Hamjatta, as usual, you are spot on again. I was about to write to Mr.
Manjang on the same lines. As you said, no one can argue with their noble
endeavor to foster peace in the country during the elections season. I join
you and others and wish luck to Manjang, Muhammed Sillah and Emmanuel Joof.
Their initiative was a good one.

Having said that, I think they are also preaching to the wrong choir when
they tell the Opposition to tone down the rhetoric and ensure peace. We all
know who the culprits are here. Let us call a spade a spade and quit these
silly games. How many Gambians have words killed so far? Granted, the
incitement from the words can kill. But who has gone on national TV to
incite his supporters to start killing people and telling on their
neighbors? Who goes around threatening civil servants? How many APRC
ministers have been ambushed before in the manner Darboe was ambushed in
Basse? How many APRC supporters were ambushed at Denton Bridge and stabbed?
I will NOT leave here today if I want to catalogue the lawlessness and
political thuggery of these vermin.

They use government-sanctioned thugs to intimidate their opponents. When
people fight back like they did in Baddibu (after APRC lost the
by-elections) Opposition supporters (victims of trespass) are then arrested
and incarcerated. At the worst, what the Opposition is saying to its
supporters is for them NOT to lie down and let APRC thugs walk all over
them. Self Defense. The Opposition (unlike Yaya) is NOT telling its
supporters to attack people. Yaya and his cohorts do not stop at talking
about violence. They kill and maim people.

Manjang should save Joof and Sillah some grief and just pick up the phone
and talk to his buddy Sarjo Jallow to tell his boss (Yaya) NOT to unleash
July 22 Movement thugs on the Gambian people. That’s all. Just like Yaya
made one utterance and made Decree 89 ‘history’, the vermin also has to just
talk to Baabaa Jobe and the July 22 Movement thugs for the political
violence to stop. All these meetings will get us nowhere if people do NOT
want to address the crux of the matter. Sarjo Jallow needs to tell the
criminal leading our country that the violence has to stop. If the vermin
CANNOT convince Gambians to vote for him, he should leave them in peace.

How can the Opposition threaten the peace in the country? The Opposition
does NOT have a Police Force that goes around slaughtering children as young
as three. The Opposition does NOT have an army led by some bigot sharing a
tribal agenda with Yaya to annihilate their opponents. The Opposition does
NOT have a national TV where it can tell its supporters that it is OK to
bury people six-feet deep. All we have is our determination to NOT let thugs
and bullies emasculate us. Let no pacifist be under some illusion. This time
around, Yaya is finished. No one will let these thugs walk all over them. We
will NOT attack them, but if they attack us, they will pay like that vermin
paid in Basse. Enough is enough.
KB


>From: Hamjatta Kanteh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: GAMBIA'S POLITICAL SITUATION WORSE AND THREATENING
>Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 04:47:32 EDT
>
>Mr Manjang,
>
>Whilst i agree in principle that attempts to lower the political
>temperature
>of the country is vital for a conducive election milieu, i doubt very much
>if
>it will ever reach fruition if it remains decoupled from emphatically
>stating
>the underlying fundamental factors that make the country's political
>temperature to reach all-time highs. Any attempts to lower the current
>political temperature of the body politic ought to factor fundamentally the
>extent to which the heigthening of current political tensions are as a
>direct
>result of an ever belligerent bully of a gov't that intolerantly pursues an
>Opposition that lacks the wherewithal to respond in kind. In lieu of the
>aforesaid, organisers of talk shops aimed at lowering political
>temperatures
>should be bold enough to tell the bullies that those they are bullying have
>the right to existence and that right, amongst others, includes political,
>social and economic social liberties which CANNOT be arbitrarily infringed
>upon by the absurd whims and caprices of the APRC.
>
>  Herein, organisers of such talk shops must highlight the fact that
>imprisoning the likes of Mr Dumo Sarho illegally doesn't augur well for any
>gov't that parrots unity incessantly whilst bullying its citizenry.
>Organisers of such talk shops should bluntly condemn gross violations of
>Human Rights like that of Dumo's. They should never let themselves be
>hoodwinked by APRC's attendance of such talk shops on time as signs that
>that
>party is interested in political moderation and by extension the existence
>of
>inviolable and non-negotiable liberties that CANNOT be arbitrarily
>infringed
>upon by anyone's whims and caprices. The APRC has shown that it only cares
>about political moderation insofar as it strengthens the hands of the devil
>that created that party. As was evinced in your last correspondence, once
>the
>APRC realises that political moderation means death to them, they will
>refuse
>to be willing participants in such moderation. Political moderation as a
>tool
>for narrowing down political differennces and create an environment
>conducive
>enough for social, political and economic cooperation, was never meant to
>sweep under the carpet the abuses of belligerent political bullies or try
>to
>intellectually rationalise them. Political moderation means we highlight
>abuses that has the propensity create animosities that make social,
>political
>and economic cooperation impossible. Political moderation was never meant
>to
>short-cut such abuses by rationalising such flagrant abuses in a manner
>which
>unwittingly serves or attempts to strike fear in the hearts of those who
>are
>at the brunt of the flagrant abuses and decided to have no more of it.
>
>Therein, there is no middle ground: social, political and economic
>cooperation is impossible where freedoms are exclusively the property of
>one
>individual to give and take at his own discretion. For the efforts of the
>organisers to bear fruition they must firmly state the fundamental
>underlying
>factors that has precipitated the current political violences and the
>likelyhood of total breakdown of the system as a whole. It is, therefore,
>incumbent upon the organisers to always make the case that things have
>degenerated to this level and have the propensity to degenerate further if
>the powers that be do not understand the inviolability and non-negotiable
>nature of the freedoms they continue to flagrantly abuse.
>
>All the best,
>
>Hamjatta Kanteh
>
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