The Gambia: They need a sane President

Need for mental checks

If there is a case for assessing the mental health of leaders in Africa and more so their suitability for office, the President of The Gambia presents such an opportunity.

He has just ordered all homosexuals in The Gambia to leave the country within 24 hours or be beheaded according to the BBC.

He has threatened to enforce laws against homosexuality stricter than the ones in Iran.

It is outrageous that so-called leaders can subsume secular legal process with fundamental religious laws imposing such on people regardless of their degree of adherence to the religion.

He is in grave error

It might be well to ask foreign homosexuals to leave your country, but indigenous homosexuals are Gambian as the President is Gambian, they have every right of existence to live without fear in The Gambia just as the President exists in The Gambia.

However, he is in error, no President has the power to remove the right of citizenship to any indigenous person, he might have the right to deny a representative document of the country to allow the citizen travel out of the country as a Gambian.

If he does want to rid his country of homosexuals, he should facilitate their exodus, arrange for a country to accept the people he is trying to exile, ensure their safe passage if they decide to leave but he must follow due legal process and if any decide to stay and fight the authority of the President to impose such a sanction.

Anti-African concept

This kind of fundamentalist intolerance is alien to African, it does not belong to our culture, people might be ostracised for who they are but not to the point that they are menaced in this way.

This is the same President who claimed he had found a cure for AIDS but was involved in some hocus-pocus herbalism and mantras which could not stand the scrutiny of commonsense talk less of medical inquiry.

In his stupidity he announced his new found powers to the diplomatic community and they should have laughed him to derision.

They are like you and me

People might have their issues with homosexuality and homosexuals, that is their prerogative – they are fellow human-beings, have the right to life and freedoms as the other man in their citizenry and persecuting homosexuals does not begin to address the serious issues of governance that these idle useless incompetent leaders should be addressing.

It is a distraction and unconscionable, we cannot sit back and watch the dereliction of duty to the service of governance made insignificant for some super-moral society that delivers no solutions to the people.

Having idiots in leadership is bad enough, having a rabid mad man in leadership is twice a misfortune and having Yahya Jammeh as President of The Gambia is a catastrophe visited on a people who deserve a whole lot better.

The buffoon is 43 tomorrow, I cannot believe we were born in the same year – this is really bad it is horrible. Like I wrote in February 2007, The Gambian is being overrun with an epidemic of stupidity that needs to be wiped out, first with getting rid of that man.