I want to take this opportunity to say that Mariatou may sound like she is
being objective or she is making her points with FACTS but her utterances
make me believe that this is just her opinion and nothing else.  Knowing
some of the facts that she is speaking to I can assure that she is not
being objective in her analysis of PARTS of the past elections in Gambia.

First of all, her assertion that PPP "bankrolled" UDP is FALSE.  If she
does not know much about UDP she should ask people knowledgeable about the
party in private because she does seem to believe the party leadership who
made it clear that that UDP is indeed a newly formed INDEPENDENT party.
Just because UDP/PPP/GPP formed an alliance during the past election does
not mean that UDP owed anything to PPP or any other party.  This was a
marriage of mutual interest; which was to try to unseat Yahya Jammeh for
their mishandling of Gambia’s affairs.  At the time of the opposition party
meeting for a potential alliance I do not think most people thought any
other opposition party had more to offer to UDP than PPP.  Therefore, it
was quite important that the offer by PPP to join UDP in an alliance be
taken seriously.  Unfortunately, the other parties, contrary to some
people’s believe, were the ones that had hidden agenda's.  Two of them, NCP
and PDOIS, simply refused to join mostly because of their disdain for PPP.
As for NRP only Amat Bah knows the reason for his reluctance to join the
coalition.  I know that there was a misconception of UDP being a front for
PPP all throughout the campaigning thanks to APRC's constant pronouncements
of such but this is absolutely NOT TRUE.  I can assure you that the people
that head UDP are no pushovers!

Secondly, Mariatou claims that both parties (UDP and APRC) were using
tribal sentiments and threatening language.  This was a one-sided affair.
May be she can quote or recall for us one instance were tribalism was
preached on the UDP platform.  This is another myth that was planted in the
minds of many people by the APRC propagandists.  Here, they thought they
can convince many of the other tribes to vote against UDP if they can
successfully label it a "Mandinka" party.  All one has to do is to just
look at the leadership of the party to decide whether that characterization
was correct or wrong.  I have to admit, in my humble opinion they have been
pretty successful at it.  The election results bear that conclusion.  On
the matter of THREATS, we all know whose nature is that.  It appeared that
after 5 years of trying to be civil, law-abiding, and democratic on the
campaign trail and being met with nothing but intimidation and brutality,
UDP had no choice but to stand-up to those APRC thugs.  That approach
probably is what led to relatively less violent campaign.  If you all
remember on several occasions UDP supporters were assaulted by the APRC
supporters and on many of those occasions the UDP guys were able to repel
their assailants.  In other words, it could have been worse.

Lastly, the fear that people had for the country being engulfed in violence
was legitimate for the simple reason that many people knew that Yahya and
his cohorts were ready to go to any length to cling unto power.  So, it was
natural for the majority of Gambians to pray for peace during and after the
campaign period.  If it were not for the maturity of the leadership of UDP
the headlines could have been different.   One of the reasons for Lawyer
Darboe's concession and congratulation of Yahya Jammeh was to avoid such
violence but Yahya and his supporters did not reciprocate in kind.  Rather,
they went around harassing, arresting, and beating up opposition
supporters.  What a shame that was.

Sorry for the long posting.

YND

On Fri, 30 Nov 2001 17:06:17 -0500, Mariatou Sonko <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>I read, with keen interest, the many analysis of the most recent
>presidential election.  I was going to leave the issue to rest because it
>has been dealt with at length, but, again I felt that there are some very
>important factors that were not mentioned or I might have missed in the
>archives.  If this is a repetition of some of the issues that you have
>already discussed, I appologize for clogging your boxes.
>

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