The Times, they are too interesting…

I was saying in my last post that it wasn’t necessarily the case that the Gambian dictator, Yahya Jammeh had really conceded victory when, on the day after the presidential election he congratulated Mr Adama Barrow, the winning candidate. I found it difficult to digest the notion that a man who had seized power by force in 1994 and had subsequently bullied his way into several election victories thereafter should suddenly undergo a Road to Damascus moment. I was worried too, that signals out of America were in danger of being misinterpreted to mean that a free pass had been granted to dictators everywhere, especially those in Africa. I was not surprised, therefore when, barely a week afterwards, Jammeh reverted to type and declared that the election he had just lost “flawed”. He now demanded a fresh vote hoping that his machine of state persuasion would produce the right result the second time round. He used all the wiles in the book of dirty tricks to intimidate the country into submission but, in the end, he had to cave in to the persuasive logic of the stick and carrot. 

We do not know how appetizing the carrot was, but one ingredient was, no doubt, the prospect of a retirement haven out of the reach of international justice. So, on the night after the inauguration of the new president elect, dressed in characteristic flowing white and brandishing his regulation copy of the Quran, he waved goodbye to a thin crowd of long faces standing lugubriously on the tarmac at Banjul International. The country could exhale again.

The rap sheet that Jammeh would have had to answer to and, with some luck, might still do, is a long one. But, for the moment, he is safe in Equatorial Guinea where, one imagines, he would be swapping dictator anecdotes with his host, president-for-life, General Teodoro Obiang. Meanwhile, Gambia’s long-suffering people must content themselves with merely mocking their recently departed tormentor.  

Talking about thin crowds, this is one of the issues that get the wind under the skirts of the new Trump administration, right from its chief exec down to its lowliest gofer. The size of an adoring crowd, by itself, is not a big deal. However, correct me if I’m wrong: the last time someone obsessed so much about the size of his crowd it didn’t end well. And even today, eight decades on, we remain awestruck by the intensity of crowds at Nazi rallies that shook the ground as they shouted “Sieg Heil!  Sieg Heil!” You might again say no big deal. A few “Sieg Heils” here and there do not register high on the Richter scale of political upheavals. The real problem lies in the horrible traits hidden below a thatch of orange or of any other colour. But we have to hand it to Mr Trump. He does not hide behind mealy-mouthed words. He “tells it like it is”. He wants his hearers to understand exactly what he is getting at. And it seems they do. For now, anyway. But for the rest of us, the majority, I hope, the parallels are troubling and the possible consequences of the new president’s size-obsession, his statements and his executive orders make for sleepless nights. Fortunately, America’s founding Fathers wrote up a constitution that provides fairly robust protection against dictatorial tendencies. 

The other defence against unbridled executive power is mockery, for which this particular executive is ripe. Lampoonists remain unbowed both in their spoken word and their graphic essays, whether on TV or through cartoons. This is powerful stuff although Mr Trump responds with a counter-narrative that includes violent language and “alternative truths”, none of which, so far, has been enough to deter anyone, even the little children, who just as in The Gambia, have also joined in the fray.  

It is early days yet, but America must ready itself for difficult times Yahya Jammeh started off fairly benign (as dictators usually do) but in the end he became a terrifying figure in the Gambian political landscape. Hitler was exactly the same. 

Watch out, world.

Tell Fren Tru