Mr Sallah, Thanks alot again for your immediate response. I am very delighted to read you message, and I believe this process shall encourage all politicians who apire leadership to accept objective criticisms, and respond effectively to the concerns of the people whom they want to lead. I hope this tradition shall continue such that in the future, people should be able to look beyond personalities and subject politicians to a rigourous test to determine their true colours. I will try to narrow down the vast territory you covered from stating your party's position to your bizarre fulminations in calling me an "agent provocateur". We should attempt to focus on relevance at all times and resist the temptation to mire into peripheral issues such as recalling some obscure political rhetorics made years ago- they have absolutely no bearing to the issues at hand, and can only introduce more political semantics, ill feelings and sensational frenzy. Mr. Sallah I will begin from where you ended your statements. You stated categorically clear that your party leadership should be blamed for "actions" that harmed the interest of the people. Well I will try to do just that, on your own terms and much more if possible. Please Mr Sallah let is just discuss the substantive issues at hand i. e. the question of legitimacy in the Gambia, the tyranny that is self-evident in the Gambia and your "actions".... You and your party participated in an impeccable democracy, albeit all its flaws, for many many years. Although you were obviously an opposition to the incumbency, you never never miss your oppurtunity to condemn and critize, without any reservation or fear, the Jawara government. Again you have never supported any violent means to overthrow a constitutionally elected government, I can therefore assert that you party was a loyal opposition-i.e although you disagreed with the policies of the incumbency, President Jawara, yet you were 100% LOYAL to the CONSTITUTION of the first Republic, because it represented the wishes, the aspirations, the hopes, dreams and confidence of the supreme Gambian people. That was a very sacred covenant Mr. Sallah! In July 1994, that convenant was breached and the Gambian people reduced to "pawns" and "spectators", again to borrow your very words. At that very moment , the UDP never existed, yet to my amazement now, you never seized the oppurtunity to organize mass demonstrations through civil disobedience, to rectify a serious harm to the interest of the Gambians, when the political climate was obviously conducive. Instead you resigned your democratic principles to a tyrannical domination, a serious ommision of your political leadership that you have been trying to intellectualize since 1994. This I believe Mr. Sallah is a serious breach of confidence. This act of ommision to do the right thing is the very stuff that strenghtened the devil of Kanalai and I completely agree with Hamjatta that your political party actions has inadvertently corroborated the accusations of cavorting with the tyranny going on in the Gambia. Mr Sallah I am still yet to grasp which "laws" are you disobeying by organising a peaceful demonstration to express the will of the people, condemning rape, torture, inefficiency, arbitrary dismissal of judiciary officials, abduction of innocent people, the rape of defenceless children, and opposing what is evidently wrong! If the Chief Law Enforcement officer of the land is breaking the law, threatening people with death and acting irresponsibly towards the people, I do not see what else is there to obey! There is no room to play the loyal opposition here with tactical fantasies of winning a bogus 'elections'. If not now Mr. Sallah, then when? When is it going to be "conducive" for you to take a resolute political action...? I am dying to know! Finally I will choose to ignore your answer concerning the decrees slammed on most of your former colleagues. Honestly If there was any politician I would ever support in that country, he could have been your good-selve, and not anybody else. I hope that you will do us all a favour by proving your conspiracy theories. I want to khow whose agent am I. Keep up the good conversation. Greetings EBou Jallow ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface ----------------------------------------------------------------------------