Gassama, listen to your ridiculous bravado.  For you to think that Gambia
does not need Western Aid is the silliest notion I have heard from you for a
while.  Even Yaya was smart enough to figure out that he needs the ‘West’.
He paid (in vain) hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US in
order to be in the good books of the US.  But, trust you to be way off as
usual in your pathetic attempts to be the ‘chief sycophant’ of the APRC.
Just yesterday on the Wall Street Journal there was a report about how Libya
(one of your supposed donors) is trying to be in US’ good books as well.
But like I told you before, if a kid is sitting with his dad and they see a
charging lion, it is the dad that will run first because he would have
realized the gravity of the situation before the kid did.  In other words,
ignorance is bliss.  To break it down further, because you and your cohorts
are so ignorant, you put all these silly ideas in your head.

Did you know that over 90% of our ‘Development Budget’ comes from loans and
grants?  The remaining 10% comes mainly from domestic borrowing from
‘Western’ institutions like the Standard Bank.  Do you know where your
illegal government borrows/begs all this money from?  Yes! You guessed it.
From the ‘West’.  It is NOT from Libya or Cuba.  When our groundnut industry
needed rescue, it was the EU (and NOT Taiwan) that came to the rescue.
Despite that this illegal government prostitutes itself and uses the best
parts of all UN speeches pimping for Taiwan, ordinary Gambians do not have
much to show for it.  Taiwan deals directly with Yaya and the AFPRC/APRC.
Your government has willingly ‘enslaved’ itself to the Taiwanese
‘check-book’; but will come out and exhibit machismo to the ‘West’ that it
needs the most.  Just shows how inept Gambian ‘foreign policy’ is.  You said
that ‘Our sovereignty is not for sale or bargain’.  Maybe you did not hear
the speech of the Foreign Secretary at the UN.  The sovereignty is for sale
all right.  It is for sale to Taiwan that will deal with Yaya directly and
not follow up on projects to ensure that the Gambian masses are benefiting.
It is ludicrous that Taiwan will ‘donate’ tractors to Gambia and top
Taiwanese officials will not know whether the ‘donation’ is to Yaya
personally or to ordinary Gambians.

The aid that comes from the ‘West’ comes with ‘strings’ attached.  If civil
servants working on those projects get dismissed unjustifiably, the
financiers have a right to ask questions and expect logical explanations.
That is what you people do not like.  You would rather have Taiwanese
delivering dollars in suit-cases for Yaya to fatten his private bank
accounts.  The Gambian masses cannot say that we did not warn them.  The
APRC does not have the interest of the Gambians at heart.  These people are
there for their pockets and nothing else.  Yaya always dreamt to lead a
flamboyant life-style, but unfortunately for us, he did not want to struggle
for it.  They do not care if the donors ‘sanction’ us.  It does not affect
Yaya’s private bank accounts.

People should not be fooled by sycophants like Gassama that does not even
understand where his salary comes from.  If he thinks that Gambia can
survive without ‘Western’ aid, then he must be a bigger fool than I thought.
  This man is the same man that ran to the ‘West’ for cover when he thought
that Yaya was going to lose the election.  Let Gassama give us a break with
this ‘we don’t need the West bravado’.  We all know that ‘Allah’s Bank’ does
NOT exist.  One only has to read and UNDERSTAND the latest budget to realize
that we have a bankrupt nation that cannot survive without loans and grants
from the ‘West’.  Any government that has an agenda of depriving us those
loans and grants should not lead us.  Before the elections, we told Gambians
that loans and grants were the bottom-line for us.  We do NOT have oil or
diamonds (if you disregard Baabaa Jobe’s ‘Blood Diamond’).  We also told
them that Yaya and his cohorts put those funds in jeopardy.  Well, we did
not have to wait long to prove out point.  Unfortunately, poor Gambians are
going to learn the hard way.  Both Gassama and Yaya do not practice what
they preach.  Yaya will say that he does not need the ‘West’.  But when his
wife was to have a baby he did not take the woman to RVH or to Taiwan or to
Cuba.  She came to the ‘West’.
KB



>From: Jungle Sunrise <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Gambian 'Foreign Policy' in a state of Flux
>Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 10:49:45 +0000
>
>Dampha wrote:
>
>"To paraphrase brother Saul Khan in one of his brilliantly written
>pieces on fdig.org: ‘it is foolish to cut the hand that feeds you’.  Well,
>that is exactly what the morons back home are doing.  This erratic move by
>the government to expel yet another Western diplomat from the country goes
>to show that little (if anything) has changed in the Dictatorship we suffer
>back home. These people to do not have the wherewithal to do the right
>thing."
>
>Dampha,
>
>The illusion that, without western aid we will not survive was shattered
>way
>back in 1994/95 when they did their worst. They imposed santions on us,
>paralysed our tourism industry and guess what; we survived it. The EU and
>the US are only returning part of what they stole from us in the first
>place; and like it or not, this government will not tolerate or accept any
>foreign government or individual to lord it over us. No, we will not accept
>it. Our sovereignty is not for sale or bargain. We have survived worst.
>Whatever we may have learnt from the west, survival isn't/wasn't part of
>it.
>They have suppressed us and even tried to annihilate us through the most
>barbaric means vis-a-vis through slavery and we survived it. Rest assured
>that we are not going back that way again. We would rather die than be
>enslaved again.
>
>Have a good day, Gassa.
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
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