Dear Editor,
If anyone is telling you that The Gambia is growing just give him a slap on the cheek. A catalogue of forced mishaps took place in this country and the willingness to redress the mishaps has been hampered by greed and sheer incompetence. Below is a catalogue of monumental proportion that we should be ashamed of as a nation.
Last had stable electricity in 1977. Lost the cotton mill in Basse. Dwindling groundnut yields. Lost sesame exportation. Lost Gambia Tannery. Lost Gambia Live Stock Marketing Board. Lost NTC. Lost Kotu Workshop. Lost Jahally Pacharr. Lost Julbrew. Lost Chellerams. Lost Gambia River Transport. Lost Nawec. Lost Public Works Department. Lost Board of Health. Lost Commercial & Development Bank. Lost Agricultural Development Bank. Independence Stadium not functional. No track and field in country. No basketball arena. Education has gone down south. Health in chaos. Road infrastructure deplorable. Environment at its worst. Inflation skyrocketing. Public debt mounting without tangible assets to show for it. Exchange rate on a free fall. Public service manned by incompetence and crockery. Corruption institutionalised.
God save our nation from the clutches of bandits and dimwits. The list goes on. We are inching closer to a failed state/banana republic with endemic corruption and incompetence. The Gambia has been reduced to a region in Senegal. Once the supermarket of West Africa, now another ailing economy hijacked by economic gangsters who have perfected land grabbing, procurement abuse, natural resource misappropriation and personal exploitation. The poor has gotten poorer yet clapping for the gangsters in suit and tie. GDP is not the best indicator of progress as it is not an edible food to be consumed by the poor. Our human indices have been faltering for ages with no end in sight due to poor leadership that is entrenched by an indifferent population.
The longest loosing streak in development history is held by the government of The Gambia thanks to incompetence, corruption and lack of patriotism. Then again, The Gambia, No Problem. We refused to be counted alongside the serious countries in the league of nations.
Nyang Njie
Fajara
Angry Ismaila Ceesay and his press release
Dear Editor,
Read Ismaila Ceesay’s press release on the chronic lack of power, and you won’t have to read far before you encounter his fear expressed as anger and false machismo. But I’ve long since learned that anger and arrogance are far easier to express than fear and shame. So let Ismaila and his handlers express themselves through angry, verbose, unprofessional, and childish press releases. He can call Gambians all sorts of rude names his little mind can conjure, but despite his wish for everyone to be a turncoat like him, he can’t stop anyone from expressing their frustrations with their incompetence!
Ismaila opens his tirade by saying that they “wish to express their deep concern over the increasing spread of misinformation, deliberate distortions and politically motivated narratives… bla bla bla!” Such baloney! If you can torture yourself by reading through the gibberish and infantile press release, you’ll find several lies, such as their supposed commitment to transparency, accountability, and responsible governance, even as they refuse to comply with laws requiring the release of information or hold the tribal bigot Seedy Njie to account.
Then, in the second paragraph, Ismaila contrived to “acknowledge the concerns of citizens affected by intermittent power shortages…” He said “intermittent”. Such heartlessness! Who reduces 15-hour outages to intermittency? But here is one word used twice in the first and second paragraphs that tells you a lot about Ismaila’s and his handlers’ mindset: In the first paragraph, Ismaila claims he is “DEEPLY” concerned about supposed misinformation, deliberate distortion, and politically motivated narratives. Never mind that Ismaila himself is a “Bawdo” of misinformation, deliberate distortion, and politically motivated narratives! What stood out was how he uses the word “DEEPLY” when addressing his unhappiness, but only manages to acknowledge the “CONCERNS” of people affected by “intermittent” power shortages! The people’s frustrations are reduced to concerns; they are not deep enough for Ismaila. You don’t have to be a psycholinguistic expert to read through the rest of Ismaila’s nonsense and know where his tortured soul lies.
Calling frustrated citizens “alarmists,” dismissing their concerns as “manufactured outrage,” and accusing them of “coordinated misinformation campaigns” only shows how small Ismaila is! For Ismaila, everything is a misinformation campaign, and you can’t help but wonder whether he even knows what that term means! If he does, he never cited a single instance of such a campaign. Just the pleasure of throwing baseless accusations against others in the hope they will stick. His tantrum is based on nothing but insinuations and hubris. But he can throw all his toys out of the pram if he desires! What he cannot do is stop people from talking about their incompetence, corruption, greed, spinelessness, and duplicity!
I was about to waste my time going through the rest of Ismaila’s malarkey, but when he started lecturing us on honesty, patience, and responsible commentary, I gave up. For a minister who sits on national radio and shamelessly lies about others, and a minister who shamelessly turned around to lick his vomit, it is funny and sad that he is the one preaching about values and patriotism today. I had to stop wasting my time on his malarkey! May Daarmanso save us from spinelessness!
Alagie Saidy-Barrow
USA
