Hamjatta, a brilliant and timely piece. I like your 'flushing cockroach'
analogy. In my opinion, that is our most fundamental problem today. The
stubbornness with which certain people peddle 'bad ideas' is just
mind-boggling. But we must resolve to debunk these nonsense each time they
surface. Trust Yaya and his cronies for reaching perverse conclusions when
faced with clear challenges. As you pointed out and Winston Churchill
discovered years ago, Democracy is not a perfect system. But it is the best
thing out there. I agree that it is irritating to have people denouncing
Democracy and most of the time would not present credible alternatives. If
they are courteous enough to give us alternatives, their choices range from
the bizarre to the downright illogical. Some of these people are criticizing
a system that they do not even understand. We have to be very careful how we
interpret what is going on in Florida in the Gambian context. The population
of some of the counties in Florida is larger than the whole Gambian
population. The challenges that face the Floridians are different from the
challenges we have back home. When we advocate for democracy in The Gambia,
no one is suggesting that we should adopt all the proven mistakes and export
them to Gambia. That does not make sense. We should try to learn from other
people's mistakes. What is most significant in Florida is that there are
mechanisms in place for dealing with the debacle. The current structure
allows for matters to be resolved with little or no risk for bloodshed. Not
everyone is going to be happy with the outcome. That is not the point. The
focus is to at least convince the overwhelming majority of Americans that
the process was fair and the outcome is legitimate. To use the Florida
fiasco as justification for dictatorships is absurd, hypocritical and
downright dishonest. The more logical thing to do is to try and outdo the
Americans by ensuring that we have a system where every vote counts. This
should be a minor challenge bearing in mind the population of The Gambia. It
is ridiculous and perverse to argue that we should allow Yaya to lord over
us because people cannot be trusted to apply Democracy properly. We can have
a Democratic  process  that is better than the American one. Let us set the
standards high. This must be made clear to Yaya and his cohorts. What is
going on in the U.S. should not be used as an excuse to disallow election
monitors in the coming elections. With all the noise going on in Florida, no
one is alleging fraud (yet). Did we hear George W or Al Gore putting guns at
the heads of elections officials and asking them to declare bogus results?
Granted, there are other pressures being applied at these elections
officials. But the significant thing here, is that there are checks and
balances that will make it very hard for some of these partisans to succumb
to the illegitimate wishes of their parties.  Again, the challenges the two
societies face vis-a-vis Democracy are very different. Apples and oranges.
Like you pointed out, we should still insist on elections monitors (if and
when we have elections) and demand that the process be better than what
operated in Florida. Whether Democracy is a far more superior system to a
dictatorship headed by a moron like Yaya, should be a non-issue. Our focus
should be on how we are going to improve and perfect our Democratic system.
I will also conclude by reminding everyone about trying to flush a
cockroach. No matter how trivial we might think the 'bad idea' is, we have
to attack it. People can regard this as dictatorial. But it is not. Evil
('bad idea') has to be met head on and debunked. To paraphrase an adage:
evil thrive where good people stay silent. The least we can do when faced
with injustice, is to speak out against it. We should not let Yaya or anyone
tell us that our people do not deserve to choose their leaders, unless they
can come up with a better alternative. And vagaries such as 'traditional
democracy' do not suffice. As you shrewdly pointed out, this argument
against Democracy is a very dangerous and sinister one. It is also very
insulting for people to tell me that I should not participate in electing my
leader because I do not know how to choose a good leader. That is what it
boils down to. This condescension must be wiped out. Morons like Yaya and
mental midgets like Saja Taal and Sedat Jobe cannot decide for us who is
supposed to lead us. One of these days, you will hear one of these shameless
spinmiesters trying to use the Florida problem to convince us to crown Yaya
as our leader for life. I can gladly live with the decision of the majority
of the illiterate farmers in Gambia if they freely decide to vote for Yaya.
What I cannot stand, is for Yaya to steal power from the people and then
have these knuckle-heads going around and trying to justify the illegal
takeover.
KB



>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: The Wages Of Indifference
>Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:33:34 GMT
>

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