Haruna,

I total concur with your observations regading Hamjatta's postings.

Candidly speaking, at the beginning of his polemics with Halifa and PDOIS, I
was of the belief and opinion that Hamjatta was a genuine, sincere and
objective critic, who wanted to take all politicians to task so that the
opportunity will be created for them to explain their policies and
programmes as to how they intend to run our country when they are trusted
with that responsibility. But as the debate continued, I began to sense a
serious degeneration in his criticisms. Instead of dealing with pertinent
issues, Hamjatta tended to resort into a personal struggle Halifa Sallah. I
began to read in Hamjatta's writings a hatred for not only Halifa and PDOIS
but anyone who dares to be objective with PDOIS' position,  which I believe
reflects a penchant for pettiness, and a desire to show off.  This attitude
of Hamjatta is not serving us any good. If anything it only takes us back.
We are not engaged in any intellectual show. And if at this critical
election year of our country, we are still  not prepared to use our senses
rightly and direct all our thoughts and energies towards coming up with the
correct tactics and strategies to remove the Jammeh dictatorship, then let
us all be reminded that history shall indict us all.

The problem I have with Hamjatta is that he is unreasonably opposed to
anything from PDOIS. I am now of the conviction that even if PDOIS were to
indicate that one plus one is two, Hamjatta will come up with a different
theory to justify that PDOIS is wrong.

Secondly, a day hardly passes by without Yahya Jammeh being condemned for
what he is - the big tyrant and dictator of the Gambia. But we do not take
time to sit down and reflect on our own personal tendencies and honestly ask
whether those tendencies are more alligned to dictatorial or democratic
ones. Some of us have, willy-nilly, become the tyrants of the L, and will
not hesitate to incarcerate anyone with a dissenting and objective voice to
the dungeons of cyberspace. Hamjatta will not hesitate to condemn them as
"programmed fanatics".

I definitely do not see any sincerity in Hamjatta. What I clearly see in him
is a desire to be seen as a giant intellectual. We need to be sincere with
each other. That is the only way that we can make giant strides ahead. The
world has moved far ahead of us. What we are interested at this critical
juncture of our history are policies and programmes that are WORKABLE not
mere rhetorics. The time has passed when the world was divided into lefts
and rights; communists, capitalists and liberals. The old frail voter in
Nawdeh is not interested in who is a communist, capitalist or liberal. What
he is interested is what can save him from a life of povery, misery and
disease. What we should strive to search for, with all sincerity, is what
can work, full stop. Knowledge is not the monopoly of any one person, race
or region. It belongs to humanity.

The problem, I must say, with some of us is that we tend to talk too much
and do very little. Let us pool our resources together and support the
parties of our choice, financially and morally. Those ones at home, at the
forefront, have sacrificed everything they have; everything they could have
been; now it's our turn to show seriousness in what we say.

No offence.

Batch.







>From: Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Response to Halifa: The Liberal Alternative and Agenda Part
>           [ii]
>Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 00:34:37 -0000
>

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