It is quite heart-warming to see some of the movers and shakers of the APRC slowly making public admission of the wrongs of Jammeh.
This is good not only that it’s a signal of a reconciliation down the end of the track but it also gives a renewed hope for justice for the Jammeh victims.
Denial of Jammeh atrocities has remained a concern of huge and grave magnitude not only to the victims and the truth-seekers at the TRRC but also the discerning members of the public.
Like how so many are still in denial of the industrial scale murder of Jews by Hitler, a whole lot of people are also in denial of Jammeh’s hunt-down of Gambians like wild animals, rape of our women, pilfering of public coffers, that he was a quack doctor whose so-called therapeutic treatment cure ironically became a plague for his patients and a caboodle of wrongs.
But quite soothing is Fatoumatta Jahumpa-Ceesay’s public admission on Star FM on Tuesday that Jammeh is not immune to human frailties and, as mortals do, he made mistakes.
This is reconciliatory in tone and must be amplified by the man himself now quietly living in exile at the centre of the continent. Jammeh should open up the floodgates to reconciliation and help in the healing process by working in a cordial manner with the TRRC. This will prepare the ground for the rendering of his accounts of the various instances of atrocities he’s linked with. This will also serve as a path to his eventual prosecution so that Gambia can finally achieve true reconciliation.
So, as Hamat’s recent faux pas threatens to overshadow the probe into the fisheries bribery allegation, we hope more acknowledgement of Jammeh’s brutality would continue to come from the APRC, especially its upper echelons. Jammeh must also take the cue.
This is wholesome for our voyage to justice, reconciliation and healing.
