During the recent retreat of Jammeh’s cabinet at his home
village of Kanilai, he justified the decision of the Military Council he
chaired upon seizing power on humanitarian grounds and the protection of the
reputation and presumably good character of the Jawara ministers whom he
accused of corruption that justified the 1994 coup.
The incongruence of Jammeh’s logic is again on full
display. After railing about the corrupt
nature of the Jawara regime, including Jawara, whose members and inner circle
were consumed and blinded by a “flamboyant lifestyle” resulting in the
impoverishment of the many by the few.
To remind Gambians of the military regime’s disdain for
these members of the privileged class and the military junta’s commitment to
redressing an unacceptable and exploitative condition brought about by a
corrupt regime, Jammeh loaded some of these cabinet ministers and senior civil
servants in open trucks around the city of Banjul in broad daylight.
Where is the empathy that was obviously absent in 1994?
Jammeh’s regime can boast of inflicting more physical and psychological harm to
Gambians than the combined toll of the Jawara and colonial
administrations. Gambians have suffered
more murders, assassinations, tortures, forced disappearances and exiles than
the British ever could inflict on the Gambian population even if they
tried.
It is therefore incomprehensible, illogical and an outright
lie to claim that the conclusions and recommendations of the Bamfor Commission have
been withheld to protect Sir Dawda Jawara’s reputation and integrity and those
of his former ministers and their families by saving them from further embarrassment
should the findings of the Commission be published. This is a warped logic and therefore makes
no sense.
The justification for the coup, according to Jammeh and his
colleagues, was “rampant corruption” and the “flamboyant lifestyle” led by Jawara
and his ministers. What sense does it
make to suppress publication of a Commission’s Report that was created by law
with the proviso that its findings must be made public. The mere act of not going public is
contravention of the law, not that it matters to a dictator to contravene the
law.
Based on reports, the Bamfor Commission found that
corruption was not endemic as claimed by Jammeh and his group of power hungry
putschists to warrant removing a legitimately elected government. To accuse the ousted government of
corruption would guarantee quicker acceptance of the junta by populace than to
complain about maltreatment of Gambian soldiers at the hands of the Nigerian
army commanders who were running the Gambian army under a bilateral technical
cooperation arrangement basis.
Why were they - Jammeh and his cohorts - advised to lie about the true reason for the coup by “dishonest Gambians” – to
borrow Ebrima Chongan’s description, one of the few Gambian military officers
who resisted the coup – some of whom are still active in one way or the other
in the affairs of the Jammeh regime.
Without their role as advisers to the young, inexperienced and
ill-educated soldiers on how to cling on to power for longer than required,
Jammeh and his fellow putschists would not have entrenched themselves in power
for twenty two years and counting.
The Bamfor Commission’s Report’s conclusions and recommendations
were suppressed and never made public to this day, despite many demands from Omar
Jallow (OJ) a former minister in the Jawara government. The refusal to comply is because it’s
conclusions did not support the reasons advanced by Jammeh justifying the
coup. He lied then. He’s lying now. His condition is pathological.
