This is culled from the Independent. Its an interesting read. ..................................................................... The bye-elections in Kiang East and Central Baddibu are now history, but their impact and repercussions are still lingering. There is no doubt that a lot of lessons have been learnt in the process by everyone, most particularly by the politicians and their supporters as well as the people of the two constituencies. One of those lessons is no doubt the volatility of allegiance in Gambian politics and the crucial role that money plays in that. While the APRC are congratulating themselves and no doubt bragging about their success in Kiang East and their excellent performance in Central Baddibu, the UDP, on the other hand must be at pains to explain their dismal performance in both constituencies, inspite of all their predictions of easy victory in both places. However, looking at the results in both constituencies, one would not fail to see that while the APRC had indeed made some significant gains, particularly in Kiang East, but it was the UDP which lost a lot of ground as opposed to the APRC making gains. One interesting phenomenon in both constituencies was the unusually large number of people who did not vote, over 2000 in Central Baddibu and about 1000 in Kiang East, which represents almost 30 percent of the registered voters in each constituency. It is quite hard to explain what may have been responsible for that, considering the vigorous campaign mounted by both parties and the interest that everyone seems to have shown in the elections. It would not certainly be attributed to voter apathy because that has never been a factor in both places. Therefore, we seem to be left with only one other possibility for the low turn out, which is vote buying, which was attributed mostly to the APRC. It was alleged that they had hundreds of thousands of Dalasis, which they allegedly used to pay to take possession of the voter's cards of those they suspected of supporting the UDP, thus preventing them from voting. That is definitely a very credible explanation for the large number of people who failed to cast their votes in both constituencies. If that allegation is true, then another credible explanation for the easier APRC victory in Kiang East could be attributed to the fact that it is a much poorer place than Central Baddibu and therefore a much easier prey for the briefcase politicians. One other thing, which seems to have favoured the APRC, was the incumbency factor. While the UDP depended entirely on their meagre resources to carry out their campaign, the APRC on the other hand had access to government vehicles and the use of other state resources to carry out their campaign. They also did not hesitate to employ the services of the divisional commissioners, the chiefs and other local government officials and facilities as well as other civil servants to campaign for them. Do not however ask me where they got all those huge sums of money they were allegedly using during the campaign. If their party leader, President Jammeh can afford to get his own aeroplane, purchase 39 tractors and their ancillaries, send so many people to perform the Hajj, occasionally dish out so much money and several brand new four-wheel drive vehicles, then we can easily assume that those huge sums came from the same bottomless pit. It no doubt explains why on a daily basis, several groups and organizations of all shapes and sizes make "courtesy calls" on President Jammeh, apparently because they all want to get a slice of the big cake on his table. That reminds me of the legendary 'operation green medicine', if anyone knows what I mean. While both the APRC and the UDP have shown a high degree of restraint and discipline throughout the campaign, which may be a symptom of the maturity of Gambian politics, the IEC no doubt deserves the most commendation and praise in the way they handled the campaign and the elections. Apart from the generally incident-free campaign, their experiment to count the votes on the spot has also worked very well. Therefore, the bye-elections in both constituencies have generally been billed as both free and fair, at least on the surface, thus giving Gabriel Roberts and his team a clean bill of health for their first test. Another thing worth noting was the fact that both parties were allowed equal access to both radio and television, which was another lesson to the authorities that allowing the opposition access to the public media does not necessarily give them undue advantage over the APRC, which they seem to have always feared. We should therefore hope and pray that henceforth, they would open up the public media to all shades of political opinion, instead of allowing it to be only monopolized by the APRC. If there was another lesson learnt by the politicians, it was the total disregard of Decree 89 by certain former ministers of the PPP regime who were supposed to have been prohibited by the Decree to take active part in politics. We have seen how Buba Baldeh and Dr. Lamin Saho were openly campaigning for the APRC in both Kiang East and Central Baddibu. I wonder whether there is anything left in the Decree that would now stop the other politicians banned by the Decree from openly manifesting their allegiance and campaign for any party of their choice, unless the authorities want to tell us that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. While everyone, including the security forces were commended the way they behaved during the campaign, but it appears that it did not take the police quite long before they began to display their biases in favour of the APRC. Shortly after the results in Central Baddibu were announced, they were said to have pounced on some celebrating UDP supporters and detained them for several days, and eventually charged them for assault and trespass. It appears that since the removal of Tamsir Jasseh as Deputy Inspector General, the neutrality of the police is beginning to slide downwards, and they are again beginning to behave like a branch of the APRC. Instead of dealing with issues brought before them on their own merit, they have again begun to act on "orders from above", making them look more like an appendix of the APRC than a neutral professional force sustained by public funds to serve everyone regardless of political affiliation. It certainly does not make sense that every time there is a clash between UDP and APRC supporters, it is always the UDP supporters who get arrested, as if the APRC supporters are angels who do no wrong. Let us hope and pray that the new team heading the police would begin to restore the neutrality and professionalism of the force. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _________________________________________________________________________ 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 and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------