Hi bambalaye,
you have completely lost the senses that you wanted to convey
to yur readers on the Gambia-L. Please go over your nonesense and read it
loud and clear twice to yourself so that you can be able to rewrite it again
and inform your readers in a way you want them to understand your piece
please.
Please no ill-feeling for my comment
Thanks for now and good luck
ousman badgy
Serekunda (Gambia)
>From: BambaLaye <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: The Gambia Today - An Opinion (Part1)
>Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 10:19:44 -0500
>
>Fellow Countrymen and women,
>
>What is it that the Gambian should do to keep us together despite
>widespread political, economic and social instability in Africa, despite
>the turmoil in the subregion, and despite our own evidential
>contradictions? This is hardly a question to command any ready answers, but
>it is one to leave no conscientious Gambian indifferent.
> While I am very much aware of the importance of a political
>scientific or sociologists' approach to this question, I have limited my
>thoughts, or what comes of it, to the political, economic and social
>consequences of the July 22 coup, with the awareness of the fact that
>Gambian sociologists, historians and political scientists will undoubtedly
>do justice to the historical origins and the social impact of the type of
>despotism going on in today's Gambia. I must not hesitate to add that
>everything mentioned in this write up is my personal opinion. An opinion
>founded on personal experience, experience of friends family and
>acquaintances. Based on exchanges and discussions with legitimate ordinary
>citizens in positions and circumstances and of credible experiences with
>the current regime. For those of you ready to disregard your consciences
>and defend the status quo at all costs, this one will be up your nose with
>a rubber hose. Here is my opinion.
> To refer to Gambia as a role model in the sub-region the way our
>authorities and their toadies tend to do with pomposity, is to imply that
>Gambia is a representation of our sub-region in terms of qualities - and
>almost always reluctantly in terms of pitfalls as well. While this may be
>true in many aspects, it obviously stretches our credulity with respect to
>testing our social experiences or making predictions therefrom. Stretches
>away from being a sub-regional model in this sense, ours have become a
>'six-
>feet deep' spot for many a theory or generalizations.
>And certes, it is. In other places, the intrinsic conditions did lead to
>violent outbreaks, bloodbaths and changes from bad to worse or better, but,
>in Gambia, these effects tend to simply dwindle, as if the entire nation is
>a victim of a hypnotic spell by the wizard state. As we witness the poor
>farmers being asked to hold on to promissory notes for three consecutive
>years now, drastic downslides in the value of the Dalasi, up trends in the
>economic inflationary rate with no counteractive measures or a tandem
>increase in teachers' and other civil servants' salaries. Nothing is
>expected to happen, though in other nations in a similar predicament,
>government will rush to increase salaries or take other measures in order
>to absorb the effects of economic decadence on their subjects. During the
>last presidential elections or shortly before that, when the opposition is
>perceived to have commanded much credibility and popular support, and when
>it was widely assumed that a change in government was just a matter of
>time, President Jammeh made for the dash and was able to puncture a
>steadfast opposition using questionable strategies with the help of the
>Electoral Commission. The opposition parties together gained a huge number
>of the votes cast, showing that a great number of the electorate wanted a
>change of president. The opposition, which has failed to present a single
>candidate to represent all opposition parties, made some critical noises
>about the level of rigging. This yielded little dividend, for protests -
>mainly by the UDP- were neither organized nor sustained. As a popular
>Cameroonian comedian Tchop Tchop would put it: " Elections are like a
>football match where you must prepare your players physically and
>psychologically. You can consult the Pygmy witchdoctor, corrupt the referee
>or motivate (bribe) your opponents…You organize your elections knowing full
>well that you are going to win them. You have yourself to blame for not
>having known what to do." (Candidat unique de L'Opposition).
>
>It is not only the ordinary citizens, farmers or civil servants that are
>reluctant to assert themselves against the government's distracting
>maneuvers. The opposition parties have failed in their many attempts to
>present a unified force to fight their course. Since the July 22 takeover,
>journalists of the private press and their newspapers are suffering as
>victims of the selective application of a slew of repressive press laws,
>yet they are hardly seen to have organized themselves into a strong union
>capable of defending and promoting their freedom and other interests. What
>passes today for a Gambia Press Union is yet to consolidate itself as a
>force to reckon with. Teachers, nurses, hotel workers and petty traders and
>other groups are similarly disorganized, preferring to go in for a dolce
>far niente rather than fight for their professional interests. Many
>attempts to empower the civil society have yielded little fruit. And this
>can be said of many other aspects of our society.
>If we are to talk about the successes of the opposition and the civil
>society measured on popular yearning for the institutionalization of basic
>human rights and democracy, an argument can be made to assert that their
>difficulties with laws and government heavy handedness have offered
>Gambians the opportunity to discover the overwhelming reluctance of those
>with vested interest in the status quo, to open up and give society a
>chance to move forward. That is a priceless contribution, even though
>opposition parties themselves face a daunting task in avoiding some of the
>pitfalls that are second nature to African politics, such as using 'the
>belly' (J.F Bayart, The State in Africa: The politics of the belly, 1993)
>not ideology as their main political compass. Instead of seeking a common
>platform, the opposition has fallen easy prey to the entrapment of
>paleoanthropic bond, and so have their militants who tend to vote on the
>basis of ill-conceived expectations.
>It is quite obvious that the democratic process in the Gambia has failed,
>and that the opposition parties and other sections of the civil society
>seem to be dragging in coming up with workable solutions to the current
>disenchantment. Yet it is curious that opposition parties, the media and
>other groups have failed to positively capitalize on the inclination of a
>good section of society towards a more democratic social and political
>order. Recent elections results have left little doubt that the bulk of
>Gambians want a change for the better. We long to have an active say in
>matters of public interest, and to seek freedom from the misery of what we
>have for a government of which we are victims. What then stops us from
>pursuing those freedoms in an organized and sustained manner, with or
>without violence? How is it that our actions - when and if we act - have
>often tended to contradict our declarations in favor of democracy?
>Gambia is becoming a country that is easier to govern than it is to run a
>family. A civil servant appointed to high office or merely aspiring to such
>an office is made to understand that the system -epitomized by the Head of
>State-is of boundless benevolence, and that all thanks be to Jammeh for any
>appointment. This policy, if it can be so called, creates the illusion
>amongst the seemingly elite, that everything is possible with the state -
>even in total economic decadence, and that individuals must give Jammeh
>total support if they wish to maintain, step up to or come by high office,
>or a sinecure for that matter, and the favors that go with it. The obvious
>impression given by such appointees is that every presidential decree of
>appointment emphasizes on the benefits of the position to the person
>concerned, and almost never on the responsibilities that go with the
>office.
>Personal interests become superior to the duties of the office. Within this
>logic, the most unpardonable crime is that of disloyalty, or the perception
>of such, to Jammeh. Every other section of the constitution can be
>disregarded with impunity. Thus corruption and embezzlement in the customs,
>police, immigration, to name a few, becomes the mantle of success. Bribery
>and exploitation in the civil service are all glossed up until one commits
>the ultimate crime of political disloyalty to Jammeh. Political allegiance
>to the APRC remains one of the surest guarantees against a Jammeh
>sanctioned sacking or even imprisonment for allegations of a treasonous
>crime. Civil servants and businessmen and women know this all too well.
>This essentially blinds us as Gambians to the facts of the system as our
>real problem.
>What we have for a government today, has little regard for virtue and
>meritocracy, and has proven many a times that it has more room for
>mediocrity than critical excellence. It thrives on the impressions and not
>on the substance, making subservient mediocrities feel more important than
>real achievers. It is not uncommon to hear about stories of a low-level
>civil servant APRC stalwart threaten to make a director lose his or her
>job. A second or third rate officer who provides the APRC with
>unconditional conceptual rhetoric it needs to justify its excesses and
>heavy-handedness, is more likely to be the next boss than his or her more
>productive but principled counterpart who is denied the recognition for
>being a genuine go-getter. This situation accounts for the current
>intellectual misery in our beloved Gambia.
>Ours is a totalitarian system somewhat similar to that of Vaclav Havel's
>post-totalitarian Czechoslovakia, in that it 'serves people only to the
>extent necessary to ensure that people will serve it,' where anyone not
>playing their predetermined role will face the possibilities of indictment
>as an enemy of the state. (V. Havel, living in truth 1986). Due to their
>seduction of the people at every level of society with pretences of true
>achievements, the APRC has succeeded in permeating civil life with
>hypocrisy, sycophancy and lies. This they need to do in order to
>consolidate their power over the people.
>However, as ordinary Gambians are confronted with the contradictions in
>their daily life, they cannot help but conclude that the whole business of
>national development, national unity or integration is a smoke screen
>instigated with the hidden agenda of stifling any attempt at meaningful
>change. Therefore, it all boils down to the power game - how much longer
>can you hold on to what you have, stay in office through corruption,
>embezzlement, hypocrisy and the misinterpretation of the reality. Even
>though the APRC is very keen in blocking all perceivable channels of
>effective resistance - claims to democracy notwithstanding - and though the
>citizenry generally fear retribution and government sanctioned thuggery, it
>would be wrong to assume that there is little resentment of the status quo.
>It could be said that the alienated masses may not have the means to effect
>changes they yearn for, but they do indulge in symbolic acts with symbolic
>success on a daily basis. These are actions in which the system will be
>conquered, and a new democratic and populist order put in place, in
>fulfillment of what the feeble minded have all the while treated as
>extraordinary expectations.
>
>
>Abdoulie A. Jallow
>(BambaLaye)
>"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that metter."
>-M.L. King Jr.
>
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