I am increasingly feeling virtuous in my recent prediction that the post-coronavirus-pandemic world will never be the same as before in that despite all its devastating pitfalls it will end up dramatically raising the awareness of the world population who before uncritically tolerated the unsustainable economic and sociopolitical order of an inequitable world.
The rigged establishment perpetrated by rascal politicians and public officials grounded on untenable convictions will no longer be accepted but diligently challenged by the novel breed of politicians, public officials, scholars and activists.
Government leaders will no doubt be subjected to a level of scrutiny never imagined before in legitimate efforts to root out the tradition of pervasive corruption and government incompetence previously deemed appropriate but fatally cancerous to society.
I watched the last proceedings of the Gambia’s Human Rights and Constitutional Committee where our Finance and Foreign ministers Mr. Mamburay Njie and Dr. Mamadou Tangara respectively were grilled on issues that in the past would have been treated differently. I tip my hat to the National Assembly Member (NAM), Hon. Ya Kumba Jaiteh for her brilliance and audacity to confront the two ministers with the most pertinent questions.
Apparently, Doctor Tangara merely proved his ignorance and insensitivity in saying that he could not get back to convey the concerns of the NA to the Chinese ambassador to the Gambia after the Barrow government already issued a statement on the subject that questioned the recent xenophobic behavior of Chinese nationals against Gambians in China for fear of violating diplomatic etiquettes.
Obviously Hon. Jaiteh told the foreign minister what he should have known better about his role and that of the superior national assembly’s when it comes to such international affairs. That he was in this case only a messenger with minimal or no liberty to even question the content of the message for delivery from the superior body of the NAMs.
Anyway it goes to expose the kind of universally accepted diplomacy he has for years been practicing as the APRC ambassador to the United Nations where diplomats hardly question each other on anything even when in doubt of policies or resolutions drafted for ratification.
Yes, at the UN, beside the activities of the Security Council everything mostly revolves around how to endorse the position of fellow diplomats in unison, recycling the same speeches laced with accolades on different topics, in different conference rooms and at different dates. No ambassador especially from third-world countries questions the legality or misbehavior of envoys from developed countries particularly those considered “Donor Partners” controlling the global narrative. China is indeed among them.
Essentially, the five permanent members of the Security Council, the United States of America, China, the Russian Federation, France and England remain in charge of manipulating the rest of the member countries into supporting their global objectives.
No fanciful rules and regulations can deter these super powers from pursuing and achieving their national interests and occasionally at the detriment of weaker nations. If they like a crooked government they campaign for its legitimacy; like wise if they dislike a popular government they fight to outlaw or even oust it from power while the rest simply obey and follow whatever the “Donor Partners” desire.
Trust me, international diplomacy is at time a ridiculous career.
China is the most totalitarian nation in the world-remember Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989-but preserves a position of envy and praise among almost all African ambassadors because of it check-book diplomacy.
African ambassadors at the UN are indeed always predisposed to collectively band together behind any super power determined to destroy an African nation stigmatized as undemocratic or rebellious to western values.
Although since the end of the cold war, incidents of weak nations being overtly toppled by these giant nations have dwindled considerably.
But all that transpires at the UN when the super powers are not paying much attention to the “masses” is the routine ritual of endless meetings where insignificant diplomats praise each other in the name of drafting one resolution after another that are hardly implemented but enough to justify the maintenance of the organization and their mostly-lobbied jobs in tact. These formal events are punctuated with elaborate dining and wining on meaningless celebrations attended mainly by well fattened and robotic ambassadors.
When America and England wanted to destroy Iraq in 2003, China, the Russia Federation and France realized that every excuse presented for the invasion was false but they simply step aside and watched them lobby the masses of UN member states into endorsing the resolution to topple Saddam Hussain and “restore democracy” in that country.
After well over a decade with a million and a half people killed they shamelessly succeeded in overthrowing Saddam’s government, killing him and permanently destabilizing one of the most stabled countries in the world.
China in particular never opposes any conspiracy by its counterparts to destroy or support any weak leader because they lack the political virtue and even the conventional vocabulary to speak about democracy, human rights and the rule of law for obvious reasons. But they are free to buy support and property anywhere in the world, destroy our ecology and even cause pandemics without any retrain. It’s the exploitation of the loopholes of capitalism at its best.
Invariably, when France, America and England conspired together to destroy Libya in 2011 because of Gaddafi’s “human rights violations”, China and the Russian Federation also knew about their ultra motives, being far from what was portrayed; but they again stepped aside and watched the masses of ambassadors at the UN approved the resolution that killed Colonel Gaddafi and bomb the Arab nation to rubbles, plunging it into another endless and reckless war.
And again because America and Israel disapproved the first democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi was celebrated at the UN for massacring over 1000 of his supporters in 2014, members of the Muslim Brotherhood party who tried to resist the overthrow of their elected leader.
If Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in 2014 had not in the case of Syria refused to step aside and watched America and England destroy another helpless and endangered nation, our diplomats would have obediently played along another nasty campaign of attacking the Syrians and perhaps killing President Bashar al-Assad and destabilizing another region in the name of global democratization.
We all know the immunity and adoration enjoyed by Saudi Arabia at the UN because of its backing from the West which has nothing to do with their benchmarks of establishing and reinforcing their slogan of “the universal declaration of the right of humans or peoples” for a better democratic world.
Unfortunately, our Honorable foreign minister Dr. Mamadou Tangara being at the UN for too long was among the indoctrinated masses who understand no other way of conducting diplomacy other than sucking up to countries like China a “Donor partner” even if Gambian citizens are publicly decapitated in the streets of Beijing.
That said, one wonders where the conscience of our government lies in an annual budget of GMD270 million for traveling expenses allocated to the ministry of foreign affairs when our hospitals and schools remain terribly underfunded and under-equipped. I am now very interested in the travel budget of other ministries that we know are mostly slated for per diem-fortune hunters.
Hon. Ya Kumba Jaiteh was right on the money in asking for the balance of this year’s annual budget apportioned to the ministry of foreign affairs to be used to rescue stranded Gambians in Europe living under precarious conditions in the wake of the global pandemic.
The ministry mustn’t be allowed to keep the needed cash until the international travel embargo is lifted for it to be paid to Air Brussels on useless trips for per diems, trips valued only by the photo-ops posted on Facebook and Instagram.
Virtual meetings being the current order of the moment are proving effective and far cheaper than the extravagant traveling of officials that should from now on be thoroughly scrutinized. It will probably require commissioning a special NA committee purposely to vet the relevance of all foreign trips for approval before any public official is airlifted and paid per diem to leave the country. And upon arrival they should all surrender receipts of how every butut was spent.
A serious policy along those lines will soon stop the unnecessary traveling exploited and abused by unscrupulous officials jokingly identified in the Gambia as Misses & Misters of Air Brussels.
It certainly felt very refreshing to hear the NAMs educating the finance minister Mr Mamburay Njie to respect the hard fact that moneys should no longer be opaquely transferred from banks or ministries to other departments and spent willy-nilly and called it an unquestionable “century-old tradition”. That is disgraceful.
These people have been robbing our resources and bluffing their way while ignorant and spineless officials let them.
I can even notice the speaker Mrs. Mariam Denton taking tougher stand against their good-for-nothing behaviors, thanks to the awakening effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
Indeed, the contemporary and dynamic young politicians emerging lately from our National Assembly such as the Honorable Ya Kumba Jaiteh perfectly fit the desired African leaders contemplated by the Ghanian writer, Ayi Kwei Amah who in his epic novel, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born published by Heinemann African Writers Series in 1969, gave us a title that had since left the world wondering when they would ever be born.
Like one Senegalese said recently, the COVID-19 disease after all came to expose the chronic diseases of the African continent that has been subjected to ruthless foreign exploitation, enabled by our incompetent and unconscionable politicians and public figures. He sounded like one of the beautiful ones being born.
God have mercy on Africa and the Gambia. Ramadan Mubarak!
Thanks for reading. Till next time, I apologize if any reader is offended.
