KB,

I'm still choked with stuff to do, so forgive me for butting in late. I
share most of your sentiments regarding PDOIS' reaction to the London
meeting. I had resolved not to criticize them on this forum, after meeting
Mr. Sallah here last year. I've had to break that pledge a few times before,
because of the way they were going after Hamjatta. Though in fairness to the
PDOIS people, Hamjatta hammered them first. So, they declared open season on
him. But, given the positions that PDOIS keeps taking -as opposed to any
other party back home- relative to the murderous APRC regime, I can
understand why Hamjatta finds it impossible to restrain himself. PDOIS'
condescending reaction to the London meeting is a case in point.

I believe PDOIS seriously erred in several ways:

1. PDOIS' stand that travelling to London to “brief a British MP” tantamount
to admitting impotence on the side of the Gambian opposition is baseless. In
fact, it's preposterous. Anyone with basic knowledge about the Gambia knows
that the country survives on foreign aid. That of course, comes with
strings. So, as much as we'd like to pretend to be an "independent" nation,
the nations whose handouts keep our tiny economy spluttering, have a lot of
say in how our nation is governed. Sad, but the truth. The AFPRC’s
turn-around regarding their original desire to hang on the reins of power
for four years, was mainly due to outside pressure: “No Elections, No Aid
money.” No secrets there. So, are so many other cosmetic improvements in
good governance in The Gambia. Which makes me wonder why PDOIS would even
pretend that opposition members briefing some British MPs on The Gambia is
folly, a waste of time, or anything extra-ordinary?

2.  This one is simply sad. PDOIS keeps invoking the names of former PPP
govt. officials as a negative connotation of the London meeting. The same
posture the Jammeh govt. has taken, one may add. However, the same govt.
doesn’t hesitate to use, or appoint members of the last PPP govt. machine if
it serves its interest: Buba Baldeh, E.K. Sarr, Aji Fatou Sallah, etc, etc.
But from a human perspective, what do we expect from the PPP people?
Personally, I can’t think of any better place where Sir Dawda and co ought
to have been on that February day than at that London meeting. Let’s face
it: These people were kicked out screaming.  They were accused and vilified
as the most corrupt, most nepotic, and most undemocratic people ever to
defile Gambian soil.  Some of these people like OJ (for whom I now have much
respect,) were arrested and subjected to really inhumane treatment including
physical torture! Think of most types of de-humanizing treatment, and
chances are, most of the PPP people have been subjected to it. And they
continue to be harassed and their lives threatened on a daily basis. Time
being the great arbiter that it is, has shown their erstwhile accusers to be
every bit worse than they ever were. But somehow, these vindicated people
shouldn’t even call for the normalcy that obtained during their tenure in
office to return. I wonder what gives PDOIS or any Gambian for that matter,
the right to silence these people anymore. Yes, they screwed up; No, they
shouldn’t be put in office again; But you darn straight, they’ve EARNED the
right to be at the forefront of the fight against the fraud who illegally
uprooted them only to out-do them in every crime sphere imaginable. I’m
really interested in hearing why PDOIS thinks the PPP people shouldn’t be
visible in the fight against Yaya Jammeh at this point in time. I noticed
code words like we want change, but “change should be for the better” in one
of their letters. Well, get this PDOIS: Having the last PPP govt. back will
be a “change for the better!” Why not ask the average Modu or Kumba on the
street?  Yaya Jammeh has simply accomplished a Herculean task, something
really unimaginable to many of us only six years ago: He has turned the PPP
era into “the good old days” in The Gambia! It’s a shame that PDOIS fails to
get this.


3. On a practical level, our tiny nation is at the mercy of Yaya Jammeh. For
all practical purposes, the Opposition and the parliament in the Gambia of
today are merely symbolic. Yaya Jammeh not only sets the rule; he IS the
rule and the law! The man simply does what he wants.  Damn any of his
opponents. And because of our relative geo-political and economic
insignificance, Yaya Jammeh will kill a lot more of our people before the
outside world notice anything -unless we raise the alarm early! The PDOIS
statement envisaged a scenario where Sheriff Dibba would have attempted to
register as a candidate in the forth-coming bye-elections; then to challenge
his ban in court if refused registration, etc, etc. This sounds like a joke
to me. To test constitutionality, or the rule of law in the Gambia, PDOIS
doesn't need an old timer like Sheriff Dibba as a test case. How about suing
the govt. for the murder of the little kids killed last April? That is a
bigger crime (committed by this govt.) than banning any politician. And even
as I write this, the Yaya Jammeh govt. still has a "shoot to kill" policy at
unmarked borders like the Giboro village border crossing. How about suing
for the families of the two people who were killed in cold-blood recently?
Or if these subjects are “volatile” or “confrontational,” how about suing
Yaya Jammeh for defying the wish of the Gambian majority to have TERM LIMITS
entrenched in our constitution as clearly stipulated in the National
Consultative Committee report?

We all know exactly what will happen if anyone tries to seek redress for the
victims in any of the incidents cited, or the subversion of the people’s
wish in the NCC report. Like I pointed out to Mr. Sallah before, what we
have in the Gambia, is a “simulation of democracy.” If one wants to be
fancy, it could be called “legalized authoritarianism.” Legalized, because
of a staged election that was meant to be rigged from the word “go.” But, in
any case, the Gambia’s democratic credential is a sham, a big public lie. No
honest observer of the Gambian scene can miss such an obvious fact. Which is
why, one has to wonder why smart folks like the PDOIS people keep throwing
out amazingly naive ideas about this rogue govt.  It is in the govt.’s
interest to keep the outside world in the dark about the true nature of the
Jammeh regime. PDOIS is the only party that readily helps the govt. in that.
And one has to ask: “what is in it for PDOIS?”

Also, I can't help but add to the protests about the PDOIS line on Jawara.
Frankly, I thought the party was over Jawara. But as the line “…Jawara is
lucky to have Hamat Bah and not a PDOIS rep…” clearly reveals, they still
have their daggers out for the Old Pa. When it comes to Jawara, PDOIS never
passes up an opportunity to attack, and denigrate the man. Yet, the same
PDOIS will declare that they're against "the politics of personal insults"
when it comes to Yaya Jammeh. I remember fully well PDOIS’ maiden days. I
was a senior in High School, and one of my past times was to visit the PDOIS
HQ at Bunding, a block from the mosque. I also clearly remember the theme of
PDOIS’ first round of symposia: “The Senegambia Confederation.” Those who
think PDOIS is a party of dour, or lifeless characters, should find a tape
cassette of PDOIS’ symposium on the Senegambia Confederation. Their sense of
humor was palpable, and very infective. The way they lampooned the PPP
people, was simply hilarious.  And they got their message through to the
masses. Makes one think of the Wollof proverb of  “shooing away one’s
chicken, while saying what one intends to say.” Simply put, if one cared to
see the silliness and petty hypocrisy of the PPP people in the ‘80s exposed,
one needs not go any further than a PDOIS symposium. That was MY PDOIS. It
was the party I fell for. The one we have now is unrecognizable to me.
Because, if one had paid millions to invent a bumbling buffoon of a
political opponent, one simply couldn’t have come up with a better product
than Yaya Jammeh. To any of his opponents who dare examine the man’s
character, Yaya Jammeh is god-sent. Simple! What do you call: a
thirty-something year old, who publicly humiliates himself by wearing
clothes meant for septuagenarians; Or if that’s not enough, he carries a
staff laden with “magical” juju reminiscent of the Mansa (kings) of the
ancient Mali empire? Or carries a chaplet in his left hand when three-year
olds in Quranic school know better? Or goes on TV to brag about how wealthy
he is –when 90% of the population is undergoing disguised starvation? Just
to cite a few of Yaya Jammeh’s colorful achievements. Yet, the new PDOIS
openly keeps away from such subjects, because they’re not interested in the
“politics of personal insults.” ‘You ain’t fooling me’ PDOIS, as they say
around here.

One can genuinely question Sir Dawda’s democratic credentials, because it
was indeed spotty at times. But, overall, it’s totally dishonest for PDOIS
to be still sticking to their professed stance that “there’s no difference
between the PPP and the APRC.” At the height of PPP rule, Halifa Sallah
personally confronted Sir Dawda at a Serrekunda polling station to point out
to him that he was violating election rules by trying to unduly influence
the election by his presence on Election Day 1987. According to first hand
reports, the man concurred with Mr. Sallah’s observation, just turned
around, and left without any incident. I missed that encounter by less than
five minutes -literally. I remember the day like it was this morning. Some
of OJ’s people were so livid, it wasn’t funny. I stood and listened to many
of those people saying of Halifa Sallah things like: “he should be glad that
this is Jawara. Anywhere else, he won’t see the sun again”… “This man thinks
he’s the most educated Gambian…” “’key hamutt Bo-pam’ (the man is
arrogant,”) etc, etc. I have no doubt in mind that Halifa Sallah or no other
PDOIS stalwart will EVER try any such thing with Yaya Jammeh. And we all
know why. In fact, Halifa Sallah is on record here as saying basically that,
PDOIS wants to keep doing their thing without provoking anything that would
cause Yaya Jammeh to lock them up, or “banish” them somewhere. So, here we
have a situation where PDOIS itself basically admits that the political
environment is more adverse today than what obtains under the PPP, yet the
party keeps clinging to the spurious claim that the PPP is no better than
the Jammeh regime. There’s something truly dishonest about that. One would
be remiss for failing to accord Mr. Sallah and PDOIS what is truly theirs.
Equally, fairness dictates that we give Jawara and the PPP people what is
rightfully theirs. I can’t resist invoking St. Thomas Aquinas’ wise lines on
justice again: “To treat equals unequally, or unequals equally is an
injustice.” Yaya Jammeh is simply no Sir Dawda Jawara. So, to keep equating
the two in terms of their rule, is an injustice to Sir Dawda, and
increasingly an insult to anyone who lived under PPP rule! A group of inept
and mainly incompetent people, they were. Common criminals, they were not!
I have no doubt that history will be more kind to them than the APRC. Or at
the very least, PDOIS ought to stop the pretense that they’re not engaged in
a personal vendetta, when they jump at every opportunity to ridicule the PPP
people, but keep finding excuses not to play Jammeh the same card, or even
worse rationalizing some of the evil that the Jammeh govt. does by telling
us that the APRC inherited such and such from the PPP. If Yaya Jammeh will
kill one for something that Sir Dawda gracefully accedes to, how on earth
can these two people’s regimes be the same?

Be as it is, the Gambian majority is fairing far worse under Yaya than it
did under Jawara whether in terms of civic rights, or economics. This is an
open secret. We know what Jawara did, or failed to do. And we also know that
what Yaya Jammeh is doing to us is worse than anything we’ve ever seen under
Jawara. It is the duty of our “wanna be” leaders to expose and stand firmly
and unequivocally against the criminal syndicate that the Yaya Jammeh govt.
is. If PDOIS cannot stand with the rest of the opposition against the APRC,
the least the party ought to do is keep its silence. PDOIS’ unfortunate
statement on the London meeting has done nothing but muddled the waters, and
sent the wrong message to this criminal govt. that they’re faced with a
divided opposition. It is partly due to a similar myopic position that
PDOIS’ took in 1996 in the form of “there’s nothing wrong with Yaya Jammeh
turning the AFPRC into a political party and running for president” that
clearly encouraged Yaya Jammeh to change his clothes and self-succeed. That
statement conveniently ignored qualifiers like the need for a level playing
field (which was IMPOSSIBLE to have with Yaya Jammeh as AFPRC Chairman and
APRC Presidential candidate) in the pursuit of true democracy. Thus the mess
we’re in now. We don’t need another such blunder, no matter what PDOIS calls
it! If PDOIS is to ever become an alternative candidate for power in the
Gambia, the party will have to strive to appeal to a broader demographic
group than the current narrow strata that is dominated by people with blind
zealot proclivities. For which the rest of us are thankful. (The fewer of us
that follow PDOIS this way, the better for our nation.) PDOIS’ unnecessary
and sanctimonious intransigence is simply too much for an increasing number
of EDUCATED Gambians. If the party can pull itself out of this tinderbox of
their own making, there may yet be a lifeline. Otherwise, PDOIS as a serious
contender of public office in The Gambia, is all but dead! Call me an
arrogant prophet of doom, or what have you, but I’m willing to bet anyone
that on its present path, PDOIS will actually win FEWER votes in the next
election than it did in 1996! People are sick and tired of PDOIS playing
footsie with Yaya Jammeh!

Sorry, I have to break my vow not to go off on PDOIS on this forum again,
but PDOIS seems to miss the fact that the rest of the Gambia is simply tired
of the criminality of this APRC regime. Six years of multiple page letters
haven’t done the trick. As it is, even a re-incarnated PPP is preferable to
the time bomb we have right now. So why help the Jammeh govt. cover up a
public lie that is clearly propelling our country into very dangerous
territory?

Good day.

Saul.



>Barrow, I join Hamjatta and commend you for your stance and honesty. I
>renew my appeal and encourage other PDOIS supporters to view our statements
>in

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