c) AFTER THE 1997 ELECTIONS. After the elections were over and Yahya declared the winner, Hamat Bah congratulated him at state house and Ousainou Darbo refused to acknowledge defeat, saying that the elections were neither free nor fair. He cited amongst other things, the monopolization of the public media, the use of civil servants such as the divisional commissioners and chiefs, the high level of harassment his supporters were subjected to, intimidation of voters etc, etc. The APRC accused the UDP of being bad losers and that people did not vote for them because they campaigned on tribal lines, insults, that they had no agenda for the development of the country, that their only agenda was to restore the corrupt regime of deposed Sir Dawda, that they wanted to destabilize the country etc, etc. These polarized supporters of both parties and the tension and enmity between them grew. The security forces, particularly the NIA, continued to harass the UDP, the police often unjustifiably refused them permits to hold their rallies. The UDP often defied these permit refusals by the police and this often resulted in fights between the rival militants of the two parties with the security forces often siding with the APRC militants. Lest I forget, these APRC militants were mostly members of the July 22nd movement who went about harassing people with impunity. The Security forces especially those stationed at Denton bridge really wrecked havoc on peoples’ lives. People were harassed over stupid ID cards on the pretext of screening people to see if there were any rebels from Sierra Leone, Liberia or Cassamance. This harassement continued until the former Interioer secretary of state, Major Bojang was kicked out of office. Explaining his dismissal, a government press release intimated that Bojang was harassing people unnecessarily to inflame peoples’ minds to compel them to riot. The July 22 nd movement was also banned. Meanwhile immigration officers kept continuous vigil at the offices of the Daily observer and its journalist, especially foreign ones were often deported on the slightest mistake on their part. Citizen Fm was raided and closed havibg been accused operating a radio station without a license. The proprietor, Baboucar Gaye, and his reporters were arrested, detained and finally taken to court. At the end of the trial, the proprietor was found guilty and the trial judge ordered the forfeiture of the station and all equipment to the state. Almost everyone expressed outrage over the heavy handedness of the judgement accusing the government of picking on Citizen Fm for political reasons, The government was accused of not liking Citizen Fm’s reading of newspaper articles in the local languages, as the local private papers did not feed the public with the one-sided and often boring stories of government’s activities. The fact that the independent media gave the other side of the story did not go down well with government. More to come later. Have a good day and bye 4Now, KB Jobe. _________________________________________________________________________ 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------