Wednesday, January 4, 2017

The true character of Yaya Jammeh

While continental Africa's smallest country is on the brink of a potentially devastating military intervention by ECOWAS troops caused entirely by Jammeh's intransigent behavior, the very same character is busy plotting on how to smuggle his loot out of one of Africa's poorest countries.

Yaya Jammeh's loot comprises of numerous of the world's most expensive luxury cars that includes a fleet of Rolls Royces  Maseratis and Bentleys. worth tens of millions of dollars - a collection of high performance cars that reminds us of his greed and vanity of a man who once accused of his predecessor of engaging in "flamboyant life-style" because he and his ministers rode in Mercedes Benz 200 as their official cars.

For 22 years, this former military police officer who, at the time of seizing power, had less than $ 10 in his bank account, is probably more financially solvent than the country he is ready to abandon for another country where he hopes to seek refuge from a population that would like to lay its hands on one of Africa's most prolific kleptocrat.

He used the public treasury as his personal piggy bank to amass wealth at the detriment of the Gambian people who became poorer under two decades of widespread corruption and an incompetent bureaucracy that fed off the crumbs left behind by Jammeh and a few of his cronies.

While Jammeh preoccupies the media by feeding it with fake news and other forms of distractions, such as mass arrests of people wearing T-shirts that say "Gambia has decided" and feigning escape to Conakry, the embattled Gambian dictator was, and is still, busy engaging a small circle of friends belonging to the African dictator's club to help him plot his escape while concurrently pretending to be engaging ECOWAS in seeking a peaceful resolution of the crisis that is entirely of his making.

Needless to say, by adopting this approach, he is exposing a country that is already on the verge of total bankruptcy by subjecting an already traumatized population to potential military intervention that can only put more Gambian lives in danger. From Jammeh's point of view, it is perfectly an acceptable proposition as long as the outcome will save his neck at the expense of everything else.

Greedy, dishonesty, corrupt, vanity, self-centered and meanness are a few of Jammeh's true character that are on full display since he lost his bid for a 5th term of office as president to Adama Barrow last December.