I know Gambians Don’t Like Me But…

By Yerro Ba

If you have made an objective review of the political and diplomatic situation at home, your conclusion might be different.

In a systematic way, something has always been coming out of what Jammeh does, whether this is visible to the ordinary eye or not. Jammeh’s actions especially at this present period are not his own making but calculated to respond to a message which I believe means “I know you Gambian people don’t like me but I will be here and nobody can do anything about it.” Why is he saying this? He believes that if he threatens people nobody can do anything about his being here the ignorant person can then say then “Let me just join him or leave him because he is a Mansa.” So I am saying that Jammeh is being isolated diplomatically outside and steadily loosing grip at home politically and this is what is responsible for his erratic behavior. In short it is called BUYING TIME. For example, telling the EU Charge d’Affaires to leave but allowing the office to remain means that he simply wants the EU to replace the diplomat which of course will also take time and the one coming after her may not be pushing as hard as Agnes did on the political dialogue especially on the electoral reform. Imagine a political leader disconnected or isolated from almost all the international organizations in the world and who still wants to hang on to power because he cannot interpret or swallow the aftermath of losing that power.

So I am saying that if we want to help our people to understand the situation better so that they become resolved, they should be helped to see that Jammeh is now too weak and frightened that he is loosing grip from all sides and that is what is responsible for his erratic behavior. Why is he turning the whole election program to a MONEY-affair? Because he has toured the country and saw with his own eyes that the real people that used to give him all the support have not turned up this time around. You and I are not there but he was there and he knows that the 200 or so plus vehicles filled with security personnel and other government and parastatal officials including the recruits from all units are the ones who would go first to the meeting site to welcome him so that it would appear that it was the locals who came out on their own to do so. Why is he angry with elders in many places to the point of insulting them if he was happy with them? Because he knows the reality and he cannot fool himself. So let us see Jammeh as someone who is very desperate and is doing his last kicks as a dying horse and some of the fists are just a symptom of that general confusion. So everything that he does is adding up both quantitatively and qualitatively and everything the opposition does is also taking the same dimension. So sooner rather than later, the country will be freed from this madness and something tangible will come out of it.

Ends