Memo to Leaders of Parties Comprising the Opposition Coalitions   
   
  RE:  THE CERTAINTY OF DEFEAT FOR A FRAGMENTED OPPOSITION         
   
   
  A bare three months to Decision Friday, there appears to be parity of vision between the so-called opposition coalitions, and the APRC. Even as I accept the possibility of a dramatic shift in the balance of competing visions, and with it the electoral fortunes of a fully coalesced opposition, it has to be recognised that any such window is narrowing by the day. 
   
  If only to restate what numerous commentators at home and abroad accurately surmised, there is no question that a fragmented opposition will comprehensively collapse in any, and all efforts to electorally consign APRC to history. Should the tragedy of defeat only tangentially exercise your anxieties, the official formalisation of that foregone certainty may permanently freeze most of you out of serious national leadership.
   
  Even as you woefully failed in discerning the interest of Gambia, it requires no genius to fully appreciate your very own, and act to promote it. With Kombo East as clear microcosm of Decision Friday, I urge that you revisit and reengage the issue of whether your personal interest lies in a fragmented contest against APRC.  
   
  As you accurately preamblise in the five-party NADD Memorandum of Understanding, lawlessness and self perpetuating rule, with their full panoply of attendant perversions of democratic governance, continues to corrode the fabric of our public life. A state of affairs where a sizeable segment of the population accepts governmental heavy-handedness as normal, and the majority lives in fear, cannot in any way be a harbinger of pleasant tidings for the body politic of The Gambia. In light of our quite precarious existence, it is extraordinary that NADD, as originally conceived, foundered in the manner it did over the comparatively trivial matter of a flag bearer. 
   
  Although willing to accept the possible existence of varying levels of culpability, I reject the uncritical insinuation that only one party, and, or, person, drove the original NADD off the road. On any analysis, this sounds too simplistic. Confronted as we are with a national emergency, you must now demonstrate the selflessness with which you were uncritically associated, individually, and collectively. If the current impasse translates to the ultimate collapse of the project, that can only exemplify a collective tragic failure in leadership. In that eventuality, you should seriously reconsider your positions, individually and collectively, as standard bearers of national parties.
   
  Either that or a betrayed public will loudly do it for you after Decision Friday!
   
  For the avoidance of any doubt, I take nothing from what I said about Honourable Halifa Sallah in proposing him for flag bearer of the five-party NADD. That proposal was the outcome of a cold and strategic assessment of what I understood to be our nation's electoral reality, and NADD's best weapon against APRC. It was also based on the assumption that the UDP – the party I supported over the years, and with the numbers to effectively torpedo any arrangement it opposes – would buy into the logic of Halifa as flag bearer. In a nutshell, my overriding calculation was premised on the assumption that as Gambians at the edge of the same precipice, we were also staring at the same abyss and its terrifying possibilities. On purely pragmatic considerations, and in the interest of nudging the original NADD project to a deal, I now revisit my stance on flag bearer*
   
  Should the opposition remain fragmented, Decision Friday will likely usher in a tremendously changed political landscape. It is not fanciful to postulate that as the current constellation of oppositionist party leaders, you have a mere three months to fulfil your date with destiny. In the event of a three-way contest on Sep 22, the APRC will "secure" the public mandate for another five years. In that eventuality, the vast majority of you will be consigned to the fringes of political leadership by 2011, assuming that contest was not pre-empted by forces demonstrating a palpable lack of faith in the "democratic" process. Some of your parties, and, or, your coalitions will be moribund. As a credentialed crusader for the rule of law in The Gambia is wont to quip, you can take that to the bank.
   
  Notwithstanding respectable dissent, it is objectively clear that the impending presidential polls represent a watershed in Gambian public life. I therefore reject the defeatist suggestion that reconstituting the original NADD is no longer possible. As such a contention has no basis in political reality, any among you party leaders suffering the urge to act in accordance with this particular position should have no business aspiring to an area councillorship.
   
  In similar vein, I reject the contention that reconstituting NADD remains your exclusive prerogative as party leaders, the so-called Executive Committee of the original entity. As stakeholders, the opposition’s supporters are entitled to a say on how the September elections ought to be contested. It is my view that, as the victims of tyranny, and the intended beneficiaries of dislodging APRC from our councils of state, any project in this regard is our enterprise. As party leaders, and clearly crucial to providing direction and momentum to the ultimate success of the enterprise, you are nevertheless mere trustees of a vital national project. As fiduciaries, your duty is to the people you intend to liberate from the clutches of tyranny. Your duty is to us, and we accordingly have standing to challenge your vision on the way forward!
   
  Notwithstanding your public pronouncements, you may be of the view that referring to 2006 as a make or break year mischaracterises the magnitude of our national condition. Even to the casual observer, the overwhelming evidence of the gathering storm over our national space must be obvious. The relentless atmosphere of repression is simply not sustainable, and something has clearly got to give. On the grounds that no Gambian deserves to suffer in a civil conflict against the dictatorship, I still contend for the proposition that the electoral process must be the principal route and a coalition the main vehicle. 
   
  Should the foregoing argument appeal to you, the urgency to reunify the splintered NADD cannot be overemphasised. As a matter of principle, I celebrate vision regardless of source, but reject all manifestations of delusion in similar manner. Against a fragmented opposition in September, it is delusional to even suggest the electoral vulnerability of APRC under our first-past-the-post system. In the best of circumstances, neither of your coalitions can do the job all alone.
   
  How you fail to appreciate that the only empire likely to emerge out of APRC’s ruins is that of the people - sired and nurtured on promoting the rule of law and the dignity of the individual – is the extraordinary and eternal shame of NADD's disintegration. As I cannot envision a new dawn of kings and their legions of sycophantic courtiers, I reject any leadership that mirrors the natural inclination of dictatorships in personalizing political questions of national dimension. 
   
  And so you are not amiss in anchoring your hopes and policies firmly in reality, national leaders who toy with any form of parochialism are better advised to accept that Gambia’s communities are damned to the common fate of camaraderie or tragedy. We are condemned to survive or collapse as a national community, not as communities within a nation. Sink or swim, we must experience our plight as a collective. That fate is absolute and allows for no variation whatsoever! 
   
  Never in doubt about the agonising challenge of fashioning a workable coalition, I am nevertheless of the firm view that those who aspire to the rarefied task of directing the destiny of a nation must be mature and pragmatic enough to appreciate and navigate the bottlenecks inherent to a project of such critical import. I accept that we are yet to arrive at the unfulfilled terminus of the five-party MOU driven NADD project, but now more than ever, decisive and visionary leadership is of paramount necessity.
   
  An event of great moment occurs on Decision Friday. The choice is between transiency and permanency, and it is your prerogative to choose, and Gambia's to judge. 
   
  How do you then plead gentlemen? 
   
  Do you plead for you and your moment on the national stage, or do you plead for Gambia and her suffering people? 
   
  Just so you are aware, Gambia is poised to render its verdict after Decision Friday
   
  In the meantime, I urge that Gambians sympathetic to the opposition cause refrain from rewarding failure through the wastage of funds on either of the coalitions in their conclusively tentative and futile efforts against the APRC in the event of a three-way presidential contest. I appreciate we cannot require specific performance on a five-party NADD as originally conceived as long as you know not to count on principled and pragmatic Gambians to sponsor your fruitless journeys to nowhere.
   
   
  Lamin J Darbo
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  *          PROPOSAL OUT OF THE OPPOSITION STALEMATE
   
              In broad terms, I propose that:
   
   
    
   Subject to any electoral rules, Ousainou Darboe be selected as flag bearer of the five-party MOU driven NADD, and that Honourable Halifa Sallah be selected as his running mate, i.e., as president, and vice president respectively 
   
    
   NADD as a “neutral” entity remain the collective vehicle of a reunified coalition unless there are electoral rules barring Ousainou Darboe from heading it.
   
    
   In the event of a NADD victory, a government of national unity be set up, and that the transition period be reduced from five years to two years to allow for stability and political certainty. All constituent parties of the transition government should be able to contest in the post transition presidential polls 
   
    
   Each of the party leaders be included in the national unity government at cabinet level
   
    
   A constitutional review commission be established to help make the 1997 Constitution rule of law, and separation of powers compliant
   
    
   The government of national unity decide on how to approach the January legislative elections  
   
  Details Subject to Negotiation
   

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