Conteh,

I agree. If you remember, these were my concerns and some of the questions I
rasied when the fund drive was first initiated by brother Joe Sambou. I
commended him, but wanted to know just who we will give the funds to? A
united opposition was the logical choice, and so long as this was not
forthcoming, I did not see the point in this.

As I have pointed out numerous times already,Jammeh initiated his plan to
steal these elections back when they came up with this need for a national
identity card. We have all been reading about how they used this during the
so-called registration period. I also think that having that registration
period was the biggest farce there ever was. All that was intended to
accomplish was to make it possible for them to disqualify Gambians from
voting by making the terms impossible to meet. Why have a registration period
and render all previous registrations null and void in the first place, when
enough time was not allocated for the people to register comfortably, not to
mention the terrorizing of people conducting the registration as well as
those registering.

Without a united opposition, the election is lost and Jammeh will be back for
another period of pure nightmare for the country and the people.

I have also said this before, and will repeat, that the biggest
dissappointment is the fact that in the opposition parties in whom we had
high hopes and a ray of hope for the future, the fact that they cannot set
aside their differences to unite, not for a common ideology and agenda, but
purely because this is an emergency, a critical moment in our history and
somethig drastic needs to be done is more than a slap in the face.
If you have a dying person and you call 911, the last thing you need is the
crew of the ambulance engaging in arguments regarding who can drive better or
faster. All they need to do is to do what is necessary to get there in time
to save a life, and then sort out the other matters later.

Yes, I know that they will tell you that they are for a United opposition,
and i have personally asked this question to those in a position to anwser
it. All i got was the usual PR answer, and it looks like this is all we will
ever get.

The purpose of a united opposition is to get rid of the iron fist first, even
if we have to form an interim government. With a situation where the choice
of a leadership is in the hands of the people again, rather than at the
barrel of a gun, we can then dissolve this interim government and have normal
elections.

In our country, people are dying either from hunger, poverty or just plain
murdered because of their political allegiances or they said something that
the dictator does not like, or perhaps they knew too much of the lawlessness
that is rampant and  our economy is in ruins and there is hopelessness and
fear everywhere.

Where then in our critical hour of need,  are those who profess to love us
and are dedicated to our welfare so much that they have dedicated their lives
to this cause?
It certainly makes one re-examine such professed dedication when a move to
save the very existance of the people is not undertaken because the focus is
on ideological differences that will not save us right now. We are a long way
from having a dedicated leadeship who practice whatthey preach.

Jabou Joh


> In a message dated 07/07/2001 12:10:43 GMT Daylight Time,
> >[log in to unmask] writes:
> >
> >
> > > << I concur with your sentiments. I have these very important
> questions:
> > > 1. Why waste valuable time and resources in endorsing the UDP to
> > > participate in an election already won by dictator yahya?
> > > 2. Why can't we seek unity rather than selfishly taking different
> > > routes to flush out the dictator?
> > > 3. What will we do after the dictator steals the elections? >>

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