Hi Everyone,

For the past one week or so active readers must have noticed a barrage of clunkers sometimes explicit otherwise coated in innuendoes salvoed against my person and other list managers, initially for the mere purpose of being invited to join Gambia-L's Management Team, but very recently because a couple of members were delisted by Messrs. Jaiteh and Camara of the Management team. Ayatollahs, dictators, mullahs, mealy-mouthed creeps, they charged like frothing tellitubbies; and very few offered the mildest excoriation of such waspish venom. But on what grounds? 

I am sure many would recall that now and then, I have used my time to appeal for a more civil exchange of views lest heated debates degenarate into unprincipled flame wars. I remember "quarelling" with Halifa Sallah about that a few years ago. But I am not writing to tell you about me, for I have no interest whatsoever in egotism, even if I should admit that  neither do I believe in the absolute absence of vanity in my daily intercourse with people.  

First, I have neither the interest nor the need to qualify for anybody why I agreed to join the Management team. It is not a job and I am certainly not appointed. Usually the criterium for owning a list is respectable familiarity with the subject discussed, which in our case is the Gambia, and related issues; a definition that duely qualifies anyone to join the management team as a co-owner of Gambia-L. The owner, however, may solicit the co-ownership of a list by a group or an individual to assist in the day-to-day management of administrative and technical issues affecting the list. 

Second, public mailing lists that are hosted freely at friendly universities or elsewhere are, as far as I know, NEVER managed democratically. It is simply impossible practically to have to schedule a "show of hands" on every single administrative issue, especially when these hands could belong to non-existent Yahoo populists and Hotmail militants able to assume multiple identities, with all sorts of dubious names. Public mailing lists are public precisely because people can join or leave them as they wish. Please remember that nobody pays tax here. So insisting that Management should take into account a particular opinion could be a normal democratic demand but one which may prove to be inexpedient. That does not imply though that, a list like ours, and especially its management, with our specific cultural problems and assets, should neglect the opinions and complaints from members in matters relating to running the list.

Third, a politically correct management is fictitious  because most politically active mailing lists are biased in favour of one tendency or another, so that defined rules of engagement in discourse themselves turn out to be in one party's disfavour. It is precisely in an attempt to create a counterweight to this bias that Katim Touray sought a balance by creating a management team of co-owners rather than a having an individual  entirely responsible for administering the list. Though the list is owned by one person, Momodou Camara, technically speaking, Gambia-L's management team is supposed to function in an acceptable democratic manner, taking collective decisions on major questions relating to administering the list, effectively and fairly. It is regrettable that current impressions from the membership suggest otherwise, and with good reason. Obviously, management will have to improve where it has been failing, but so must the memebrhip. Sister Jabou Joh has written what is partly expected from the members. What I find particularly peevish is the accusations of collusion with APRC politics by conspiring Mullahs. For those who see the Management team as a cabal of invidious conspirators, it becomes all too handy to rationalise and construe whatever they do as evidence of dark and wicked designs telescoped to purge from the list those who obviously think themselves the politically-correct do-gooders. 

Fourth, it appears to me that many of us have a problem relating to what I refer to as deculturalised democratisation. Democracy and Human Rights yes, but not NECESSARILY at the price of cultural values that have helped our societies survive centuries of foreign domination. Insulting people in the name of free speech is not only destructive of your chances at persuasion, but it is to commit a passive act of violence. Insults have caused village and clan feuds in the history of many African societies. The epic of Sunjatta Keita contains a chorus where the great Mande king says he'd rather die than be humiliated. Most sitting presidents will openly rig elections because they are terrified with the public humiliation that should follow in case they suffer defeat. Obviously this position is debatable, but let me simply assert that Sierra Leoneans have gone to court on numerous occasions to settle disputes that arose from mutual insults on a mailing list hosted at St. Johns. We do not want to get there!
If you call people dickheads while in a CULTURAL milieu such as London, you will have no trouble. Unfortunately, for many a Gambian living elsewhere (say Banjul, for instance) the first thing he might see is the INSULT: dick + head. While I realise this is perhaps no reason to immediately delist anyone, my emphasis is that the responsibility for decency in all discourse is mutual.

I am aware that it is very difficult to convince anyone that opinions they hold of certain individuals is misinformed when the "evidence" shows a recent delisting of certain said opinion-holders. I can simply appeal in all sincererity that for purely practical reasons disabling the Management team to submit a collective decision on the current crises right now, members bear with us for a couple of days, by which time the list owner should be able to solicit the opinion of all managers and the entire list informed of that position. Here is an update however:

1. Dave Manneh has not been removed from the list as was claimed by Yusupha Jow
2. Karamba Touray is still subscribed and has not delisted himself.
3. The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy,  New York branch, was not delisted by any List Manager.
4. George Sarr was removed for impersonating Malanding Jaiteh.


It is very unfortunate that some members have voluntarily unsubscribed themselves in protest but I believe that to be quiet unnecessary. 
On a personal note, let me say that given our history, it is quite normal that people question and reject the exercise of power over which they have no control: the power to shut people up by delisting them at will. But to think that by virtue of being a list manager, I should abuse or misuse that power on the bases of differences in political opinion, is perhaps the greatest insult to the integrity of us all in the management team. 

Momodou S Sidibeh

 

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