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| Jammeh as he appeared in 1994 |
We have been insistently calling for Yaya Jammeh to step down while he still can.
With the
imminent collapse of the Gambian economy, fueled by personal greed and
incompetence of Jammeh and members of his entourage comprising of a set of
bureaucrats whose only qualifications appears to be a display of blind loyalty
to the dictator and/or to be tribally affiliated to him, the call Jammeh to
step down is growing louder.
The economy is deteriorating at an accelerating rate
primarily as a result of the regime’s increasing lack of fiscal discipline
despite numerous and persistent warnings of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) – an institution that is without blame for overseeing a mismanaged
economy that has been in the making for nearly a decade.
Gambians are poorer today than they were when Jammeh seized
power unconstitutionally in 1994, despite promises of a better living condition
for Gambia’s 2 million inhabitants.
Jammeh has decimated the agriculture sector, degraded the education
sector that now produces students that are barely functionally literate and
militarized the tourism development area leaving the beaches resembling armed
camps resulting in tourists fleeing The Gambia as a tourist destination for
Cabo Verde and Senegal.
Jammeh is not faring any better in the foreign policy sphere
either. He has unilaterally and without
notice pulled The Gambia’s membership from the Commonwealth, unceremoniously
broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and threatened to pull Gambian from
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) over the 2011
presidential elections that the regional body felt was not free and fair.
Jammeh erratic leadership and idiosyncratic behavior is felt
throughout his 22-year brutal dictatorship and has demoted The Gambia to the
status of a pariah state for a country that once occupied an enviable position
within the community of nations as one of the few multi-party democracies in
Africa along the likes of Botswana and Mauritius.
The recent Gambia – Senegal border closure, a direct result
of Jammeh’s unilateral decision to increase the Trans-Gambia highway tariff by
10,000% in contravention of both bilateral and regional conventions, is
additional reminder that Jammeh is unfit to lead the Gambia and should step
down.
The border closure which is in its second month is having a
devastating effect on ordinary Gambians in general and on Gambian and
Senegalese traveling public in particular.
Its effect on government revenue is more devastating, forcing Jammeh to
recoil by reverting to the old tariff rates even though the damage has already
been done as the diplomatic isolation deepens.
Over the weekend, Jammeh decided to replace his embattled
and corrupt Chairman of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission with
another long-serving member of the discredited and highly partisan
Commission. Both of these gentlemen are
in the pocket of the Gambian dictator and are thus equally unsuited for the
IEC.
In fact, the replacement Chairman,
Alieu Momar Njie, was involved in 2007 in a D 4 million fraud case involving
the state and the ex-Mayor of the Kanifing Municipality. He was eventually appointed as Commissioner of
the IEC and now Chairman of the IEC. To
Reactivate the charges against Chairman Alieu Njie – a routine Jammeh trick –
will not take a lot of effort should he try to be independent or act against
what Jammeh sees to be against his political interest.
Whatever the case, the fact remains that the Commission is still
infested with corrupt Commissioners who have presided over a rotten system that
has ensured the entrenchment of Yaya Jammeh as one of one of Africa’s most
brutal, corrupt and incompetent dictators. Gambians
now are determined to see the back of Jammeh who must either step down or be
forced out of office in 2016.
