Kb, An excellent and timely piece; cogently argued and lays barea fundamental moral truth about Gambian society in the age of the madness and despotism of Jammeh, the AFPRC and its mutation, the APRC: the toe curling hypocrisy and lack of faith [whatever we so choose to delineate it], that dominates our public life. You were spot on about this aptly named “acute low expectations syndrome” or ALES - as you put the acronym. It is precisely because of this ALES, that our public discourse, especially as it relates to Jammeh’s madness and despotism, is infested with moral and political relativism galore. If Jammeh plunders our State coffers, rest assured that there is a rag out there that will choose to ignore such facts and properly subject them to a forensic scrutiny as they used to do when the PPP was there. Instead they will choose to dwell on the past making silly conjectures, anecdotes, trivial personalisation and plainly hypocritical relativisation of issues. When children are butchered, rest assured that the smarmy hypocritical editors of the said rag would with their usual inebriated obsession with Jawara relativise the murder of the children by dumbly pointing at Kukoi and 1981. Brother, such is the twerpish disposition of the said hypocritical rag that every time they break from their tradition of inebriated obsession with Jawara and try to critique Jammeh, they end up with moral idiocy and conceit. In effect, one has to date back to Jesus and the Pharisees to beable to make sense out of the toe curling hypocrisy of this rag. They have subtly metamorphosed from the radical rearguard critics of the mishaps of the ancien regime to the resident rearguard refuters of the UDP and in extension making Jammeh sound logical or plausible. Reading the said rag mischieviously reporting on UDP activities and or utterances, one would be forgiven for assuming the the UDP is the gov't of the day and or the leadership were the very ones who ordered the butchering of the children in April 2000. If Jammeh and his madness make ridiculous and treacherous allegations like incriminating the UDP with ethnic bigotry, rest assured that the said rag will attempt to make it logical/factual by giving the allegations intellectual muscle. For as long as one can actually recall, the APRC and its crowd of madness have always tried to tar the UDP with the past of PPP, NCP and the GPP and the so-called “Mandingo” bigotry and or hegemony. In their “analysis” of the by-elections, the said rag was quick to mischieviously carry side remarks reportedly made by certain nonentities at a UDP rally in Baddibu that went likethis: “Mandingos” should unite again certain groups, blah, blah………. I cannot ascertain the attributed assertions by the nonentities who were reported asuttering them during the said UDP rally. Indeed, such imprint could be gleaned from the said rag's "special election" published after the freakish 1996 presidential elections where they choose to highlight what they perceive to be the UDP's inflammatory ethnic remarks and deduced from it the treacherous allegation that the UDP harbours ethnic hegemonists. Be that as it may, since UDP official policy is not geared towards the ethnic hegemony of a particular ethnic group or to stretch the argument, none of the UDP leadership have declared such an agenda, one pauses to question: Why is the said rag and its editors hell-bent on making this treacherous charge against the UDP sound cogent and or holding water? But as sure as there is always a calm after a storm, such APRC bigwigs like Buba Baldeh were openly peddling the ethnic card in Kiang to the “Fulas” of that area to join forces with other ethnic groups to offer Jammeh a credible bulwark against the “Mandingo” hegemonists of the UDP. In fact Baldeh was the chief orchestrator of the move against the NRP Assembly Member of one of theKiang seats [Njadoe – I believe that’s his name] to force him to cross-carpet to the APRC. The same treacherous shenanigans were employed against the UDP in Njolfen where, albeit Hamat Bah’s decent efforts, the APRC was able to gainsome significant ground against the UDP - thanks to Baldeh’s treacherous peddling of the ethnic hegemony conspiracy of the “Mandingos”. Yet, the same rag that seemed to see theirs, as moral crusaders against ethnic bigotry never highlighted these damaging developments. Instead they choose to mischieviously highlight the fact that albeit Hamat’s honourable efforts to side with the UDP,the “coalition” failed to retain the seat; enough to spuriously conclude that the united opposition most have been calling for cannot defeat Jammeh at the polls. Now, during the 1996/7 elections, the same ploy was cynically used to instill ethnic fear amongst a certain section of the Gambian electorate that hated Jammeh and wanted to vote UDP. This was very effective in a last minute vote-swing against the UDP: Certain ethnic groups out of such fears voted APRC and to this day mistrusts the ambitions of the UDP. Indeed,shortly after the elections, at a State House parading of so-called community eaders, Yankuba Touray, in a rare public gaffe, painted this vignette of theAPRC strategy: if the UDP lays claims to a large “Mandingo” support/loyalty/following, they will simply tell the rest of the ethnic groups to coalesce to the effect that no Gambian with a surname regarded as “Mandingo” will ever win the presidency. Not exactly Touray’s words but the gist of his message that day. It is also interesting that since Jammeh took over, his behind the scene efforts in ethnic associations proliferated to the point that a month passes without an ethnic association doesn’t have anaudience with him at State House. And with good reason too; if you are going to polarize the nation along such lines, better encourage such ethnic associations – and even sponsor their activities with taxpayer money. Put together such votes can very handy. These are the current bane of stuff about the ethnic agenda of Jammeh. Did the editors of the said rag highlight these amongst others? Did they bother to highlight the chauvinism of those who call themselves “Jolas” within the security services and its links with the insurrectionists in Southern Senegal? Did they ever to highlight the unlegislated affirmative action that Jammeh used to leap frog those he term as “Jolas” to the higher echelons of the State, especially in those positions like the security services that he uses to impose his will on the Gambian people? This ethnic conspiracy hogwash of “Mandingo” arguments along the lines of divine and aristocratic claims to the Gambian presidency/leadership is, of course, nothing but sentimental nonsense – sentimental nonsense, that supposedly intelligent people want tomake look plausible by giving close scrutiny to every utterances made at a UDP gathering that will give intellectual muscle to their grand conspiracy theory legs to stand upon. Any objective observer of Gambian politics, familiar with whatever it was that prevailed during a nominal “Mandingo” like Jawara’s reign would be hard pressed to back these treacherous claims with substantive evidence. The inebriated and fanatically obsessed editors of that rag knew that before anyone heard of them, there were places Baddibu, Kiang, Jarra, Bakau,etc, etc, and such politicians like Dibba, Makalo and even Juwara who were relentless in their opposition to Jawara. But then that is the whole point: a pea-brained twerp like Jammeh needs to propagate certain falsehoods and the self-appointed mullahs of the said rag see it as their role to give intellectual muscle to such barbarous and treacherous claims. That is what there is to all these treacherous and cynically stupid conspiracy theories of ethnic hegemony fromthe “Mandingos”. Simply put: All these attempts at caricaturing the opposition as ethnic bigots is just romantic hogwash being subtly peddled by a despotic Dictatorship and its closet allies in a rag whose editors have quietly metamorphosed - without the batting of an eyelid by many – into hypocritical savants. In the very end, these idiotic, conceited, ridiculous and persistent attempts to tar the UDP with habouring ethnic hegemonists ambitions, reminds me of a story I read when I was kid: Remember that story of the chicken that chanced upon a thunderbolt that scared the living daylights of her and mistook it for the sky falling down and went to get the whole animal family she could summon, to come see the fallen sky? We know how that story that ended. Turned out to be a big hoax largely the feverish imagination of the chicken and her unfounded fears about imaginary stuff. As that same stuff happens in 2001Gambia: These twerpish claims that the UDP harbours ethnic hegemonist ambitions is not only sentimental hogwash but the deluded and unfounded fears of Jammeh and his allies – both open and closet – anchored on the periphery of figments of feverish imaginations. I can’t help but end this with a broadside I chanced upon last year when I visited the North. In one of those quirky Gambian gatherings, the editors of the said rag were the subject of one individual’s wrath. This gentleman told us an anecdote about the editors of that rag, which if substantiated, should explain some of their arrogance, condescension and hubris: At the height of their lampoonery of the PPP establishment, the editors of the said rag used to brag that Gambians can’t write and or engage in polemics; which is why all the challenges they threw at the PPP establishment’s intellectual heavies for debates have largely gone unanswered. Well, have we got news for them: turns out that Gambians after all can write and engage in polemics. And 1987 Gambia is not 2001 Gambia. Evidence? Well, the last time such challenges were thrown on this List, the brags and chortles have been replaced with exasperation and gasping-for-air fight backs. Welcome to the age ofdiminished returns in polemics. And the sages were right: want to be reduced to an irrelevant has-been? Try putting on the apparel of peacock vanity, hubris,and undisguised hypocrisy. Hamjatta Kanteh ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------