The Elephant In The Room
By Baba Colley
A Constitution That Forgets Its Heroes
Most people die from natural causes or accidents. But some walk deliberately into death’s path for something greater than themselves.
Just two years before Gambia’s most improbable election victory, citizens holding foreign passports embarked on a dangerous mission to liberate their people from Yahya Jammeh’s brutality. Two of these men never made it home to their families in the United States. Jammeh was heartless enough to parade their mutilated bodies on national television.
One of those men was someone I’d known since I was a teenager. We’d exchanged messages just months before that fateful day. He had everything—a loving family, a successful career, a life many only dream of. He risked it all because he wanted something better for his homeland.
Yet now, after everything these individuals and many others sacrificed, we find ourselves questioning whether people like them are even fit to serve the Gambian people.
It seems like yesterday that everyone credited the diaspora for hastening our liberation from a monster’s grip. No one distinguished then who held which passport. But times have changed.
The Bastard Child Treatment
The draft constitution is out, and Gambians holding dual citizenship received bastard child treatment from Mr. Cherno Sulayman Jallow and his team. Keep your father’s name, they said, but you’re written out of his will.
The rationales keep shifting. Every new argument is as ridiculous as the last.
First came “split loyalty”—the claim that a Gambian with American or Swedish citizenship couldn’t be sufficiently loyal to their birthplace, to the country of their entire extended family, because they’d be beholden to their adopted home. These critics have clearly never heard of Captain Njaga Jagne.
When that argument collapsed, they moved to something more bizarre and unfortunate—bizarre because it lacks logic, unfortunate because it exposes an ugly truth we only whisper about. But there’s a 13,000-pound elephant in the room, and we might as well address it. (That’s how much an African bush elephant weighs. I googled it so you don’t have to.)
The New Twisted Logic
The latest argument goes: “If you want to run for office or hold certain government positions, you shouldn’t be able to hedge your bets and return to your ‘good life’ if you fail.”
By this twisted logic, a doctor shouldn’t run for office because if they lose, they’ll return to practicing medicine. A wealthy person shouldn’t run because if they lose, they’ll remain wealthy and comfortable.
What did the diaspora do to deserve such disdain? Is it because they appear to have escaped the daily hardships many face back home? Are they viewed as citizens who don’t deserve the full privileges and courtesies extended to others?
To run for these offices, diaspora Gambians must first renounce their foreign citizenship. If they fail to get elected, what’s one more unemployed person? Never mind that the support these individuals provide their families back home matters. We’re willing to jeopardize all that because we oppose the simple idea of them asking for a chance to serve. Not even asking what they’d do if elected—just the act of asking to be considered.
The Real Elephant
The elephant in the room has always been envy. That ugly feeling of wanting what others have and hating them for having it. It’s that social comparison mechanism putting people in their place. How dare you leave us here and now want to come back to compete for this honeypot we call government?
To these people, government is all they have to measure up to those in the diaspora. Anything putting you in direct competition with them is a non-starter. Stay away with your knowledge and experience—we can screw this country up all by ourselves.
Your favorite politician feels the same way, by the way.
Survivor’s Guilt and Second-Class Treatment
The diaspora didn’t turn their backs during Jammeh’s madness. Don’t treat them and their children as second-class citizens now. The people are smart enough to choose their leaders. If they want to pick someone from Switzerland, that’s their right.
Many in the diaspora suffer from survivor’s guilt—“a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not, often feeling self-guilt.” The next time you feel obligated to help a long-lost friend, remember your good heart isn’t acting alone.
Some diaspora members, operating from this guilt, may feel inclined to let this injustice pass.
I say we shouldn’t make it easy for them. This isn’t about us—it’s about honoring those who died to make this constitution possible. We cannot allow Mr. Sulayman Jallow and his team to write off our country’s patriotic sons and daughters.
The truth is that 99% of the diaspora aren’t interested in running for these offices. But when did lack of personal interest stop us from fighting for what’s right? We shouldn’t allow a few people to erase us from the constitution as if we played no role in where our country stands today.
Let the people vote it down at the referendum. We need every politician on record. We need to know who stands with the diaspora on this.
A Final Question
Word has it that 80% of the population agreed with this disrespectful clause. Since I can’t dispute that statistic’s accuracy, I can only ask Mr. Cherno Sulayman Jallow that famous Barrow question:
When did it get so dark that we can no longer recognize one another?
Let us know what you think in the comments section