By Omar Bah
The former ruling APRC has expressed its concern over the appointment of Alhagie Barrow at the TRRC.
The appointment of Mr Barrow as director of Research and Investigations of the TRRC generated heated debate on social media.
APRC leader Fabakary Tombong Jatta said “people like Alhagie Barrow” should not be appointed in the TRRC, because of his involvement in the 2014 attempted coup.
“This is a man who wanted to overthrow Jammeh and we believe he would have killed Jammeh if he had the chance. Now tell me how can you appoint somebody who wanted to overthrow a legitimate government into a TRRC that is looking at the alleged misdeeds of the same government,” he queried.
“How can you appoint a hyena to sit in an assembly that is judging how goats should be preserved?” he asked.
He said The Gambia does not need a truth, reconciliations and reparation commission because the country did not go through a genocide.
“We do not need a truth, reconciliation and reparations commission in The Gambia because it will only create more gaps than bringing us together,” he warned.
Pundit
Meanwhile, speaking to The Standard on the issue, Lamin Keita, a human rights activist-cum-political science student based in the United States said “it would be immaterial for the country to spend millions on a truth commission just to pursue less than fifty culprits”.
He said The Gambia’s situation “is more or less, the job of the police to identify the few people who were directly involved in committing atrocities under the instructions of former President Jammeh.
“The primary objective of any TRRC is to preach forgiveness in order to heal the emotions and wounds of hatred or anger that had been created by the former regime. But the way I am seeing the Gambian TRRC and the people that surround it, there would be more hatred than healing at the end,” he opined.
Keita, who is currently pursuing PhD in political science in a US college, said “there is no place for retaliation in the New Gambia”.
He said those who were in one way or the other affected during the former regime should remember that “he who forgives becomes a better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred.”
