KB,

We are indebted to your vigilance and dedication. Once again, with your trade-mark precision, you have exposed the inconsistencies, fraud and fallacies in this whole election scam thing. Only those fanatically besotted with the political/electoral process fail to see the point that under the current arrangements, there could be no free and fair elections. As you rightly questioned, where are they – those that still insist on elections as things are? They are nowhere to be found. They should be out here explaining to us why elections should still go ahead despite evidence of engineering in favour of the incumbency. The situation as it is, is largely reminiscent of 1996 when with help of the same people in the PIEC; Jammeh staged managed his electoral victory. Nothing has changed only the tune and perhaps the pace. The actors and actresses are still there doing their thing albeit in a different apparel. People like Chairman Johnson is too intelligent to let a midget with the brain  cells of a flea like Jammeh soil their reputation. If nothing, the good Reverend is a man of God anointed to watch over His flock in this world. His lot should be with the suffering poor who are being brutalised by a crack-pot like Jammeh. The Reverend should resign from the Commission. Men of the Church like Desmond Tutu and Dr King Jr. threw their lot with the suffering masses and never regretted it a minute. Events and indeed, history have vindicated their stance.

What is needed in the Gambia is a milieu of ungovernability to the point where government would be on its bended knees and forced to act decently and appropriately. In Yugoslavia, a crack-pot dictator in the same mould as Jammeh has bite the dust. He went because he was allowed not to manipulate the system all over again. The people had enough and took to the streets. His machinery of oppression deserted him in his hour of need. Twenty-fours later he was emptied into the dustbin of history without any report of carnage. The moral, political and social ramifications of the Yugoslav experience goes beyond the shores of the Balkans. It is there for all besieged peoples to copycat and challenge their oppressors. The Yugoslav experience has proven the point: That dictatorships, if not directly challenged will never relinquish power. And the collective will of the people can defeat any obstacle impedes their march to freedom.

If anything, the opposition should learn from the lessons of 1996. But alas, and as Hegel noted, "what experience and history teach is this – that nations and governments never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they have drawn from it." W e simply don’t get it. On this election being a fraud, I have been saying this here to the point of ennui. Yet, critics are always accusing us of being arm-chair theorists who theorise before they lay their hands on evidence. Evidence or no evidence, events are finally repudiating such accusations. Free and fair elections in the Gambia under present arrangements are at best a delusion. At worst unwittingly strengthening and legitimising this brutal crack-pot pre-historic dictator we call our president

Hamjatta - Kanteh