President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has won a new West African convert following Yayah Jammeh’s Gambian led Government announcement yesterday(2nd Oct. 2013) that the Country has terminated its membership of the British Commonwealth Organisation. During the last British Commonwealth report on human rights, the Gambian Government whose Country has been member of the Institution for 48 years, was criticized for its human rights record something which the resentful announcement went on to accuse the Organisation of ‘neo-colonialism one which a modern day Gambia will not tolerate’. The truth is that people don’t always criticize you because they hate you, but rather sometimes criticize you because they want you to be a better person, in President Jammeh’s case, a better Leader and so therefore better freedom treatment of his people. It’s about promoting universal freedom more than anything else. The British Commonwealth as worth emphasizing, is a non-political Organisation whose primary aim is to share and promote culture among freely independence member nations. While it can freely comment and engage with member nations, it does not in a sense impose its will upon anyone though it has the right to suspend or expel a membership found to have fallen foul of the Organisation’s guarded golden rule of non-military coup or takeover not to mention persistence human rights abuse by such membership’s Government. It sometimes surprises me how people can so easily come to such baseless conclusions of their own. It’s a rather bankrupt thinking non-factors consideration sparse approach all in all. I hope President Yayah Jammeh will later have time to think again over his decision which he probably won’t, as there is fundamentally missing. Whereas the Free World had since the onset of the Cold War, done its best to promote or spread democracy across Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and African Third World Countries, the issue of misrule or bad governance mostly as a result of weak democratic institutions, persists as of today. ‘Democracy’ is the easy general term which in itself is different from a proper functioning democratic State or Government. A democracy with an iron fist ruthless crackdown on political opposition and dissent, a democracy that rigs elections, suppressing civil liberties including a crackdown on freedom of press and expression, is all but another name for authoritarian civil order, having no democratic meaning or values attached. That is the no win dilemma we face, indeed a great challenge. Here I hasten to mitigate any move by fellow Country commentators that may want to use this innocent observation as a political propaganda tool aimed at discrediting past or current Government when in reality Sierra Leone has from former President, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to that of current Ernest Bai Koroma’s Government, consistently maintained a good human rights record score points among rankings; average satisfaction by any least. There is simply no room for negative attacks against any of the two post civil war Leaders in particular.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 22:02:47 +0000
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