By Alagie Saidy-Barrow
Africa-Press – Gambia. You’d often hear those who defend these spineless and multiple-tongued politicians make the ridiculous claim that values, principles, and consistency are not realities in politics. Their existence and that of the spineless politicians they worship revolve around duplicity, inconsistency, lying, and corruption. A few weeks ago, someone told me that my expectations of political figures were too high and unrealistic. They insisted that politics is a game, and so there is nothing wrong with engaging in securing one’s interests in that game. If this mindless position weren’t so sad, it would be laughable. If your political reality is embracing lies, corruption, spinelessness, and saying one thing today only to say the exact opposite tomorrow, you should not get angry if people ask you whether you are genuinely in politics for the people or yourself!
When has asking for people to conduct politics with honesty, values, and principles and not lie to the people become so unrealistic? When has it become acceptable for politicians to be liars, hypocrites, inconsistent, spineless, greedy, and corrupt? You call that realistic politics? These terrible traits (lying, duplicity, greed) do not conform with your religion or culture, but you insist it’s your politics, and, therefore, they are acceptable. No sane person will teach or encourage your children to be liars or to be duplicitous and unprincipled. These are not values that anyone wants their children to have. Yet, Jam Sarr and his ilk want us to accept duplicity, lies, and inconsistency in politics because they are accepted in American politics! Such logic.
If anyone is in politics to better the lives of the people, then your politics should not be about what you stand to gain as an individual. You will have differences with others regarding what programmes and policies to implement in order to better the lives of the people, but your support, or lack thereof, for programmes and policies, should never be based on what you stand to gain as an individual. If a Tombong Jatta or Seedy Njie or some of those multiple-tongued politicians who have their foot in two parties or have been jumping from one party to another are your examples of a good politician, then you are no better than them. No one should get into politics to serve themselves. That is not politics; that is just being a dirty hustler.
Now, if, like Jam Sarr, the only principle you have revolves around getting money and being close to power so you can live better than those you politic for, then, of course, lies, inconsistency, lack of principle, duplicity, and spinelessness will be your best attributes. That’s fine, but at least have a bit of decency by not telling us that you’re in politics for the people. Have the decency to admit that you are a dirty hustler.
The sad part is, when you talk to these proponents of unethical and immoral politics, they have never heard of African political ethics or what it means. They have never heard of Islamic political ethics or its emphasis on ethical leadership, where political leaders prioritise the welfare of the people over their own interests, where public service is dedicated to serving the public, not oneself. They often rely on Western notions of government or democracy, yet they have no understanding of the philosophical foundations of these systems. For them, politics is a dirty game, and so it is okay for politicians to be liars, inconsistent opportunists, spineless bootlickers, and wishy-washy deceivers. Our country has suffered long enough, and the people deserve better than that. May Allah bless us with politicians who are in politics to better the lives of the people first and foremost, and not themselves.
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