Dear Editor,
Last week is the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Deyda Hydara. His family, friends, former colleagues and indeed the whole country are still waiting for justice. We can recall that on the morning of 16th December, 2004, Gambians were awoken to the news of the assassination of the veteran journalist and managing editor of The Point newspaper by unknown assailants.
While at the time everyone suspected that the regime of President Yahya Jammeh had a hand in the assassination, hardly anyone knew why a harmless person like Deyda could be the target of such a cold-blooded murder. However, the queer behaviour and comportment of President Jammeh and some senior members of his regime with regard to the case, heightened suspicions that the regime had something to do with it. Even the very attitude of the regime towards the case was quite bizarre. Not only was the family never invited to the postmortem examination, but the autopsy report was also never made available to them, even when they requested for it. Up to this very day, neither the family nor the Gambia Press Union and all the other interested parties, knew what became of the autopsy report or even the bullets that were removed from his body.
Therefore, something was always definitely quite fishy with regard to the attitude of the Jammeh regime towards Deyda’s assassination. All calls by the Gambia Press Union and other concerned groups for a thorough investigation of the case were ignored and the regime continued to demonstrate its complete indifference to the matter.
In fact every time President Jammeh commented on it, he made some ambiguous remarks which tended to confuse rather than clarify his government’s stand point on the issue. Therefore, the confessions at the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission by some members of former president Jammeh’s killer squad, the Junglers, that they participated in his assassination, did not come as a big surprise to many people. It was merely a confirmation to what many had always suspected. Even the claim that they were acting on the orders of Jammeh, was not a surprise. What was however not quite obvious was the reason why anyone would target Deyda for elimination. Anyone who intimately knew him, must have known that he was an advocate for peace and social cohesion. Even in his journalism work, Deyda was always calling for peaceful co-existence among peoples of all races and creeds.
Therefore, it is hard to see how President Jammeh or anyone else would want to get him eliminated. However, what is still of most concern to many people is why, almost three years since the release of the TRRC report, we are still waiting to see the government take action against those accused of his killing, apart from the case against Bai Lowe, accused of being driver of the assassins, and who was prosecuted in Germany. Therefore, 20 years after the brutal killing of an innocent Gambian, his murderers are still freely walking in the streets as if no one cares for justice for Deyda’s family and friends.
DA Jawo
Kanifing
Keeping them honest. Politics is about honesty!
Dear Editor
May Ahmad Fatty was on Coffee Time With Peter Gomez Monday morning to try to explain his dramatic alliance with the NPP. During the interview he said many false and misleading statements such as saying that there was consultation over the so-called draft 2024 constitution as claimed by Justice Minister Dawda Jallow.
All stakeholders including CSOs and political parties have denied that any such consultation took place. Only Mai agreed with Minister Jallow, obviously. But what I find even more disingenuous and misleading in his comments was when he tried to defend the situation of corruption in this government. Apart from trying to stain everyone as corrupt, Mai went further to claim that even the US and UK are also highly corrupt societies. He backed his claim with figures he quoted from Transparency International in their 2023 Corruption Perception Index. This is an annual report that assesses all countries of the world in terms of the level of corruption present in a country. The assessment involves a score of 0 to 100, and based on that score, a country is ranked from 1 being most clean and going down to the highest number as being most corrupt! In the show, Mai cited the score of UK which is 71 and the score for the US which is 69. These scores rank the UK at number 20 and the US at number 24.
This means the US and the UK are among the cleanest countries in the world in terms of corruption. But Mai never quoted their ranks (UK/20, US/24) rather he kept harping on their scores (UK/71, US/69) thus trying to create the impression that these two countries are very corrupt because of their high score figure. In this way he tried to say the US and UK are equally corrupt just like The Gambia!
Comparatively The Gambia’s score is 37 over 100 thus ranking the country at 98 as a highly corrupt country in the world. UK is ranked at 20 and the US is ranked at 24. This means there is a huge gap between The Gambia on one hand and on the other hand the US and UK. See the screenshots of the report to notice the scores and the ranks of the various countries. Visit the full report here: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAsaS7BhDPARIsAAX5cSC-pHoLiYZHwCJr32EToSDyW9ywmdHpIXsMc4tIW_S5pZ_T9Bxs-v0aAsrJEALw_wcB
Our politicians must be honest and sincere. Politics is not a game nor is it a horse trading exercise for the selfish interest of individuals. A politician is an individual who wishes to serve the public with honesty, dedication and selflessly. Politics is a national service. Public office belongs only to the people for their welfare and interest. If one cannot be honest by upholding high ethical standards and protect public interest then one should not enter politics.
For The Gambia our homeland.
Madi Jobarteh
Kembujeh
