Hamjatta,

What bothers me about your response to this post is the fact that you
offered no statistics to refute any of the issues I raised. For your
information, what I have is the hard copy of the 79 page report. What
inspired me to post this part of the report now is the "Seven years ago"
speech given by Yahya Jammeh on July 22nd. Part of that speech went thus:

"Seven years ago many people had to bribe principals and Headmasters just
for their sons and daugters to be accepted into high school or junior
secondary school". As you may be aware, this was very wide spread. Some
pupils never made the transition to high school simply because places were
very limited. This is one of the major problems that resulted from that and
is a major problem we are facing today. A significant number of
half-educated people whose crime was not to have had parents who knew the
right headmaster or principal or could not afford the bribe. Some of these
people feel too good to do some of the menial jobs that our parents did and
yet are not fully equiped to do other less menial jobs. This you cannot
deny.

In the same report it says "Among some of the educated urban population
however, there was apathy inspired by general dissatisfaction with the
political system. The result was withdrawal from political activities by
many and mushrooming of unregistered opposition". This refers to what
prevailed before the 1994 coupe which indirectly influenced most of the
educated folks to embrace the coupe in its initial stages. It is a fact that
many of us in the know, thought that we were such a minority that any effort
on our part to try to bring back sanity to the chaos that was, would be
useless. This was the attitude of many intellectuals then. With the
exception MOJA (G) and PDOIS there was very little debate about the PPP
misrule. Even though many of us identified ourselves with their strugle to
enlighten the masses, most of us did nothing.

Another part of the report goes on thus "Thus, in his thesis 'Dual
abdication' cited in Obadare (1999) Nana Kusi Appea Busia jr, noted that it
was not only the PPP government that let the people down. According to him,
the Gambian public 'deepened its own misery by its own passivity and by
abdicating its social responsibility without a fight. Thus by not being
vigilant and by being unconditionally obedient to political authority, the
society also broke the terms of the social contract' (Bussia cited in
Obadare 1999:348)". You know full well that the above situation was exactly
what prevailed in the country and if you agree with that then I cannot see
why you cannot acknowledge the efforts of this government in terms of its
commitment to education. The cycle of poverty and ignorance must be broken
for the benefit of all Gambians and one of the surest ways of doing so is
through education. It is very dishonest of you to try to downplay the
government's commitment to education. You know full well that your ability
to convince some people is not because of your sincerity but because of your
knowledge. Most right thinking persons would not argue about things that
they have no idea about.

As for the case for citing the statistics on health, that does not deserve
any defence on my part. The fact that seven years ago, we had only about ten
doctors serving our populace in only two hospitals is clear testimony of the
impotense of the Jawara government. Now that atleast additional hospitals
are being built and the fact that there are now atleast 262 qualified
doctors serving throughout the country, makes a case for jubilation. Some of
you cannot see it is because you live in countries were medical and health
services are quite adequate. You live in environments were every death is
investigated and documented. Those of us living here live in a society were
you can be poisoned early evening, die late evening and get buried before
dusk. We neither have adequate resources nor the expertise. Therefore the
efforts of this government in trying to address these issues ought to be
commended and not condemned.

Your attempts to cloudy the debate by referring to my unmasking will not be
a deterent. That should be clear by now. And if you are of the opinion that
I cherry-picked the report to give a more favourable picture of what
prevails why not post it for all to read? Finally I will hope to make a more
indepth study of the global human development Index 2000 and make
comparisons between the Gambia and other countries. I understand we've move
up some more places again. Anyway watchout for it.

Have a good day, Gassa.


>From: Hamjatta Kanteh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
> ><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: UN Human Development Report -2000 (Gambia) YET STILL AN LDC
>Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:55:26 EDT
>
>Pa Modou,
>
>The most dishonest part of your post is that you cherry-picked the UN Human
>Development Report; preferring to truncate parts of the Report that indicts
>this imbecilic regime of yours. I will get back to you on this when i get
>to
>read the Report in its entirety. The way you cherry-picked the Report
>merely
>confirms the fact that you are NOT objective about the sequence of events
>or
>the scheme of things in the Gambia; rather, you are a very dishonest
>partisan
>operative. Remember the lie you told us here about your refusal to accept
>that things are as digital or black and white as some on this List wish to
>portray it about the Gambia. Well, what do you call such dishonest
>cherry-picking of a Report to insinuate the wrong picture of the Gambia?
>
>If anything has changed about you since your exposure, it is how the
>cavorting, self-confident and hypocritical Kebba Jobe has mutate into the
>shamed and subdued demeanour of Pa Modou Gassama! Shame on you, Pa Modou!
>
>Hamjatta Kanteh
>
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