In a message dated 5/28/01 4:18:57 AM GMT Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes:
> << Hamjatta,
> I have seized to personal attacks when national issues are discussed. I am
> sorry, but I am not on this list owing to anyone to explain my position any
> further. I will try to read your piece more when I have a dictionary by my
> side and could look up some of your misused words like "sodding." If I have
> any reply for you, you will get it. I am not here seeking for recognition
> and
> self importance on the Gambia-L. >>
Mr. Ousman Jallow-Bojang,
A pity you clearly can't even distinguish between criticisms and personal
attacks. More's the pity that you are not only burdened with conflict of
loyalties [as i always say about your shifting sand principles vis-a-vis
Jammeh] but it turns out that you are also afflicted with delusional
psychosis - if you can attribute ad-hominem-bickering status to my criticisms
of your positioning insofar as we speak of the problem of Jammeh on this List
[hope i've added more "misused" words to your checklist for you to check out
as well]. If what i had wrote was intended as a personal attack on your
person, i would have enumerated certain personal foibles i have always
detected in you since i joined this List and off this List what i know to be
true of you vis-a-vis your loyalties or former loyalties. For instance, i
would not have failed to make good use of your close affinities with such
AFPRC/APRC has-beens like Sanna Sabbaly, Major Momodou Bojang, Kaba Bajo and
the Brikama-Farafenni-Armitage tapestry of the AFPRC/APRC in its early days.
I could have pointed out to List members how enthusiastic you were of the
AFPRC and how wholeheartedly you embrace their "revolution" until, of course,
Sanna Sabbaly was unceremoniously kicked out of the AFPRC in January 1995. I
could even insinuate that your funny positioning on the crucial issues and
the risible one of being a sodding "fence sitter" on this List is on the
whole attributable to your lack of confidence in the APRC since most of your
influential friends were kicked out unceremoniously and the incontrovertible
fact that yours is not an agitation for an end to the APRC; but one for a
reformed and more benign APRC dictatorship. And i could have made it a
combative point when you issued that latently hypocritical posture of yours
saying that Jammeh is personally a horrible character but would not hesitate
to give a clean bill of health to such despicable Jammeh side-kicks like Kaba
Bajo and Major Momodou Bojang - as it happened, two of your closest buddies.
I could have engaged in all sorts of guilt-by-association innuendoes that
will in the very end besmirch your reputation. Yet, none of these have ever
featured in my criticisms. Where then does the charges of "personal attacks"
come from?
Since mine is, and always will remain, a principled protestation of the
gradual withdrawal of all forms of decency, moderation and whatever it is we
dared called Gambian values and norms by Jammeh and his uncultured acolytes,
i shall always refrain from highlighting issues that are irrelevant to my
agenda. Amongst others, personal or ad hominem attacks rank prominent on such
a list of irrelevant tidbits. Insofar as what you do privately is irrelevant
to the discourse i engage in here, it shall never be the subject of my
criticisms. However, if you express a position on a public forum in a public
discourse, it no longer becomes exclusively yours and yours only; it becomes
public material and a matter for public scrutiny. People can freely take
issues with it without being personal. This has no truck with intolerance and
or personal attacks. If you can't understand this, then i'm afraid you need
more help than the occasional therapy - i would have prescribed for your
burden of conflict of loyalties - from a shrink. If i may moralise: It is
becoming the bane of objection of many on this List that if you criticise
certain positions you disagree with, you are being intolerant and in effrect
being a Jammeh with a pen. The perversity of such interpretation of the
notion of tolerance also include the ridiculous idea that even if people are
lying through their teeth, we ought to stay mute and respect such lies
because we must be tolerant at all times. This, of course, is nothing but
off-the-wall nonsense. Tolerating divergent views doesn't mean one accepts
them prima facie. One tolerates others views because one realises that others
are entitled to such views. A Christian tolerates a Sikh not because he
believes that Sikhs are right; but because Sikhs are entitled to their
version of the Good. This, however, doesn't corrode the fact that to the
Christian, the Sikh is wrong and vice versa - even if they don't utter a word
about it or exchange disparaging polemics on their differences. Yet, such
recognition has never robbed others of their entitlements to subject such
views to a forensic scrutiny and respectfully disagreeing with them. When
Ahmed Deedat pens polemics to expose black holes in Christian theology, does
anyone doubt the fact that he respects the rights of Christians to believe
whatever it is they choose to believe but only respectfully taking issues
with them on what he perceive to be inconsistencies in Christian theology?
Intolerance is not when you criticise people for views they publicly profess
but when you wish to literally FORCE them to acquiesce to your views. In
short, intolerance is when you literally FORCE people to see things from your
own perspective; this is what is currently prevailing in the Gambia. If
people can ascribe intolerance to us for merely criticising positions we do
not agree with, then why bother have healthy discourse in public life or even
democratic choices in a polity. If criticism becomes absolete on the shaky
ground that it leads to intolerance, Karl Popper wouldn't have the
opportunity to subject Platonic excesses to such a prodigious critique in his
seminal work, The Open Society and its Enemies. Nor would he have had the
opportunity to repudiate Marxism on such a devastating scale. I hope you
notice the clear demarcations of personal attacks and criticisms on one hand
and tolerance and intolerance on the other. If what i have sought to explain
here has left you fuzzy still, then i recommend you enrol at your local
Community College for sophomoric or even elementary tutorials on Civic
Behaviour. This shouldn't be of any trouble in the States.
More's the pity again that you seem to ludicrously and perversely think that
when people contribute on this List, they do so because they are playing to
the gallery. Lo and behold! This is as ludicrous as they come. For starters,
let's get real here about stuff: What kind of practical or material gains,
pray i ask, can popularity on this List conceivably beget a self-seeking
aggrandizer? Becoming the next Ayatollah nominee of Gambia-L "Management" in
the event one of the Ayatollahs abdicates or is deposed? Ayatollah Hamjatta
Kanteh? A pity that this just doesn't click and prosaically vapid; there is
just a ring of hollowness to how this sounds. I've always pointed out how
against everything i hold dear, exchanges on this List invariably brings
attention to my personal self as opposed to the ideas i contribute to the
debates. This is tragic as it is introduces personatilty spats and stuff we
could all do without. I will repeat that partisan politics is simply not my
thing and that i'm best suited for other stuff. And that i hold dear my
pledge never to be part of any gov't and or public administration even if
they are pushing forward my liberal agenda. We can occasionally send out
feelers and support in different forms but non-partisan we shall remain.
Being non-partisan, however, doesn't in any way mean that one lock oneself
into the pathetic cul-de-sac of "neutrality" or apolitical status. One can be
non-partisan whilst at same time remain very political and active at that.
Truth be told: I'm just too much of an iconoclast to fit into the herd
designs of party politics and public administration. Besides, since i profess
to be an incorrigible Capitalist without an apology, surely there are no ends
to what is available for me to do in the private sphere? I hope this
re-statement of my position on this issue settles this non-productive matter
once and for all.
I wish you luck with your dictionary searches and may you fruitfully ferret
out the stuff you find difficulties with. I, for one, will not ever dumb down
or dilute the way i write or think simply because it makes some
intellectually lazy person feel inadequate or shackled.
All the best,
Hamjatta Kanteh
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