The Gambia, Jammeh and the proverbial bull in a China shop

Yahya Yammeh

Since seizing power from the nation’s independence leader Sir Dawda Jawara in the July 1994 military coup, Lieutenant Yahya Abdul-Aziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh has made no secret of his absolute intolerance of any form of criticism, through a ruthless, despotic leadership style, which swung from the ridiculous to the bizarre; unimaginable to intolerable.
Under Jammeh, hundreds, if not thousands of Gambians have fled their country for fear of persecution. The man, who goes by the official title of “His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Doctor Yahya AJJ Jammeh Babili Mansa,” claimed in 2013 that he could rule The Gambia for “a billion years” if God wills. The same year he ordered the execution of at least nine “criminals and political opponents” on death row.
Famous for his trademark prayer beads, a stick and white flowing robe, Jammeh portrays himself as a devout Muslim with miraculous powers, including the cure for HIV/AIDS and infertility. He has also threatened to behead gays or lesbians.ammeh is unperturbed by the criticism of human rights groups. “I will not bow down before anybody, except the almighty Allah and if they (human rights groups) don’t like that, they can go to hell,” he told the BBC in a 2011 interview.
Under the Jammeh administration, journalist Deyda Hydara, co-founder and editor of The Point, a private Gambian newspaper, was brutally murdered in December 2004, and became the rallying point for press freedom campaigners in the country.
To the credit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the insistence of the then ECOWAS Commission President James Victor Gbeho, the regional bloc declined to send election observers to the Gambia’s presidential elections in 2011citing undemocratic local environment. ECOWAS went further to deny an endorsement of Jammeh’s victory in that election, saying that voters and the opposition had been “cowed by repression and intimidation.”
But unfazed by isolation, Jammeh decided to pull the Gambia out of the Commonwealth in 2013, and only last October, announced the withdrawal of his country from the International Criminal Court (ICC), dismissing it as an “International Caucasian Court.” The ICC has as its Chief Prosecutor Jammeh’s former legal adviser and Justice Minister, Fatou Bensouda.
The Gambian strongman therefore, probably surprised many of his critics by accepting defeat in the country’s 1st December 2016 presidential election after 22 years of near dictatorial stranglehold on the population. But true to his mercurial personality, he has since reversed himself, first threatening to annul the poll, and now says he will contest the result.
According to official sources, ECOWAS’ request to observe the 1st December polls in the Gambia was rejected; the European Union was also refused access, with the African Union providing the only semblance of international observation for the election.
In any case, the local conditions for the elections had all the recipes for a Jammeh landslide victory. In July, the main opposition leader Ousainou Darboe and 18 others were jailed for three years for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration in April over alleged death in custody of an opposition activist. And with little or no international witnesses, the Gambia was literally cut off from the rest of the world, with no Internet services and under heavy security presence during the elections.



Source:The Guardian(Nigeria)