Joe,

It is unfortunate that we continue to see and hear these forces of crude
thuggery at work. I have said it before that the maintenance of civil order
and social democracy cum tranquility is in the hands of the masses. The
people of Gambia. It has been there since the advent of the constitution of
the republic. It was never anywhere else. We are bordering onto naivety and
laziness by believing that anything remotely affecting our individual
rights can be safely entrusted to criminals and thugs through any process
that resembles the rule of law.
Self-defense against individual criminals – or criminals sanctioned by the
APRC – can no more be delegated to some body else, like the judges in those
courts than eating can, or sleeping, or any other natural function. These
stories of disruptions of legally certified gatherings, abductions and
torture should warn us that delegated responsibility becomes power and that
power becomes inevitably abused when in the wrong hands. If civil order and
social democracy are to be upheld in the Gambia, the emphasis must be on
finding a definite and absolute way towards enforcing the basic human
rights as entrenched in the constitution – the constitutional enforcement.
We must find a way to take that power out of the hands that are abusing it
and break it down. We must break the power down into units so small that it
cannot be called power, but simply “responsibility”, which unlike power,
comes not from the barrel of a gun, but from the mind and heart of the
human behind that gun.
A refusal to see the obvious, a failure to question the doubtful, if
grossly evident, may provide proof leading to an inference of collaboration
and gross abuse of power so as to impose responsibility for abuse suffered
by those who rely on the laws. In other words, heedlessness and reckless
disregard of consequences may take the place of deliberate intentions. We
must be weary of such. We must stand up to do the best we can to revert
this cycle of abuse. It is clearly taking its toll in bits and pieces, here
and there, today and perhaps tomorrow.

(BambaLaye)
Abdoulie A. Jallow
==============================================
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

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