Yus,

Surely, this ridiculous idea that Hamjatta Kanteh is the progenitor of all 
Gambian ills must belong to the junk-yard of medieval myths. Moreover, there 
is more to this needless fuss and knee-jerk obsession with Hamjatta Kanteh 
than many commentators on this List have pointed out. The barbarous attack on 
personal achievement, inferiority complex and envy are some that instantly 
come to mind. Some people just hate the idea of others who legitimately excel 
and in their acute inferiority complex-laden world, agglutinated with abject 
envy, they simply can't stand people who are smart and forging ahead in life. 
These are some of the reasons why some of these faceless wonders and freaks 
are getting really worked up about the idea of attacking Hamjatta Kanteh. 
Yet, it is precisely these character malaises that are largely responsible 
for the Jammeh Mess. Let us not fool ourselves: Jammeh never stole power 
because he wanted to end the parasitic nature of the PPP regime. He stole 
power primarily because as a moronic under-achiever with acute inferiority 
complex, he knows there is no way he could legitimately achieve what 
industrious Gambians have legitimately achieved. Similarly, all these 
personal attacks on Hamjatta Kanteh is a continuation of that abhorrent 
tradition of envy, acute inferiority complex and damnable contempt for 
individual drive for legitimate achievements. Let the attacks on Hamjatta 
Kanteh continue. For as the cliche goes, small minds will always obsess with 
personalities whilst those who legitimately endeavour to know more, will 
discuss ideas and refrain from tittle-tattle. Let me now address the crucial 
issues at stake here.

Because of our general disagreement on what voter apathy and or alienation 
entail and their demarcation, and to avoid sinking into the abyss of 
distorting personal opinion with authority, i propose i begin this posting by 
appealing to a modicum of authority in psephology or the 'scientific study' 
of elections [and also, of course, to help such loony fruitcakes, twits, and 
compulsive obsessives like Ousman Badgy-Basen - who seems so ridiculously 
obsessed with me - have a greater understanding of the issues at hand. For 
the life in me, i can't just fully figure out how their lack of 
sophistication to read basic stuff can ever be my fault. Was i ever a former 
Gambian president or education minister who failed the Gambian education 
system? Good grief! Reading these jumped-up nonentities and their mumbo-jumbo 
scrawls, you would have thought that Hamjatta Kanteh is the mass murderer 
responsible for the grisly April 2000 incidents. Something is amiss 
somewhere. Where do these weird creeps hail from? Anyway, enough of this 
digression.]. Since your assumptions on the absentee vote are premised mainly 
on the voter apathy, I thought it prudent to at least bring a modicum of 
authority on the subject. To this end, i finally had the courage to pull my 
Britannica Encyclopedia off the shelf for consultations. On voter alienation 
and apathy vis-a-vis participation in elections, Heinz Eulan & Roger Gibbins 
[eds] wrote:

"Some people are conscientious nonvoters, although such people are rare. 
Others, perceiving the vote more as an instrument of censure than of support, 
may not vote because they are satisfied with the present government. This 
group of voluntary nonvoters is also small, however. In fact, nonvoters have 
been shown to be generally less satisfied with the political status quo than 
are voters. [Representing here voter apathy] The vote is a rather blunt and 
ineffectual instrument for expressing dissatisfaction, and nonvoting is more 
likely to be symptomatic of alienation from, than of satisfaction with, the 
political system. [Representing voter alienation]" All additives solely mine.

If you agree with Eulan & Gibbins' definition of both voter apathy and 
alienation, can you then comprehensively tell us - based on 2001 evidence 
vis-a-vis Kiang East by-elelections and not merely inferences, deductions and 
suggestions from the 1996/7 general election figures - why voter apathy was 
responsible for the abstinence of more 1000 voters who didn't show up at the 
polls to vote? This should lead to a more specific answer from you.

From now onwards, i will change my tack of general approach to the mooted 
issues by making your words - verbatim - the source of my query. This should 
help us in not deviating from the crucial issues being contested and make us 
more specific. Here goes:

Yus: <<The basic assumption for your “Njolfen” theory is based on 
conjecture.  It is taken for granted that because the by-election was 
surrounded by extraordinary circumstances (incumbent’s death and 
unprecedented economic hardships), the voter turnout would be unusually high. 
 There is nothing wrong with this except this conclusion is drawn from 
inferences and not hard facts or solid numbers. If you had produced numbers 
from by-elections similar to the one in Kiang East which show a definite link 
between by-elections and high voter turnout, this assumption would have been 
backed by empirical evidence.  But this is not the case here. The same can be 
said for the purported evidence (Baba Jobe and Kebba Jobe’s admissions plus 
newspaper reports). An inference is made from these reports that the level of 
voter-buyout was high when in fact there is no evidence to support this.  If 
Baba Jobe, Joke or the Independent had provided accurate figures which show 
high levels of voter buyout, then your basic assumption would have been based 
on more empirical evidence. >>

No. The theory or assumption is based on circumstantial evidence and logic. 
The former is admissable as evidence by many courts and a liberal definition 
of the meaning of empirical would not hesitate to admit circumstantial 
evidence as empirical. I've always granted that i started off on a 
conjectural premise. This was later supported by such circumstantial 
evidences like local newspaper reports, the admission of such APRC bigwigs 
like Baba Jobe and Kebab Joke and most recently by some UDP supporters who 
stepped forward to aid their party in their investigations on the matter. 
More to the point, no APRC heavyweight has - insofar as i can see - come out 
and disavow or repudiate the claims of vote-buying. The logic of all this is 
that it leads to a garnering of evidence that is on the whole circumstantial 
but legally acceptable as evidence in some courts of law. In any event, the 
UDP is contesting the Kiang East by-election results in court and more or 
less they are going along the lines of Dampha and his compatriots thinking. 
The judgment on that case shall, perhaps, be the denuder of all assumptions 
professed on the issue and their incoherences or fallacies. 

Yus: << On the other hand, my assumption about the high amount of absentee 
ballots is based on empiric evidence or experience from past elections.  The 
claim being that because statistics show a regular pattern of less than high 
voter turnout in previous elections in Kiang East, this predicament was not 
surprising.  A comparison shows a definite correlation between the absentee 
vote of 1997 and that of 2001.  This assumption is therefore not based on 
conjectural but empiric evidence.  A good example of a similar assumption 
based on empirical evidence is as follows:

Based on statistics of previous elections, the voter turnout in the United 
States has generally declined steadily since the 1960s. Therefore, a low 
turnout during the just concluded presidential elections was definitely not 
surprising. 

This conclusion was derived from the statistics which show a decline in voter 
turnout from then to present..  More specifically, studies have shown that 
level of turnout in African and Gambian elections have been marred by a sense 
of apathy from voters.  This is strong empiric evidence to support my voter 
apathy assertion. >>

Now, using past election statistics for the purposes of inferring, deducing 
and suggesting are all good and well; insofar as one doesn't determinately 
make sweeping statements from them about the present without scant empiric 
truth linking the two different periods. No problems there as such. The 
fundamental flaw with this, however, only comes when one attempts 
chimerically to make sweeping conclusions from such statistics about the 
present without scant evidence that empirically links the two different 
periods. Suffice for me to say that the deductions, inferences and 
suggestions that invariably ensue from using such past election figures 
cannot by themselves be conclusive - at any rate, they need present empiric 
truths to be anywhere near conclusive. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with 
using the 1996/7 general election results to infer, deduce and suggest why 
some 1000 votes were not casted. This methodology becomes threadbare if no 
form of empiric evidence exists that directly links the 1996/7 general 
elections with the by-elections of 2001. The link you have is conjectural 
i.e, voter apathy - something you have to this very day not substantiated 
with empirical evidence. You merely point at figures that are by no means 
indicative of voter apathy. I again challenge you to empirically link 1996/7 
general elections of Kiang East with 2001 by-elections of Kiang East. Without 
such an empirical linkage, your assumptions fall apart at the seams. 
Conjectural evidences like voter apathy, that you have so fervently appealed 
to, cannot by themselves tidy away the incoherences that emaciate your 
theory. Again, i challenge you to empirically demonstrate - with 2001 facts 
and not inferring from 1996/7 general election results - why voters in Kiang 
East in 2001 would be indifferent, disinterested and unconcerned about voting 
in the by-elections. To the extent that you can successfully answer this 
conundrum, shall settle the matter - once and for all.

Yus: << There is no need to belabor your actual ‘Njolfen’ theory because it 
is shaky and you have done nothing to disprove this.  However, to make things 
worse you managed to somehow confuse the meanings of voter apathy and voter 
alienation.  You also mucked up the difference between conjectural evidence 
and empirical evidence. The ‘Njolfen’ theory cannot stand by itself or even 
with support from the conjectural evidence which you posited. This was my 
main contention with this theory from day one.  Now you seem to have come 
around full circle to admit that there is no way this theory can accurately 
explain the absentee vote.  The following statement from you puts it all in  
perspective: < point of exactitude. Yet this is a non sequitir: insofar as we 
established that votes have been bought, it doesn't matter the amount bought; 
for that alone, by itself, legally nullifies the by-election results. This is 
the point.> >>

First things first. The evidence alluded to here vis-a-vis Njolfen, is 
circumstantial. We have already stated the case for such a thing. More to the 
point, i shall reach out for my Britannica again and make consultations on 
'circumstantial evidence' so we don't distort our own opinions on it with 
authority. My Britannica tells me that circumstantial evidence is a noun and 
traces its origins to the 18th. century and defines it as: "evidence that 
tends to prove a fact by proving other event or circumstance which afford a 
basis for a reasonable inference of the occurence of the fact at issue." Now, 
if you agree with this liberal definition of circumstantial evidence, i don't 
quite see how you can attribute conjectural premisses to Njolfen when in fact 
we forwarded such evidences like APRC bigwigs like Kebab Joke and Baba Jobe's 
admission that votes were indeed bought, local newspaper reports confirming 
that said admission and of recent UDP supporters coming forward to 
substantiate the vote-buying claims; added together, all of whom tantamount 
to being described as circumstantial evidence and admissable as evidence in a 
court of law. If you disagree, can you please tell us why?

The reason why i brought up the question of 'exactitude' vis-a-vis whether we 
are ever likely to know every Pateh and Samba whose votes were illegally 
bought off them, is not to say that i doubt the evidences i appeal to. The 
point was just that we are unlikely to know every Pateh and Samba whose votes 
were illegally bought. This is a non sequitur given the circumstances and our 
original premise: By itself, this point is not that important. For we need 
not to trace all votes illegally bought before we can effectively conclude 
that illegal influencing of the outcome of an election has occurred and thus 
nullifying the by-election results. For us to have our blissful day under the 
sun in court, we need not launch statistical inquiries as to the 
probabilistic degree to which vote-buying influenced the outcome of the 
elections. For the results to be declared null and void, a single illegally 
bought vote should do. That was the point i was making all along.

Have a nice Bank Holiday Weekend; i'm off to Bournemouth, Dorset. Hope your 
plane ride was not that bad.

Best wishes,

Hamjatta Kanteh











  

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