Friday, July 11, 2014

"I know I am not God" says the Gambian dictator

Faced with a growing chorus of dissent within and outside The Gambia against his dictatorial regime, Yaya Jammeh used the swearing in ceremony of his umpteenth Secretary General of the Gambian Civil Service to assure Gambians that he's not God, when we all thought that he was because of his all omnipotent and all omnipresent behavior that characterizes his twenty-year reign of terror.

Since he fired Momodou Sabally from the position, Jammeh has been trying desperately to shift all of the blame of Sabally's disastrous tenure on anyone but Yaya Jammeh.  After all, it was he who hired a young, inexperienced and untested person, to not only run a degraded and demoralized civil service, but to also act as Minister for Presidential Affairs.

To make matters worse, he appointed the young man Secretary General of the ruling political party, and then urged him to go before national television, in the age of You Tube, to utter disparaging remarks against the Mandinkas, the largest single tribal grouping to which the poor fellow belongs.  Sabally's verbal assault was extended to include vile and historically inaccurate anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist tirade against two of Gambia's closest and most reliable allies - United Kingdom and United States.  I am not in the young man's head but I bet you he'd love to have that bizarre and embarrassingly juvenile YouTube video back.

The poor schmuck was obviously acting on instructions, and his anti-Madinka and anti-Western speech was most likely pre-approved by Jammeh.  Unfortunately, that's not good enough an excuse, so Jammeh is out to send his former SG to the gallows by suggesting that " he (Jammeh) would not appoint anybody (read his former Secretary General) to trample on others".   He proceeded to say " I do not do so because I know I am not God."

It must have felt like a baptism of fire to the new inductees into the weird and indescribable world of Yaya Jammeh where he will claim not to be God but where every action indicates the opposite.  It is a world where he will act or instruct you to act, but you will be blamed, regardless.   Sabally is finding out the hard way.  Abuse of office charges, among a host of other likely charges will be brought against him.  That is the style and modus operandi of Jammeh who has just assured Gambians that he is not God.  "Well, that's a start.  Is he human, though? asks a keen follower of Jammeh and developments in The Gambia.