rig! As the saying goes: An ex-Alkalo (ex-village chief) does not wish the village well. However for you my brother president, Gambians have done a lot for you and you need not behave like an ex-alkalo. You should not do anything that will make our co-existence difficult in the future. Your true aim is to create chaos and uncertainty in the country so that we will be forced to make concession to you in the form of amnesty. Your fear at this point should not be weathered that Gambians will prosecute and execute you. You deserve more than that. However, we will never execute you, we may prosecute you though. What you should fear now is God’s prosecution! In as much as Allah has World Bank, He also has the best justice system. Your worries should be about how you are going to account for all the killings, tortures etc. when you are called. You are fifty-one years of age and considering average life expectancy in your Gambia, you may soon answer to the final call naturally sooner rather than later. You can naturally die any time just like we will all do one day.
My brother president, even if Gambians send you to jail for a billion years or kill you a billion time, that is never going to undo the irreparable damage you did to our country. Again, as the saying goes: “If you want to judge a baboon/chimpanzee based on its ugliness, you may as well kill him”. This is because a baboon is really ugly! My brother president, you are like a baboon, your crimes are so ugly and heinous that no amount of your execution or jailing can suffice and we are more than likely going to get a better justice from the higher power in your case. You have just committed treason by unconstitutionally declaring the election results null and void and put Gambia on the path to war. We the people of the Gambia shall never fall in the trap of a failed ex-alkalo.
My brother president, you are on a slippery slope. You are trying to play a game of chess with the Gambian people after abusing us for decades. You are taking us hostage to see if we will blink and either let you continue to rule us for the sake of peace or give you concession in the form of amnesty. You will never be Alkalo of Kanilai much more president of The Gambia beyond January 18th and you better let that sink in your head. We the people of the Gambia have made the final decision on December 1st, 2016. You are manipulating and hiding behind the army to lure us into violence. What you are ignoring is that the army like the general Gambian population despise you for your heartlessness. A greater majority of them will abandon you and join the people at the first opportunity. We all know the institution of the army. For one reason, you are still the president until January 18th and if any individual member abandons you before then, they will be breaking the law. Secondly, they do not want a broken army and hence will give common sense a chance to see if you will come to your right senses and quit peacefully. Come January 18th or even before then, the army will abandon you in droves and join the people and arrest you. Finally, Ecowas has never abandoned its responsibility when it comes to arrogant, dictatorial and shameful rulers like you and they will come for you militarily if that is what you want.
Remember Charles Taylor. He had more hardcore fighters but Ecomog confronted him admirably and you know where he is today. Tell Laurent Gbagbo when Goodluck Jonathan told him to climb down before Ecowas use legitimate force against him. He did not listen because his wife told him he should not quit unless he wasn’t man enought! Where is Gbagbo today? When the former head of the presidential guard in Burkina Faso removed the transitional government and Ecowas gave him ultimatum, how did he end up?
My brother president, time is running out for you. Help yourself and help us and do the following immediately because you do not want to reach a point of no return when the patriotic members of the Gambia Armed forces will abandon you and side with people or Ecowas forces led by Senegal with tactical support from the West will come in and get rid of you. You do not want to see us Gambians use civil disobedience to get rid of you. We do not want any of these. If you do not listen to this advice, very soon you will wish you were never born to this world! 1. Call president-elect Barrow and apologize to him for all the discomfort you caused to him and immediately start working with his team for the handing over. 2. Jointly appear with president-elect barrow on GRTS and apologize to the Gambian people for all uncertainties you caused to them by your ill-advised U-turn 3. Use the next thirty days to apologize to the Gambians families you harmed…killed, tortured etc. during the past twenty-two years. 4. Leave the rest to the Gambian people. In as much as we would like to pay evil with evil, we are more concerned with the future as we would like to see real progress in the conditions of our people in the next few years. We have a lot more work to do than wasting our time on witch-hunt. After all, you will face divine justice soon! Thank you brother president.
Sadibu J.
Ends