Thanks Suntou.
Best,
Baba

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 5:10 AM, suntou touray <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> A great observation Baba, Jammeh has been imagining things from day one.
> Insightful as always.
> Regards
> Suntou
>
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 10:03 PM, Baba Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> *Imagined Nations*
>>
>> By Baba Galleh Jallow
>>
>> African governments are fond of violently pouncing upon peaceful
>> protesters and those who express dissenting opinion, sending them to jail
>> and, in some cases, clobbering them to death, as happened with Solo
>> Sandeng. Those who survive violent arrest and or torture are slapped with
>> heavy charges, often invariably including the ubiquitous “disturbing of the
>> peace” and treason. Peaceful protesters expressing their legitimate public
>> opinion within the limits of their constitutionally guaranteed rights are
>> forcefully criminalized and accused of trying to overthrow their
>> governments by unlawful means. The irony is that because peaceful
>> protesters are acting within their constitutionally guaranteed rights, they
>> cannot possibly be committing treason at the same time.
>>
>> Yet, in a majority of cases, Africa’s peaceful protesters so arraigned
>> are declared guilty and sentenced, to time, to death, or to indefinite
>> detention and starvation unworthy of human dignity. African courts under
>> the obvious control of intolerant governments routinely find innocent
>> people guilty of nonexistent crimes. Peaceful protests such as the ones
>> held in April 2016 by Gambia’s Solo Sandeng and the UDP leadership cannot
>> possibly be treasonable felony. The government’s treason charges may stick
>> to the case, but not to the persons of the UDP defendants because they are
>> simply not guilty of treason. In the laws of nature, you really cannot make
>> something what it is not simply by calling it so. It is like insisting that
>> a cow is really a chicken and that you heard it coo and can see its
>> feathers too!
>>
>> African governments that pounce on peaceful protesters are genuinely
>> afraid of what peaceful protests can do: they can overthrow a government,
>> but only lawfully, since the protests are lawful. The Arab spring that
>> toppled Arab dictatorships in North Africa started small, then ballooned to
>> match the size of the government’s unpopularity with the people. Protests
>> of such magnitude take a long time coming, a long time of the suppression
>> of small protests and dissenting opinion by the state which creates
>> widespread feelings of anger and disgust in the population. Dictatorships
>> continually undermine themselves because with every small act of tyranny
>> against somebody, the circle of public anger widens, even if only by the
>> relatives and friends of the affected persons. By trying to prevent the
>> growth of protest movements, African governments try to silence the future
>> but end up giving the future a larger, louder, more insistent and more
>> coherent voice.
>>
>> It seems entirely lost to many African governments that it is within the
>> rights of a people to remove and replace their government through
>> constitutional, and if necessary, unconstitutional means. The critical
>> difference is that while toppling a government by force of arms may be
>> claimed as a “constitutional” right – as Mr. Jammeh and his colleagues did
>> on July 22, 1994 – it is still a treasonable felony. This natural right to
>> violent insurrection by oppressed persons may be treasonable, but it is
>> still a right either explicitly or implicitly resident in the constitution
>> as the right to insurrection against injustice and unbearable oppression by
>> the State. The best antidote to public protest is government tolerance and
>> responsiveness to public opinion, especially public opinion addressing
>> issues of general national interest, such as electoral laws and government
>> policies. The suppression of legitimate political dissent is unfailingly
>> counter-productive for the State and its mother, the Nation.
>>
>> In an alternative trajectory of recent Gambian history, the Sandeng
>> protest would have attracted police attention. The police would send some
>> officers to help maintain law and order by their presence. Solo would be
>> allowed to have his protest, to lay out his demands, to loudly condemn
>> government policy, ask for electoral reforms immediately and even call upon
>> the government to step down because he believes – rightly or wrongly – that
>> it has lost all political and moral legitimacy to govern. At some point,
>> the protest time would be up and Solo and whatever crowds that may have
>> gathered would disperse with a threat to continue protesting until their
>> demands are met. The government hears about the protest and issues a
>> statement defending its electoral laws, criticizing Sandeng and the UDP,
>> and encouraging a dialogue and public debate on the issue. It organizes a
>> free and fair referendum on the issue with all interested parties freely
>> campaigning for their point of view. If the majority of Gambians say there
>> should be electoral reform, there would be electoral reform. If the
>> majority of Gambians say no electoral reform, well, no electoral reform and
>> the UDP would be morally obliged to respect the wishes of the majority for
>> the current election cycle while reserving the right to continue advocating
>> for electoral reform within the limits of the law.
>>
>> To crack down and forcefully suppress Sandeng and the UDP leadership for
>> demanding electoral reform is to totally misunderstand the nature of the
>> nation-state. Such action may seem natural in another type of political
>> formation, an absolute monarchy with no constitution aside from the king,
>> for instance. But even there, the natural right to insurrection exists,
>> hence history’s many revolutions in which absolute monarchs are forcefully
>> toppled. In all situations, regardless of the nature of the State in power,
>> the nation equally belongs to everybody. It could be said without much fear
>> of error that all Gambians equally love The Gambia. Arrested protesters and
>> journalists are loudly told during police interrogation that they are
>> enemies of the State out to destroy the country. It is implied that there
>> are some Gambians who hate their own country so much that they are plotting
>> to physically destroy it, often with the help of some imaginary malignant
>> foreign interests. One dares to say that a citizen may be deprived of
>> anything but their love of country. Yes, citizens may dislike, even hate
>> their government. But they cannot dislike or hate their country itself
>> because that is contrary to the laws of nature. It is like disliking or
>> hating your own identity, an obvious contradiction in terms possible only
>> under abnormal conditions. For example, no one questions Donald Trump and
>> Hillary Clinton’s love for America. Trump simply wants an America that
>> builds walls to keep Mexicans out and ban Muslims from entering the
>> country, while Clinton wants another kind of America.  In the recent
>> Brexit saga, some British citizens wanted a UK that was part of the
>> European Union, others wanted a UK that was not part of the European Union.
>> Neither party could be legitimately accused of hating their country. They
>> are merely arguing for their preferred version of the nation, their
>> imagined nation (to evoke Benedict Anderson’s useful concept of the nation
>> as an imagined community).
>>
>> Because of the grotesque dislocation of the African State from its
>> natural space as an integral and subservient segment of the population, it
>> is incapable of developing an appropriate understanding of its locus,
>> status, role and function in society. The African State conceives of itself
>> and acts as if it is a separate, all-powerful entity, located high above
>> the people, with total command of the police, the army, the courts, the
>> prisons and all the laws of the land. It insists on knowing best what is
>> good for the country and reserves the right to violently protect itself
>> against any constitutional right that interferes with its absolute power.
>> In a strange case of political dystopia, the State arrogates to itself
>> total ownership of the country, the people and their future, and leaves no
>> room for alternative viewpoints on the national project.
>>
>> This profoundly tragic distortion of the nation’s character makes it
>> impossible for the State to appreciate that political conflict in general,
>> and political dissent and opposition in particular are inevitable
>> expressions of citizens’ desire as to what their country should be, or
>> should be like. The Gambia government has its own idea of what Gambia
>> should be. The UDP and other Gambian individuals, political organizations,
>> the media, the Church, the Mosque – all have their ideas of what Gambia
>> should be. Some of their visions or aspects of their visions of an imagined
>> Gambian nation may be similar, some may be different. In all cases, the
>> State that enjoys an advantage of political power should remain embedded
>> and subservient to the people at all times. What vision of an imagined
>> Gambia takes ascendancy in the nation’s politics should be determined not
>> by police boots, batons, guns and extrajudicial incarcerations and
>> executions, but by the people, if necessary through their own vocal agency,
>> or their elected representatives or competent courts of the land. If it is
>> understood that no citizen really hates their country and that political
>> differences are simply expressions of different imagined nations, and are
>> to be expected and even encouraged, the kind of destructive politics we
>> have seen in Africa since independence may begin to shift in the right
>> direction.
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