YAYA JAMMEH 'PARDONS' PRISONERS. BUT FOR WHAT?

I'm happy for the Families of the 85 'prisoners' 'pardoned' by President Yaya Jammeh and would like to congratulate them for the reunion.

What I wouldn't do is to credit Jammeh for a 'gesture' that some are seeing as magnanimous. Yaya does not have the conscience or the heart to do anything in good faith. So my wary instincts put me on a pessimistic alert, and I started looking for holes in his recent move.

First of all, for a country that's not only an open prison but a whales tummy where many citizens are unaccounted for - disappearances, kidnapping, detention without trials - 85 people is a very small figure after all these years. Besides, let's see how many of these:

a) are Political Prisoners or prisoners of conscience.
b) have been Tried in court and rightfully convicted.
c) already served their terms.
d) dumped in 'remand' without ever been charged of a crime.
e) are 'real' persons in prison and do not included dead ones or 'fictitious' inmates.

Here is why! For a president who just a week ago was threatening to 'slit the throats' of perceived adversaries to be this 'magnanimous' in observance of the country's 50th independence anniversary that happened 4 months ago, to open the gates for convicted 'criminals' is an unprecedented kindness.

Secondly, a week doesn't go by without reports of families crying that their loved ones 'haven't come home'; we have the cases of missing people from Chief Manneh, Kanyiba Kanyi, to Ebou Jobe and Alhagie Mamut Ceesay; people prosecuted and persecuted for their political beliefs (Amadou Sanneh et al), families of those allegedly involved in December 30 liberation attempt who have committed NO crimes; people who beat their cases in the Courts (Mabury Njie et al) but still languishing in jail. It is the Gambian State's responsibility to make sure that these people and their rights are protected. All these mentions have one common denominator - JAMMEH. He either sanctioned their conditions or knew about it. That is why I'm very cautious with this because Yaya is a hypocrite but a shrewd politician too. You cannot want to present yourself as merciful, benevolent lover of people when we've seen you proposing legislation that'd license you to legally murder more Gambians. That's a serious contradiction. I suspect that he's dangling a carrot while he plots something sinister, evil and major.

But even if we do want to give him the benefit of the doubt to say it was in good faith, it's still not good enough if all/most of those 'pardoned' seem to be low level convicts (petty thieves, weed possession, trespassing etc).

Jammeh DOES NOT have the capacity to EVER do good. So this isn't good enough and not worth a credit or celebration. A friend of mine succinctly reminded us of Malcolm X's stabbing in the back with a nine inches knife, pulling out five inches and want to call that a progress. Same in this case. Yaya isn't up to any good! Watch him tell them that he could have killed them if he wants but he didn't want to take them out of their miseries. This nigga sick