Sister Mariatou and Brother Yahya,

I am a fellow traveller on this space, but unlike most permanent residents I
have been bumping in and out like the porverbial countryside mailman. I
naturally have missed quite a lot of good stuff but since the elections, I
do not think I came across any serious piece of disinterested analysis
really attempting to expalin why things went the way they did, especially
given the high amplitude of pre-election anti-APRC sentiments that muddied
Gambia-L. Except for your two postings, that is to say.

Even from the newspaper stories, it was obvious that the campaign tone had
been, oftentimes, mutually bilious. I tend to side with Mariatou that the
PPP was at best an overweight liability to the coalition, yet Yahya's
observation that UDP's reactive militancy, even if it failed to serve as
rhetorical deterrent to APRC's violent proclivities, must have sufficiently
swerved an alarmed population to hold on to incessant prayer.

As for the diasporan Gambians, our sensibilities still captured by the
massacre of April 10 and 11, and sheltered from the crusts and rinds of the
cycles of Gambian misery - at least physically - by our very surroundings,
we failed to calculate the magnitude of particular variables in the
electoral formula: Human Rights and Human Rights. I think that we take, and
very rightly so, questions of constitutional and democratic freedoms as
givens, but our very situation makes it a little bit more difficult to
"understand" why thousands of poor Gambians would chant and dance in the
streets, running after a newly-arrived generator bought by their money! I
think we need to better appreciate how these "developments" (paved roads,
schools, clinics) influence political allegiance, especially amongst the
poorly informed; and how this particular issue was effectively used by the
APRC to proscribe the PPP in the minds of many Gambians. (I shall post my
take on these questions in a week or so).

But in the mean time, here is my 1000 dalasi question? Yes, I too do not
entirely agree with PDOIS economic thinking yet I am confident that it was
not on account of their econmics that most Gambians voted for other parties.
So for goodness' sake, why, after fifteen hard years on the tracks, is
PDOIS, boasting a leadership with impeccable integrity, perhaps the best
educated, the most down-to-earth, still trailing the voter statistics at
under 3%? Why?

Thanking you both for your inspiring insights.

Momodou S Sidibeh
Stockholm/Kartong

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