Brother KB,
This is a great piece - as usual. I like the way you discerned the affinity between those who think that by joining the Devil, they will be making a positive difference and their breath-taking gullibility in their assumption that they can still have the cake they took  to the Devil when they were supping with him. Johnson et al were forewarned, at any rate on this very forum, that they are unwittingly [or is that wittingly?] helping to legitimise the Dictatorship by creating the perception that there is a thing called Democracy happening in the Gambia. Well, as you sow so shall you reap the cliche goes. I warned here that the idea that the IEC is independent is not only a popular myth but equally a monstrous travesty of reality. Needless to say that Johnson's sacking has finally shattered that popular myth. I wonder what spin apologists and propagandists [open or closet] of this prehistoric regime will come up with now that the popular myth has been shattered. If there ever was a thing called "independent" or indeed,  the all-important perception of "independence" in the IEC, surely Johnson's sacking should rest that popular myth to rest now. But we must, as ever, be prepared to be entertained with make-believe nostrums that defy reality from supposedly intelligent people.  I  warn them to watch it: Gambians these days are not as ill-equipped as they were in the past. Any nostrum that surfaces, at any rate on the L, shall be razed to the ground.

With dismay, i glean from one of Ebrima's sources' mail  that the opposition is going to fund/support/stand by Johnson when he mounts a legal challenge against his sacking. This in my view, is a wrong move. Jammeh's unilateral action of sacking Johnson is what we need to push forward demands for radical reforms of the body politic. Respectfully, i urge them to stay away from Johnson; let Johnson fight his corner. He had it coming to him and continually ignored harbingers of the present crisis. As you rightly imputed, the fact that the goal post was flagrantly and unilaterally being shifted by Jammeh and his criminal Consiglieri -  Cheyassin "Sore Loser"  Secka - when there was no barring to the IEC to go ahead with its plans of the November local gov't polls,  is enough testimony to Johnson's incredible gullibility and  or his ignorance of the labyrinthine machinations of his office. What irks me most about intelligent and well-read individuals of Johnson's type who get suckered into the devious schemes of Jammeh's is when they feign innocence about their travails when Jammeh pushes them out in the cold. Woe is me and lack a day! Dear me! - Some 6 years after Jammeh came into our nation's imagination and all the horror he has wrought on us people still haven't got the drift? Surely, if this is the case then we will never get it!

 Johnson's reinstatement is and will not be a solution to the present quandary. Suffice to say that Johnson was part of that bandwagon of elites who helped this stupid gov't to continue on shamelessly with the charade that Jammeh had won that freak presidential elections of 1996 and that we are presently living under a far more democratic milieu than in the past. Every day reality more than anything - not even the venom of a seasoned polemicist - is making a nonsense of such freak claims. As things stand, the IEC as it is, is a discredited institution. The opposition should be upping the ante on radical reforms of the present arrangements before Jammeh and his criminals expect them to participate in any election.

Hamjatta Kanteh