Even by West African standards, The Gambia, with a population of just under 2 million, is a very small country. Invaginated by the much larger Republic of Senegal like a peanut-butter spread – pun intended, of course – makes the smallest officially Anglophone country in this sub-region all the more easy to forget. Which may be partly why the 22-year-old dictatorship of President Yahya Jammeh appears to have had a smooth-sailing, relatively speaking, for the most part.
Nevertheless, it came as quite refreshing, even if also absolutely unexpected, when on December 2, within several hours of the announcement of him losing a presidential election, his fourth or so, the white Islamic-tailored flowing gown-wearing Mr. Jammeh decided to concede defeat and peacefully oversee a democratic changing of the guards, as it were (See “Gambia Leader’s Election Defiance Sparks Global Concern” Agence France Presse / Modernghana.com 12/10/16).
In the past, Mr. Jammeh, a former Gambian army lieutenant, had handily won reelections primarily because of the woeful lack of a united front among the leaders of the country’s opposition political parties. But this time around, sanity prevailed and these leaders, having apparently had enough of the immitigably repressive and extortionate Jammeh regime, decided to rally round a single formidable presidential candidate in a unified coalition. Predictably, in the lead-up to the December 1 presidential election, that opposition leader, Mr. Ousainou Darboe, would be tried and sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment for taking part in a massive protest demonstration against the ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC). His place was quickly occupied by Mr. Adama Barrow, a well-known successful businessman, whose United Democratic Party (UDP) won the most recent election.
By the way, there was also a third candidate, Dr. Isatou Touray, a women’s rights advocate and Executive Director of the Gambia Committee Against Traditional Practices (GAMOTRAP), who came in a strong third in the country’s most recent presidential election. Incidentally, Dr. Touray, the first female ever to have run for the highest office of the land, is also a pioneer in the abolition of clitoridectomy or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) – (See “Two Candidates Ready to Face Jammeh in Gambia’s Presidential Race” Africanews.com 9/2/16).
What clearly appears to have inflamed the notorious megalomania of President Jammeh to rescind his electoral defeat concession, is the decision by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission to remarkably revise down the margin of victory separating Mr. Barrow, the 2016 presidential-election winner, from the incumbent from an earlier officially reported figure of some 51,000 votes to just under 20,000. Indeed, as President-Elect Barrow rightly pointed out, both the legality and the validity of the Gambian Constitution, upon whose mandate this year’s presidential election was conducted, are not predicated on the whims and caprices of Mr. Jammeh, who seized power, via a coup d’état, at age 29, in July 1994.
The criminal coup-plotter turned civilian and democratically elected leader who has never been brought to account, had reportedly been promised immunity from prosecution by his newly elected successor. But it is not clear whether there was any written agreement to this effect. This may, indeed, be one of the sticking points of Mr. Jammeh’s unwillingness to leave the political limelight quietly, especially in view of the fact of mounting pressure on President-Elect Barrow by the latter’s supporters and human rights advocates, to ensure as quickly as possible that the outgoing former strongman severely pays for every one of his legion and untold atrocities against some of his fellow citizens, including the exaction of summary executions of political opponents, both real and perceived.
Instead, in an apparent bid to further prolonging his stranglehold on power, Mr. Jammeh is calling for the annulment of the just-ended presidential election and a rerun of the same, against vehement protestations by both Gambian citizens and the global community. A high-powered delegation of conflict mediators composed of some of the leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led by Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, was reported to have been prevented from landing at the Banjul International Airport recently.
So far, the United Nations’ Security Council has demanded that President Jammeh hand over power and preclude the use of violence. For its part, the U. S. State Department has described Mr. Jammeh’s capricious concession turnaround as being tantamount to nothing short of the insufferably outrageous and “an egregious attempt to undermine a credible electoral process and remain in power illegitimately.”
Whether his failure to peaceably hand over power is likely to be “Gaddhafied” or “Saddamed” remains to be seen. Personally, I see no other constructive alternative than the immediate forcible removal of a brutal savage who irritably appears to have cleverly and mischievously devised a well-calculated strategy of prolonging his “constitutional” dictatorship. The Gambian people do not deserve to be perennially tormented by such a political monster.
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