Minos, Clearly, there is more to your unwarranted vile and vicious mudslinging than just someone returning compliments of "insults hurled" at him and else. This is as personal as they come. After some careful reflection, i have decided you and your uncouth tongue lashing are not worth the time and energy needed to return your compliments. Besides, all your accusations are so wide off the mark that you would have thought that you are responding to another Hamjatta; not this Hamjatta who merely chided you for 'hissing and foot-stamping' at Dampha et al and in extension endorsed their persons. For the life in me, i really couldn't figure out what it was that had you so worked up for you to resort to such an unremittingly philistine tongue lashing to respond to a moderate chiding. Anyway, because sending in a nasty vituperative lampoonery invariably will end up in the mailboxes of certain individuals - whom i reserve enormous respects for - i just refuse to stoop low by matching you tit for tat in very nasty and uncharacteristic outpourings. In any event, it is always to easy to engage in these vituperative fisticuffs when one is hiding behind a pseudonym. Do the decent thing and engage me on the issue you found my opinion wanting and do please substantiate your rhetoric. When you accuse people of, say, plagiarising other people's work, you are duty bound to point how and where this occurred. If you remain silent on this without substantiating your claims, that silence by itself repudiates your claims. Take the initiative and fruitfully engage me. Yus, Brother, because of the nature of my current engagements, i won't be able to send in a more fitting response until, say, the weekend. In the mean time, i suggest you revisit your understanding of the terms voter apathy and voter alienation. I 'm afraid you've still got it wrong on that. Also you've garbled on empirical evidence. I will grant that past statistics can be used as a pointer to suggest or modestly explain the present. At best, it is best used as deductive device to either falsify or prove true your conjectural assumptions of voter apathy to explain away the 1000 votes not casted. Yet, they cannot by themselves, be DETERMINANTS of the present. Case in point: you want us to accept as evidence for your voter apathy assumption, the results of the 1996/7 general elections. This simply cannot be the case because - as Dampha had earlier pointed out to you - Kiang East by-election 2001 ain't Kiang East general elections 1996/7. Granted, the results of the latter can indeed be used to suggest something about the former. But by themselves - and this is without factoring in current developments and most importantly, retrieving current empirical evidence as it relates to the by-election and not just the 1996/7 election results - the 1996/7 general election statistics cannot be determinant empiric evidences that conclusively hands down the verdict of voter apathy as the reason behind the 1000 missing votes not casted. Best wishes, 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------