Amid all the hoopla engulfing President Barrow, one may be tempted to ask who is misleading Mr President Barrow to make political gaffes in his public appearances. Is it the unwitting fixers or the genuine sceptics? In all honesty, President Barrow is seemingly a consummate servant-leader. In other words, he is a diligent architect of controversies and an intrepid navigator of turbulent political waters.
However, his navigation visibility is being blurred by some unwitting fixers smoothing the steering for him to sail into an unsettling drift. Nature educates. While some can be borne psychopaths, others may unfurl narcissism from early
childhood, irrefutably, almost anyone can become Machiavellian given the right marinating ingredients.
Lamentably, this worrisome crusade to sanctify your leadership with the endorsement of political vigilantes mutates you into another Babili from Mankamang Kunda. “Oh, hell no”, your sycophants and kleptomaniac minions will muster, “Barrow will never be another Babili. We are enjoying an unprecedented democracy and freedom under President Barrow”. Conversely, Jammeh never arrived as a Babili but graduated distinctively through our meticulous mentoring. Given the same conditioning ingredients, you could be more Babili than Jammeh.
Albeit the overwhelming demand to fix Jammeh’s 22 years of destruction of our public institution, designed tribal politics, traumatised citizens and a heavily indebted economy within the blink of an eye can produce detachment and a low sense of
it would help if you did not let the false prophets bar you from bridging the disconnect between your government and Gambians, especially those in the diaspora.
Once you perceive us as the stumbling block because that is their objective, you will hasten into a defensive corner, where Machiavellianism sets in. Instead of letting this unhealthy sanctification fester, do the right thing by taking ownership of servant-leading the Gambian people. Good leadership demands ‘fixing the problems no one else wants to touch’. Admittedly, you earnestly desire to deliver the Gambia to the promised land, but you are dispelling the mutinous calls as a relevant threat to your leadership. Take a close look at the attack on Hon Musa Drammeh’s home and the gruesome killing of our PIU officers, for instance. What do they share in common? Do they ferment any potent with far-reaching and profoundly costly effects?
Perhaps your sycophants are encouraging you not to listen to your critics as you
have already won the 2026 presidential election. Was that not what they fed you
during the local government elections? Didn’t you lose Banjul, KMC and the West
Coast to UDP? At that point, like any seasoned politician and leader, President
Barrow should have been preoccupied with what steps to take to drive the desired remedy that would register deafening approval for you and NPP. Approval? “What is he at again?” they might ponder.
Apart from the desire to live successfully, the most luring addictive is the hunger for approval. I can’t be wrong here. We all now and again crave that approval. However, one must balance excessive approval and fear of rejection to accomplish popular demands. Excess of either could push one from the cliff of success into abysmal failure. We all do not want President Barrow to fail, nor do we want him to succeed.
Consequently, carefully select the goods we offer and bin the ones you find no use for.
Yunus Hydara said, “You are right, our people to value criticism and take the essences from it. If we all think alike, someone is not thinking. That is dangerous for a country that is still very vulnerable”. Truthfully, sometimes, we are blinded by ego to either think or accept that dissenters are unsatiable haters who market no good. Sceptics, unlike conformists, often portray situations as they are instead of how you want them. I cannot imagine putting it better than Mr Hydara.
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