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Don't Listen to Kukoi

The Independent (Banjul)
EDITORIAL
October 18, 2004
Posted to the web October 26, 2004
Banjul
When Kukoi was allowed into this country, one fundamental element Yahya
Jammeh's regime overlooked at the time was the deleterious implications for the
security of The Gambia whose only defence presents itself in her peculiar
geography and the enduring brotherly goodwill of neighbours.
Another has been an unqualified trust in the old fox's receptivity to change.
Our inspired understanding was that the pretext under which this overture was
made erroneously presupposed that this revolutionary firebrand of third grade
education would mend his unseemly ways and as a fellow Gambian must therefore
be helped to rehabilitate and re-integrated into our patchwork quilt of
society. However, only Yahya Jammeh and his regime believed that such a nemesis
of Gambian history, who has been overtaken by the transience of time in much
the same way as old Rip Van Winkle, was in a painful process of mending and
changing ways and deserved some aid.
But in the truest fashion of the proverbial leopard which cannot change its
telltale spots, Kukoi is incapable of change. Intrinsically it is not in the
make-up of inveterate revolutionaries like him to accept and attempt change.
They simply won't and can't change either. His gun-prepared proclivity and
mortar readiness has hardened his blood and given him to a revolutionary spasm
still bursting at the seams with the same fiery zeal that once fired his
passionate hatred for a semblance of order Gambians have been making the most
of in the distant and recent past.
Even today Kukoi sees himself as a phallic emblem of generative Gambian
revolutionary power although the mass of his compatriots in and outside The
Gambia see him differently. They see him with the weary eye of an old dog who
knew all about mischief, ploys and treachery.
No-fire-and-brimstone speeches geared towards upping the ante against the
current regime or whipping up public sympathy to his morbific cause would
appeal for the kind of restive expectations he yearns for to keep his dream
alive. Thoughts of him otherwise leave us all petrified with the worst
imaginings of terror.

   

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