----- Original Message ----- 
  From: "Momodou S Sidibeh" <[log in to unmask]>
  To: "The Gambia and related-issues mailing list" 
<[log in to unmask]>
  Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 9:37 PM
  Subject: Re: FWD: THE ALLIANCE for REGIME CHANGE/Sidibeh



    Sister Jabou Joh,

   Not that there should be no policy documents or election manifestoes
   authored partly to win sympathy or support from the literate 
constituency.
   But rather, to question and even provoke a rethinking of the ways we look 
at
   and judge political processes in our polity.

    Because the efforts for a broader coalition of the Opposition has 
failed,
   supporters of different alliances are now busy demonising one another, 
even
   though it is clear as noon day that neither NADD nor the UDP/NRP are the
   major obstacles to social reform. So my position is that those who should
   place these policy documents and their presenters under scrutiny ought
   temselves be the initial objects of some such scrutiny.

    Independent-minded journalists whose critique would have been most
   welcomed are now  almost effectively silenced. When once the respected 
corps
   of journalists demonstrated in paying tribute to  Deyda Hydara, gunned 
down
   by thugs, not a single politician - unless I am grossly mistaken - joined
   their ranks to vent their anger at such brazen political assasination. 
But
   perhaps of even greater import, is the fact that ordinary people again,
   managed to remain unmoved by yet another outrage. Just as all the anger
   fizzled away after the April 2000 massacre, as a great number of Gambians
   voted the APRC into office after 18 months, inspite of the made-in-Gambia
   election gimmickry.

    My point is that ordinary tired workers, poorer peasants, angry 
students,
   tried journalists, pauperized women, brutalised civil servants, taciturn
   intellectuals and disgruntled politicians all constitute a national
   community of descent that since independence in 1965, never found a 
common
   historical mission to pursue with relentless zeal.
    I say it is time we rethink the entire dynamics of political processes 
in
   Gambia and how to alter them for the better. The divisions within the
   Opposition is reflective of the divisions within the larger community of
   descent.

    When the politicians failed to cobble a coalition after so much work by
   many Gambians, especially diasporan Gambians I should say, some documents
   for regime change will prove to be little more than academic material. 
There
   is great probability that the Opposition will fail to unseat the APRC. 
Yet
   again.

    Cheers,
    sidibeh

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