Gambia-Lers:
In the name of freedom of expression and democracy, I forward this letter
from Mr Matarr Njie FYI only. Please do not curse me, I am just a messenger
forwarding something, that some of the managers may not want hear or read.If
this is so, my APPOLOGIES
Dawda.
Sir:
Please allow me space in your newspaper, to debunk some of the false
assertions and claims by Katim Touray (Support Gambia-L: Gambian
intellectual urges Jammeh, The Independent 22nd November) in which
he misleadingly presents the Gambia-L, a discussion group that he
helped to establish, as a forum meant to increase internet
connectivity for Gambians among other things.
To say that Katim's arguments are fundamentally and logically flawed
is an understatement, because far from being the wonder drug that
will provide solutions to some of the Gambia's problems, I believe
that the internet in general, and the Gambia-L in particular, is a
double-edged sword, which while presenting a wonderful opportunity
to be exploited, remains a threat to the very survival of mankind,
particularly if used for the wrong purposes, as is currently the
case on Gambia-L.
In any case, the Gambia-L is the most undemocratic forum that can be
found on information super high way, because contrary to Katim's
claims, this forum is in fact intended to provide a medium for the
ardent critics of Preisdent Jammeh, because strong critics of the
forum are censored, their freedom of expression muzzled and curbed.
When Katim and other Gambia-L discussants with their questionable
motives, claim that they are 'democrats', it makes me wonder what
they are referring to. For example, I find it completely paradoxical
for Katim Touray to claim that the Gambia-L is not moderated unlike
other discussion fora, while at the same time he capriciously adds
and deletes subscribers who are strong critics of his dubious
motives. If being a strong critic of the mission of Gambia-L is
considered an abominable act, so too is repressing dissenting voices
on the L, which is contrary to the spirit of the freedom of
expression that Katim believes in.
It has also become a daily ritual on the L to denounce and downplay
any positive news coming from the Gambia. For example President
Jammeh's recent awarding of financial aid to needy students in the
Gambia, was construed by cynics as a political ploy only.
The level of capriciousness with regards to the application of the
code of conduct on the L cannot be anything like genuine democracy.
Although a self declared 'democrat' and a champion of 'freedom of
expression', Katim Touray and other managers of Gambia-L have been adding
and deleting subscribers to the forum according to their whims and caprices,
and certainly without due process, in what can only be
described as kangaroo justice, based on Mickey Mouse evidence.
Katim's assertions that the L is discussion group aimed at the
betterment of the Gambia is thus simply a veneer and a chicanery meant to
bamboozle the naive into believing that they mean well for our
country. For example, on the first day of subscribing on Gambia-L,
Dr Saja Taal, a noted Gambian civil servant who unlike the so-called
Gambian intellectuals in the diaspora, continues to serve his
country with distinction, was heaped with the most unwelcoming
remarks from certain unprogressive elements on the forum. To say
that there was tepid reaction from Katim and other self-appointed managers
is to put it strongly, and this further reinforces
my belief that the forum was establish in the first place to
demonize and castigate anybody seen as being sympathetic to Jammeh's
Government. This being the case, I also believe that the current
demagoguery on the L only reinforces my belief that it was
established by a group of disgruntled Gambians to give the Gambia a
bad press and in the process tarnish the image of the country, scare
away potential investors and the tourist dollar. Who then will judge
the judges I might want to ask.
The attempts by Katim to draw parallels between the conditions that
prevailed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other combustible regions in
troubled parts of the world with what obtains in the
Gambia, is nothing but a cheap scare mongering strategy that has now
become a daily ritual on Gambia-L. Gambians are by and large
sophisticated political animals, and any foolish attempts to
manipulate them for selfish political point scoring reasons is bound to
fail. A retraction of that laughable comparison is therefore in
order, and the best place to begin, is for Katim Touray to issue a
public apology to the Gambian people. He also needs to apologize to
the Gambian people, for letting the Gambian-L to be used to plot the
recent so-called demonstrations in Washington DC by a group of
misguided Gambians, when President Jammeh was on a visit to the US.
It is an open secret that most of these so-called demonstrators have
dubious and questionable immigration status in the US, and wanted to
justify their bogus refugee status, and bolster their chances of being
recognized as refugees, hence their cartoon-like behaviour on US
national TV.
It is certainly not in order, to sit comfortably in Washington DC,
Wisconsin, Paris, London, you name it, and engage in cyber
diplomacy, which after all is an attempt to high jack the current
positive transformation process that is taking place in the Gambia.
This is nothing but intellectual escapism. In any case, Katim and
group have lost the moral authority to preach alien concepts to the
Gambians at home through their discussion forum. A soil scientist
like Katim Touray cannot stay in the US and continue to offer his
cyber lectures on the hows and whys of agriculture in the Gambia for
example. Failed Gambian intellectuals living in fantasy worlds
cannot thus continue to engage themselves in hot air rhetorics and expect
the ordinary Gambian to understand or even care, because such
intellectual gymnastics and dishonest tactics do not improve their
material wellbeing in any significant way. Only desperate people
with desperately bad judgement will continue to sing such old songs
from an out of date hymn book. We need concrete action on the
ground and the proof of the pudding is clearly in the eating.
Clearly, whenever the emperor is naked it needs to be pointed out;
however, Katim and certain disgruntled elements on their forum do
lack the moral authority to offer what is after all mere textbook
prescriptive lectures, which when analysed, represents nothing but a
condescending and patronizing attitude from an elite group far
removed from the realities on the ground, because they live in
cloud-cuckoo-land. Their pronouncements is the kind of cheap shots we
would expect from disgruntled political agitators, and with this
kind of sensationalized reporting on the L, Katim and his team will
have to work very hard if they are to be taken seriously by an
increasingly sophisticated Gambian man and woman on the streets.
Some dangers associated with internet usage have now become quite
evident, but most are not being sufficiently recognized, let alone
debated and addressed by third world countries. Most initiatives to manage
the internet cannot be undertaken unilaterally without great
cost. The prudent management of this new found tool is therefore
called for so that mankind can maximize the potential benefits from
it. Even the bigger countries in the western world are beginning to
feel the need for such action.
It is thus interesting to note that even in the United States of
America, the so-called land for the free and the land of
opportunity, the internet is being increasingly managed so as
prevent it from falling into the hands of mischievous elements. Many
books and other articles have already been written on the potential
dangers of unfettered access to the Internet. For example, a recent
book, "Ripoffs And Frauds, How to Avoid and How to Get Away", by
Thomas Garman (1996) is highly critical of the Internet. It is a
comprehensive, well-written source of ripoffs and frauds, covering
investment swindles, telemarketing and mail scams, etc. Other
writers are equally critical of unfettered access to the
world-wide-web. For example, Cheryl J. Goldberg has written an
article, "Safety Net: Does Using the Internet Put Your Business at
Risk?" in which he advocates for the regulation of the Internet with
various laws and regulations in the US. Furthermore, in 1996, the
Internet Fraud Watch was created in the US enabling the National
Fraud Information Center to offer consumers advice about promotions
in cyberspace and route reports of suspected online and Internet
fraud to the appropriate US government agencies. Since 1997, the Law
Enforcement Internet Intelligence Report has provided law
enforcement agents in the land of the free, and at all levels of
government, a monthly digest of the latest relevant information on
the Internet. Can't the Gambia also enact its own legislation and
laws to protect its impressionable citizens from the pornography,
hate messages, and other obnoxious and mischievous games on the
world-wide-web? The enactment of a Telecommunication Act, if it does
not already exist in the Gambia, to cover false transmission of
news, hate messages on the Internet, done out of mischief, and which
may be a threat to national security, is an attractive proposal.
Surely, the Internet cannot be left as an untamed monster because
this will ruin our lives in the long term. Some sort of legislation,
as pointed out already, can for example be passed to control the exposure of
certain sites that may be harmful and dangerous to
children and persons of mischievous intentions. Unfettered access is
certainly a recipe for disaster because we in the developing world
have certain moral and ethical standards to preserve and pass onto
posterity. We cannot allow the moral decadence that is prevalent in
other societies to prevail in our midst nor be dictated to by a
condescending outside force. While some of these countries recognize
the potential danger of complete cyber-liberty in their own
countries, they still want to see free access to this double-edged
tool, in the developing world including the Gambia. The recent
financial crisis in some parts of Asia have shown that simply
jumping onto the bandwagon of economic liberalization without the
needed institutional structures in place, is a definite recipe for
disaster. The same analogy can be drawn here with hastily
liberalizing access to the Internet.
According to the Computers and Law web-site, Singapore has the
strongest libel laws in the world. Service providers and publishers
there must register themselves. They are liable to for contents
placed on the Internet, where libel laws for print media apply.
Singapore cyber-cafes are confounding the enforcers; and what is
even more important is that the island-state also has an education
programme to teach students how to use the Internet responsibly, in
the national interest.
A blanket attack on the use of the Internet will surely ignore the
potential positive contributions to efficiency, productivity, and
other welfare-enhancing attributes for Gambians in particular, on
the liberalization of internet use in the country. It is also
equally true that adhering religiously to the idea that unfettered
access to the world wide web is an end in itself; this is simplistic
and naïve view. What is more pragmatic, as shown in the examples of
Singapore, is to manage internet access, which while can avail us
with the potential benefits derived from such access, can shield us
from the inherent dangers that mischief makers lurking behind the
scenes and pretending to be champions of human rights and freedom of
expression. It is also a fact that the potential for Gambian
enterpreneurs to bring their sales activities online and get their
products to customers more quickly for example are great. Sales
>people now submit most of their orders directly on the Internet, and
their requests are instantly processed by a back-office system. This
has the obvious advantage of cutting the time it normally takes for
customers to get their orders from five weeks say, to five days! The
ability to deliver quickly is increasingly important in most
businesses where the majority of dealers sell the same products from
a handful of major manufacturers.
Instead of emphasizing the above positive aspects of the Internet in
promoting trade and investment, as well as the popularization of
the beauty, elegance, and uniqueness of the diverse Gambian
cultures, Gambia-L under the management of Katim Touray, has as its
primary goal, political agitation and demagoguery. The available
record speaks well for itself.
To underscore this argument, I will cite the current debate on the
Gambia-L calling for reconciliation among Gambians following the
change of government in 1994. While every Gambian should see this as
an opportunity for genuine reconciliation in the name of peace and
stability, a closer look at the proposal reveals that there is more
to this than it appears at first sight. Yes, we will like to see
reconciliation and healing in the Gambian family, but to call for
the un-banning of all political parties, and the to call for fresh
elections, is indeed an insult to Gambians. It further questions our
ability to take our destiny into our own hands in organizing
elections; that any elections not supervised by the hegemonistic
western powers-that-be, is not considered free and fair. A cursory
look at the proposal will also show that it represents a deceptively
fair dinkum offer. Obviously, the up lifting of the ban on political
parties such as the PPP, would indeed be a retrogressive move. This
call is being propagated by a certain interest group in the US and
other western capitals, using the Gambia-L as their medium of
communication for obvious reasons.
Contrary to the impression being conveyed by Katim and certain members of
the L discussion group that they are genuine and
impartial in calling for a healing process, available evidence
reveals that there is a hidden agenda in wanting to restore the
ousted and now discredite former PPP Government. In any case, most
Gambians now realize that the former PPP Government was a generation
of politicians who by most measures who have failed miserably to
deliver any meaningful development. They are therefore beyond
redemption, reinvention, and recycling because the Gambian people
have suffered enough under their stewardship. There is thus no place
for such egomaniac and banned former PPP politicians in the Gambia's
evolutionary political landscape. Former President Jawara and his
acolytes on Gambia-L need to listen to the wise sayings of an old
man who says, that when history repeats itself the first time, it is
tragedy, the second time farce. And certainly the Gambians do not
want to entertain such a ludicrousity of trying to give the Jawara
a second or should I say a third chance because, as we head for the 21st
century, we need to be more serious with the art of governing as we begin,
in the first
time in our history, to see meaningful development under President
Yahya Jammeh.
In any case, former President Jawara is currently crisscrossing
western capitals to garner support for his discredited record, and
he is being aided and abetted by certain elements on Gambia-L in
calling for mob rule and demonstrations. This further shows Jawara's
egomaniac attitude and the lack of interest in the future of our
country. The recent calls on the forum for the lifting of the ban on
the PPP and other former political parties and run so-called free
and fair elections is further evidence that the Gambia-L was created
to provide anti-progressive Gambians with a forum to mount an
orchestrated campaign of disorder and chaos.
Katim Touray and certain contributors to the on-going and twisted
debate on the L need to realize that patriotic Gambians do not want
to gamble their future but to ensure it, and by its current mission
and vision, the Gambia-L forum poses the biggest threat to that
dream.
In the final analysis, what can Gambia-L with its current mission,
help to bring for the people of the Gambia? The best answer that I
can think of at the moment, is nothing absolutely.
Matarr Njie
Department of Banking and Finance
Faculty of Business Administration
University of Malaya
50603 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
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