By Omar Bah
The former Interior minister and GMC leader has said the project for New Gambia has “woefully failed”due to partisan considerations.
Speaking to The Standard yesterday, Mr Fatty stated: “The potentially successful national project was quickly hijacked for partisan considerations before we took a step. We were denied the opportunity to build a New Gambian who is capable of translating the New Gambia vision into reality. We are now in the middle of a meaningless political tempest in the middle of nowhere with WhatsApp and other social media applications compounding the relentless national Confusion.”
Mr Fatty said those who perpetrated the old order under Yahya Jammeh cannot be expected to change the system under Adama Barrow.
He argued: “To change the system, it is inevitable that we change the operators of the existing system. We cannot implement the New Gambia vision with the current leadership mindset and negative attitude. Unless we see The Gambia first, instead of ethnicity, political party or personal economic profit, our national progress will remain erratic.
“If you don’t give money or money’s worth, ideas alone may not be attractive. Many voters have sold their birthrights for bags of rice, sugar and few hundred dalasis. In consequence, they are willing to mortgage their own future and that of their children for a few bututs and bags of rice today. Yet you wonder why a politician to whom you mortgaged your rights and entitlements to through immediate gain didn’t care about you later.”
National pride
Mr Fatty urged Gambians “to fight lack of pride in who we are, lack of respect for the truth, lack of integrity among leaders and religious authority, lack of respect for constituted authority, the law and state institutions, lack of patriotism and national pride, lack of sincerity and honesty in our thoughts and actions, lack of respect for the dignity of honest labour and hypocrisy and selfishness at all levels.”
He added: “There is so much hatred and jealousy circulating among ourselves and so much negative energy that substantially impact our ability not only to work together on our common welfare but the ability to drive a common vision for national prosperity. We are so polarised on so many insignificant fronts, that sustaining any collective national endeavour remains elusive.
“This is the reason why the New Gambia vision has failed; personal ego, love of power for its own sake, false belief in self-worth and entitlement above collective consideration, exaggerated assumption of one’s subjective equation in the overall scheme of things, greed and self-conceitedness have taken over the body politic.
“Lack of pride explains why we do not value most things Gambian. We have the Muhammed Jahs, the Mustapha Njies, the Baisru Jarawas, the Hamidou Jahs, the Abubacarr Jarawas and many more. What do we do?
Instead of supporting our own with our all, we seek to bring them down with everything we have or don’t have. Take Mr Abubacarr Jawara and others like him who toiled outside, made enough money and returned home to invest in their own country. They create companies, build factories, create employment, build wealth and pay taxes to the state. Some of us who have never and will never amount to anything just blah, blah on social media spewing so much hateful invectives, lying and misrepresenting facts to hoodwink a gullible public,” he added.
