Omar Jallow (O.J.) has broken the Ice, but will it last?

By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor

He was preaching to the choir. Omar Jallow (O.J) that is. Yet, for once, he made my day. Not for anything he did, but for something he said. No hyperbole. No political platitudes. Just the plain old truth. O.J’s recent speech to journalists, on the issues of liberty, did not attract screaming headlines, yet its significance was not lost to us. Liberty is the operative word. It was a moment that made my day. Yes, O.J got me giddy and on high; at least for a moment; for one brief moment. And it wasn’t the type of high one got from consuming alcohol or even pot smoking. In the interest of disclosure, I habitually consumed alcohol so many moons ago; when I was much younger, naïve and less mature. So, I could attest to its cloud nine effects. As for the pot smoking part, well let us just say I’d leave that to Yahya Jammeh to come clean about. Yep! Your president, not mine. That phantom of mighty Kanilai.

What got me the high, you ask? Well, from the horse’s mouth, here is O.J in his own jaw dropping, eye popping and sweet sounding words of admonition. "We must depart from the culture of fear and silence if we truly want to liberate our country. I am appealing to all politicians to speak against lawlessness, impunity and other negative vices posing as a threat to press freedom, liberty and human rights in The Gambia.  We should not negotiate for our constitutional rights,” O.J said. After reading these lines, I fisted my right hand and threw a punch in the air. Finally, someone who says it as it is. A breath of fresh air? Of course! But will it last? Only time will tell. And, I am not a fan of O.J; not by any stretch of the imagination. For far too often, O.J’s humanity has been lost to me. In my mind’s eye, he and the ruinous Jawara clique are merely epitomes of a government that encapsulates the mortifying paralysis that had bedeviled our country for so long.

Be that as it may, but for now, is it fair to say that O.J. and the Jawara clique have seen the error of their ways? Can’t say for sure. Let us just say we hope they have. There are, of course, self evident truths that were not so self-evident when they ruled supreme. The economic plunder they perpetrated; Gambia does not, can never belong to a single tribe; the culture of patronage hinders development; it is not how beautiful one looks and the family or tribe one is born into that counts, but what everyone can contribute to national development. Lessons learnt the hard way have a way of changing peoples’ compasses; moral compasses so to speak. It alters their perspectives of the things that matter most. It enables the objective construction of a different notion of society that find a place where each one of us fits into the melting pot of harmonious conflicts and contradictions. And it creates a paradigm of a different kind that is more humane and more acceptable. So I do hope we have all been changed by Jammeh’s long terrible reign.

From those who leisurely rode in the black Mercedes Benzes and were oblivious that our country could not afford those expensive German vehicles; those brain dead who felt the sense of entitlement based on tribe; those who dangled the abstract notions of class that was based on nothing; those who willfully put structural barriers and created the artificial limitations to economic and social progress of others; those who felt absolutely no guilty qualms for subverting social and economic progress by turning our collective wealth into their own family and friends’ pools of resources, and those who did nothing, whatsoever, have been humiliated by Yahya Jammeh, in equal measure. God knows we have learnt a lesson more profound than the artificial constructions around which our notion of politics had revolved. And that can’t be a bad thing. Now the story of the past decade and half has the potential to bring us together like never before or maybe split us apart for generations to come. I hope for the former. We all do, don’t we?

O.J’s preaching to journalists is probably not new. What he said was not ground-breaking either. But, the fact that it was uttered by a politician at home is what is so novel about it. O.J was reinforcing a given, that had been preached by Gambia’s online media since the dawn of man. Matter of fact, I doubt he was speaking to the right kind of audience. As we all know, the media fraternity, whether they are working for Jammeh’s Daily Observer or not, probably understand what O.J was telling them more than O.J understands what he was saying to them. But as the saying goes; “even a good horse needs nudging to help it run faster.” Between the media and our dictatorship, the battle lines are already drawn on the sand and etched in stone, but the home media is too timid to cross that proverbial line on the ground. And understandably too, might I add. But, there is a way to break the ice that will work to our collective advantage; politicians and the media working together.

Besides that, the media alone is helpless in bringing down the regime in the short term. The power of the media rests on chipping away at the credibility of the regime until there is none left; making popular revolt inevitable, but that often takes time. But, there are three other sure ways to get rid of this regime: through a military coup that hands over power immediately to an interim civilian government; an alliance of the media and politicians that forces that hand of the regime to overreach and lead to global condemnations and Senegalese military intervention; a National Assembly Constitutional coup. A National Assembly Constitutional coup? Not a chance. Those damn corpses at the Assembly are basking in their meaningless glory; indebted to Yahya Jammeh for what they have and don’t want to lose even if it is for the collective good of the country. But, O.J. is on the right track for now. We hope soon our politicians will have the courage to talk about all the dead and disappeared and demand the Justice Department investigations using help from the FBI and Scotland Yard. We also demand that the army takes out Yahya Jammeh for the good of the country. If this fails, we will live like this for the next two decades. And that will be a sad, sad story. For now, O.J has broken the ice, but will it last?