Hi Everyone,

I need to apologise for the delay in posting this opinion piece. Not just because I had intended to post it much earlier than now but also because, all other things being equal, drawing attention and interest to such mundane matters when many of us have our spiritual energies reserved for the requirements of Ramadan might be an added burden. Happily, Ramadan is also a period for deep reflection and self criticism, a way to cleanse our minds by auditing our circumstances and to, as a consequence, improve upon where we are weak.

While I have been hard pressed to allocate time to contribute to the debate when it raged sweetest, there has been a beautiful and informative flurry of  opinion expressed in view of the current dearth of strategy towards removing Jammeh from power. Many, many thanks to brothers Omar Joof, Sanusi Owens, and sister Jabou Joh. But even if we accept Mr. Omar Joof's view on the intentions of Mr. Waa Juwara as regards his opinions about the coalition published in the Independent, designing a strategy for coalition building demands a return to the immediate past in order to attempt determining the probable structural defects that may plague such a huge project. The resolution of some of these problems, I think, are in fact fundamental to the success or failure of the collective attempt to unseat the APRC regime. As I shall argue here, much of it has to do with the constellation of opposition parties since the usurpation of power by the AFPRC in 1994.

President Jawara, during one of his most memorable speeches, derided the opposition for its inherent frailties, and ineffectual propaganda. In Georgetown in 1990 (?), when he dropped a bombshell saying he was going to resign as party chairman and therefore head of state, he threw his audience into laughter by saying that the GPP is splintered from the NCP which itself splintered off the PPP. He went on to say that "as for PDOIS, they are a party of malcontents"!  
[The mandinka word that approximates to splinter as a verb, "ka farasi", when used in a particular context conveys its meaning  with tons of humour].
The president's assertion, insofar as it related to the GPP and the NCP was absolutely accurate. But it is not in fact the accuracy of the assertion that per se, is important in describing the identities of the parties. 
Since the APRC banned the PPP and the NCP prior to the 1996 elections, it inadvertently created a political void  that the UDP and the NRP emerged to fill. The UDP grew on the wreckage of the two former older parties. There leaderships notwithstanding, the mass base of the UDP and the APRC were mostly made up of former supporters of the two parties, with the APRC drawing its constituency largely from the anti-PPP opposition that swept across the country drawing immediate converts into the dizzying whirlwind of revolutionary vengeance and humiliation meted to former PPP royalty by instances such as the Algali commission. It was payback time for many, but only briefly.

Once the 1996 elections were over and the former soldiers consolidated their positions of power and mastered the art of accumulating immense wealth while still holding onto political office, they began to disband the very structures that would have evolved into organs of popular power if their programmes were infused with sincere democratic content. This process is eerily analogous to Jerry Rawlings disarming of the PDCs and WDCs (People's/Workers  Defense Committees) in Ghana barely fourteen months after his second seizure of power, December 1981. These were the local village committees or wards for the defense of the revolution; structures designed by the party but under the control of the July 22 movement, active in the rice distribution scheme and operated as portals into the party. The APRC deliberately trimmed the winds in the sails of the July 22 movement while it opened up itself to an influx of new blood. Very quickly, known and unknown PPP "yai kompins" and former NCP foot soldiers rushed onto the APRC gravy train. Yaa Fatou Badjan, a former backbone supporter and mobilizer for Jibou Jagne simply told Uncle Jibou that it was time that she and her followers  jumped ship. She quickly became the APRC's campaign chairwoman in Serre-Kunda East, responsible for distributing Ramadan sugar - annually supplied by the President - and campaign t-shirts to supporters and members of the party. Another high profile defection was that of Mrs. Nyimasata Sanneh Bojang, this time from the PPP. There are many similar comical instances in Gambian politics where people who were ardent rivals for years, suddenly find common cause under the patronising wings of vitriolic dictator. 
Without the charismatic nature and consistent work of O.J, the PPP, in most likelihood would have fizzled away, not unlike the NCP, from the constellation. As for the NCP, its leadership seems to have sold itself, body and soul, to the APRC. It is unclear to me where its support base migrated if at all it has not dissolved unnoticed into that vast emptiness of personal allegiances. 

So here we are, with the UDP, NRP, NDAM, PPP and PDOIS with the potential of forming a coalition. The only party, that we can claim with certainty, stands ideologically apart from the rest is PDOIS. In spite of its pan-Africanist outlook, and militant inclinations, NDAM's political profile remains unclear to me. Counting PDOIS out, where concretely lie the differences between the other four? Are there ideological differences or considerations of political economy so prominent that one should vote PPP rather than UDP? Not just that they share a common anti-corruption position, vow to establish the rule of law, strengthen democratic institutions, and prioritise agriculture, these parties hardly evince opposing position on significant policy questions. I remain convinced that the major differences between them have little to do with politcal, economic, or cultural ideas. Herein lies the major difficulty of the proposed coalition. Given that the differences had to do with economic polices or principles of democracy for instance, the parties can appreciate each other's standpoints and negotiate with some flexibility on the bases of those differences in the interest of the common good even in the short term. But the differences between the parties seem to be based on fractured histories, personalised rivalries, and perhaps both ethnic and provincial considerations. Provided that the parties have active democratic structures, it is conceivable that backward leadership traits such as personal rivalries, could be eventually swept away. But these structures are either non-existent or hopelessly dormant. UDP vividly exposed this weakness when it failed to internally and democratically address the financial irregularities which led to Mr. Waa Juwara's resignation as propaganda secretary.

It is at this point important to recall the most recent attempt at coalition building during the campaign towards the last elections. The APRC regime deliberately delayed repealing decree 89, that effectively banned politicians of the first republic and their parties from activity till July 22, 2001. But even before that date PDOIS had, as a result of a party congress held in Wuli, declared its readiness to join a tactical alliance in preparation for the elections. The other parties joined the chorus, but despite calls for the newly franchised decree 89 parties to join forces with what was tactically labelled the Opposition, a broad-based coalition that was to field a single presidential candidate never materialised. A reasonably vocal group from Gambia-L campaigned all it could muster and called for the unity of the opposition and appealed to decree 89 politicians to join the Opposition. An obviously notable difficulty in that process was Mr. Sheriff Dibba's claim that he was apparently sidelined in one of the more important deliberations, an incident that eventually supplied a convenient exegesis for his subsequent defection to the APRC.

Immediately after the elections, Mr. Ousainou Darboe conceded defeat by congratulating the incumbent even before proper consultations with others in the UDP leadership on the party's official position regarding the elections.  Mr. Juwara's departure from UDP was anything but smooth. His fervid allegations against  Mr. Ousainou Darboe is a strong enough reason to suspect that problems of personal chemistries may severely affect efforts to build a coalition. 

Beside the problem of personalities, a coalition must agree on a common political platform that must at once espouse the profiles of all parties and yet appeal to the opposition as a whole. The constituent programmes within such a platform are what must give credibility to the idea of a coalition in the first place. Its mandate cannot solely extend to the question of peacefully defeating the incumbency. The question of what to replace the APRC regime with is at least as equally important. The entire opposition needs to be mobilised on and persuaded for the relevance of these programmes if a political vacuum is to be avoided; the sort of vacuum that a military coup purports to occupy, or because of which Senegal might intervene for reasons of its security. Needless to say, it is precisely in the debate about programmes for the coalition that citizens, card-carrying members, supporters and sympathisers of the different political parties should make their voices heard: how should the coalition take issue with the IEC, the registration of voters, the whole electoral process, the regime's desperate attempts to incinerate the critical press out of existence, reactionary amendments aimed at promulgating indemnity, issues of local democracy, and so on and so forth. These and many other issues are what even Diasporans like ourselves need to engage with, contribute to, and thereby exercise our right to participate in the democratic process. Equally, these and questions of the economic collapse are best dealt with on a national basis. Not that Mr. Juwara of NDAM has no right to take initiatives on issues of national political relevance; but to insist that such issues are best dealt with in consultation with other members of the opposition, collectively combining their propaganda efforts and exerting combined strength to demand for peaceful protests against APRC's disastrous economics. In times as hard and tough as these in Gambia, coordination of the activities of, and consultation amongst the opposition parties provide the ready psychological and concrete bases for a coherent and strong coalition. Consultations will not just help do away with much of the personal tensions that accumulated over the years, it also provides strong signals to the grassroots that we are all in the same damn, sinking, boat. 

Two years ago debate about the problems within the coalition were felt to be an exercise in destructive forensics. Prissy abstractions could not be allowed to derail the all too important rush towards unseating Jammeh; political expediency was felt to be best served by overlooking the enormous problems a coalition could be subdued by. All this inspite of misgivings and warnings by, especially,  sister Jabou Joh. The elections were so close that clamouring for an unprincipled unity seemed to override all considerations of what that unity should rest upon. The concentrated focus on wresting power from the hands of the APRC induced neglect of critical issues that needed to be put under scrutiny. While the APRC was celebrating numerous cases of high profile defections to its ranks, many of us dismissed GRTS broadcast of these river-crossings as misinformation ploys. So when rumours of secret meetings between Mr. Dibba and Mr. Jammeh were circulating, it was still derided by many on Gambia-L as yet another furtive sting to divide the Opposition. The leaders on the ground, i.e some of them at any rate, sensed what was going on. Perhaps they mistrusted Mr. Dibba's secret consultations with president Jammeh so greatly that they deliberately left him out from a meeting. So the coalition broke down. The rest is history.

Current actualities in Gambia demand interventions of many forms. While a diasporan like me should never encourage people to take to the streets for anything, I should in all humility, ask Mr.Waa Juwara, in his capacity as a leader seeking political office, to mobilise his unique experience and organisational skills to take the lead in initiating consultations with ALL the opposition parties (if that indeed was not done prior to Waa's call for a peaceful demonstration), so that they may collectively draw out a strategy to deal with the disastrous consequence of the current economic and social malaise. It will hardly help if one leader or party attempts to take on the regime individually in a physically risky show of defiance. True, one can make powerful statements as a leader, but unless those statements are backed-up with the continuity of a committed, disciplined and strong organisation, they will eventually fail in their declared intentions; and that failure makes future efforts at reorganising that much more difficult. Furthermore the failure to consult with others may reinforce mutual suspicions that have their roots in the past.
We Diasporans, in our capacity as Gambian citizens(!) and concerned individuals must demand of our leaders that they must get ahead and work out their differences, concretely start negotiating on a coalition programme that will be acceptable to their constituencies. 
On the other hand some internet-based Diasporans have carved for themselves no political role except as excitable financiers, jumping from funding one emergency to the next. [Even as I write this after reading ten days of accumulated mails this morning, I see that Joe Energy Sambou, is on the move again. This time he says 3 cents a day will do]. That, indeed, is also a role, because emergencies are what Gambia is going to acquire in giant doses up to 2006, even if the rains give a sense of respite from one year to the next. But the rest of us simply must reject that kind of non-committal illusionary project and put something more concrete in its place.

Ramadan Mubarak to you all,

Momodou S Sidibeh

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