By Kebeli Demba Nyima
I read DA Jawo’s recent reflection describing himself as a victim of vindictiveness with genuine interest because, unlike many political commentators who suddenly appear after losing relevance, Jawo was not an accidental figure in Gambian public life. Long before cabinet titles, he was widely regarded as one of the most respected journalists this country produced. He belonged to a generation that believed journalism was a public trust rather than a political ladder. His voice carried credibility. His pen carried independence. Perhaps this was why Yahya Jammeh reportedly placed a bounty on his head, doing everything possible to silence him.
And perhaps that is mainly why his story today feels less like vindication and more like a self-inflicted tragedy, like a fireman who survives the inferno only to later set small fires in his own house just to prove he still understands smoke.
Jawo’s greatest mistake was not criticising President Barrow after leaving office. His real mistake was refusing to resign when he first realised what he now openly admits: that cabinet life felt like confinement, that he saw and heard things he wished to criticise but could not, and that collective responsibility forced him into silence.
That confession is devastating, though perhaps not in the way he intended. Once a journalist accepts silence in exchange for office, he ceases to be merely constrained by power. He becomes part of it.
But let us grant him every benefit of the doubt. Yes, presidents possess constitutional authority to hire and fire without explanation. Yes, governments everywhere dislike internal dissenters. Yes, exclusion from state ceremonies may well reflect political irritation. None of this is shocking. Politics is not charity. Power rewards loyalty and distrusts criticism.
However, here is the uncomfortable question Jawo’s essay cannot escape. If he witnessed troubling decisions, if his conscience felt imprisoned, if his intellectual instincts rebelled against government conduct, why did he remain seated at the cabinet table?
In the West, resignation has long been the final vocabulary of political honour. Ministers resign not because they seek publicity, but because they refuse to defend policies they no longer believe in. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook walked out of Tony Blair’s government in 2003 rather than endorse the march to war in Iraq. He did something increasingly rare in modern politics: he rose in the House of Commons, dismantled the government’s case with devastating clarity, and resigned before history could accuse him of silence. His departure reflected a political tradition in which disagreement with policy, once irreconcilable, demands exit rather than accommodation.
A similar moment occurred in the United States when former National Security Adviser John Bolton left the Trump administration amid deep disagreements over foreign policy direction, particularly negotiations with adversarial regimes. Whatever one thinks of Bolton’s ideological posture, his departure illustrated a fundamental principle of executive governance: proximity to power carries responsibility for its decisions. When internal dissent reaches the point where an adviser can no longer defend policy with conviction, departure becomes the only intellectually coherent option. Public office confers influence, but it also imposes a moral threshold beyond which continued service becomes complicity rather than counsel.
In much of the Global South, however, resignation is treated as political extinction. Ministers and senior officials often regard leaving office as a form of institutional death from which recovery is uncertain. Consequently, resignation becomes the last option rather than the first response to moral conflict. Officials rationalise incompetence and do everything possible to remain comfortably seated until someone else removes the chair. Then comes courage and intellectual indignation. Suddenly they speak against government with the confidence of a newly liberated prophet.
I do not deny that Jawo may genuinely feel freer today. But freedom discovered after dismissal is not the same as courage exercised during power. Had Jawo penned an editorial commentary while still in government, openly opposing or denouncing the very issues he now raises, he might today stand as our own version of an insider dissenter, a John Bolton-type figure who publicly opposed power from within rather than after departure.
Jawo’s complaint about exclusion from state functions reveals something deeper about our political psychology. African elites often confuse privilege with rights. Being invited to presidential dinners becomes a symbol of national belonging. Losing such invitations begins to feel like persecution. Many former senior officials were absent from these same functions. I did not see former Vice President Isatou Njie-Saidy. I did not see former Information Minister Sheriff Bojang. I did not see former Information Minister Fatim Badjie, both of whom served in that ministry before Jawo’s appointment, nor countless others who once occupied high office and quietly accepted political retirement with dignity. Principle, in fact, would dictate complete distance from a government one believes to be corrupt, inept, and operating against democratic norms. Instead of withdrawal, Jawo appears like an actor who has left the stage but keeps adjusting his costume backstage, waiting for the director to call him for an encore that was never written.
What troubles me is not that Jawo criticises government. Criticism is necessary. What troubles me is that the criticism arrives only after the privileges ended.
And here lies the larger indictment, not merely of Jawo but of our intellectual class. We are brave in opposition and obedient in office. We speak truth when powerless and practise caution when influential. Our courage has an expiration date tied suspiciously to our appointments.
During the early Barrow years, many policies unfolded that later attracted widespread criticism. Communication failures were evident. Governance confusion was visible. The Information Ministry itself struggled to define whether it served the state or the administration. Yet the minister defended the administration faithfully, as required by collective responsibility. There were numerous controversies within the ministry, including the broadcasting licences saga in which unqualified individuals were reportedly granted licences without proper regulatory scrutiny.
He now describes that period as confinement. But confinement voluntarily accepted is called participation.
Jawo deserves sympathy only in one respect. He entered government believing intellectual independence could coexist with political power. Many before him have made the same miscalculation. The state does not merely employ intellectuals. It absorbs them. His tragedy is therefore not vindictiveness from government. His tragedy is that he stayed too long and now seeks redemption through retrospective courage.
In a nutshell, Jawo is a victim of his own making, and his experience illustrates the conflict between intellectual independence and the structural imperatives of political office: when proximity to power constrains critique, participation itself transforms into complicity, and the journalist who once held independence becomes, in effect, a complicit actor within the very system he subsequently seeks to critique.
