Friends,
as a comment to the debate I will just put in the last few sections of my
very very long comment on The Gambia, the presidential elections, campaigns
etc, which I posted to the Gambia-l november 1., 2001 after returning from a
one month stay. In the light of the contemporary political scenario I got
the strong feeling of d嶴輁u, when I read my long comment once again,
specially my opening remarks on the "game of political chess". History will
teach us.
Regards Asbj鷨n Nordam
From my long letter of 1.11.01:
(......)
In my opinion the political process has to be continued and continuous.
Jammeh, and other politicians from other parties said after the election,
"that now the politics and the debates and discussions was over, and the
rallies must stop".
But that will be a mistake. If politics are only the few weeks up to
election every 5 years, the political education, and party-founding is not
strong. A party and its politicians must work all days, all years round. A
politician must go to see people at factories, students at institutes,
farmers, fishermen, come to the market, the garage and out there in the
compounds, the villages, the bush. Every day you must out and listen to the
people, meet the people, talk, debate, form your ideas, politic, strategies,
discuss, convince etc.
New people - new ideas, and more entusiasm.
In my opinion it is very important that a political party tries very hard to
make a platform inside the party, where new, young politicians can learn,
become trainees in the political business, can be tested and contested. They
must out and meet the people, and see if they have any appeal. I think that
both APRC, PDOIS but mostly UDP and PPP must try very hard to find a new
generation of politicians, train them, make them well known, so they can
step in and take over. The best thing a politician can do for his party is
to create a platform, so younger talented people can step in, when the old
ones step down. A politician who has been in the game for many years, must
one day take a step backwards, and let people with new faces, new ideas, new
energy take the first row. The elder is there to give advise, but he must
understand, that even it愀 not the african tradition, an elderly leader must
prepare for his successor. It愀 not that we don愒 respect the older
man/woman, it愀 just that we think he/she has served well for many years and
deserve to retire gradually, sit in the background and advise and let the
new generation step in.
The coming parliament election
Soon after the Ramadan the campaign starts again. I don愒 know what the
opposition parties will come up with, but I feel that APRC has got entusiasm
by Jammehs reelection. The election can in my opinion very easily lead to a
total majority for the APRC. Maybe I will comment on that later on.
Under my stay I made other observations, and I will come back to them later.
I wanted to concentrate on the election because the gambia-l has been full
of comments and predictions on that.
Regards from Asbj鷨n Nordam
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