Hamjatta,

Your statement that it is gullible newspapers and gullible people like me is
not only baseless but a very naive one indeed. You wrote:

"Contrary to APRC disinformation, Decree 89 politicians, or those who have
the clout of a political heavyweight - Dibba, Camara, OJ et al - have, at
least in principle, joined or are on the verge of joining forces with rest
of the genuine Opposition. This has been confirmed to me by an unimpeachable
source in Banjul this evening. It is perfectly understandable why the APRC
or the NIA's Disinformation Department is working overtime to drive a wedge
bewteen the ranks of the Opposition: their calculations that the abrogation
of Decree 89 would only help in unleashing disarray within the Opposition
ranks, has as of yet, not materialised and doomed to back-fire.

They figured that if they plant stories in gullible newspapers or use
gullible people like Pa Modou Gassama as their conduits, they can create
disarray, confusion and suspicion amongst the anti- Jammeh forces. So they
whip up mirages of a PPP revival with the hope that the fears and suspicions
it ends up breeding will feed on the age old rivalry between, say, the PPP
and the NCP. Such that those who would traditionally call themselves NCP
supporters would be reluctant to support a coalition that has traditional
PPP or GPP supporters. Wishful thinking, if you ask!"

Now look into the following post by JOE SAMBOU and culled from "THE
INDEPENDENT".

"O.J. acknowledged that "the period is too short for those affected by the
decree to start campaigning for election but are nevertheless still
fortunate that some of the structures of the PPP, NCP and GPP are still in
place with the possibility and indication of a positive outcome.

"The reaction of the people during the past few days is encouraging as a lot
of people who left the three banned political parties to join the ruling
APRC party are now ready to come back to their own parties." He emphasised
that the repeal of Decree 89 is the "beginning of the end of the APRC
party."

Reacting to the view that the revival of banned political parties might
affect the United Democratic Party, he said he could not speak on behalf of
the other parties but noted that the revival of all the political parties
would strengthen the UDP and other opposition parties and give Gambians a
variety of options.

O.J. appealed to the former PPP supporters and sympathisers to return to the
party so that in collaboration with other political parties they could bring
back "sanity into Gambian politics."


Now if you read between the lines above, are you for one moment trying to
tell the L that the PPP membership is not considering its resurrection?
Rather than looking for scape goats why don't you for once look at the
bigger picture. You know as much as many on this list that, a resurrected
PPP will have serious implications for some of the existing opposition
parties. You like most people on this list also can safely assume that
NON-RESURRECTION of the PPP is very unlikely. I my opinion, some of these
veterant politicians will find it very difficult to shadow a party like the
UDP.

If you ask me my premonition of what is going to happen, I will state it
thus:

1. A resurrected PPP is very likely to form a tactical alliance with the
GPP, GDP and NRP.

2. The former NCP is likely to embrace the UDP.

3. The PDOIS, as a matter of principle will not  side with any other party.

The result, I submit, may very well look like the following:

A tactical alliance of the PPP, GPP, GDP and NRP will poll between 15 and
24% of the total votes cast come the October elections.

A combined UDP/NCP will poll between 11 and 17%.

The PDOIS may poll between 8 and 14%.

In other words if the the opposition ends up as in the case of the above
scenerio, the opposition will loose the next elections to the APRC. A
combined opposition poll may therefore be between 34 and 55% split between.

Have a good day, Gassa.

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