HAMJATTA,

I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR TAKING MY ADVICE IN STRIDE AND I AM HAPPY TO SAY THAT YOU DID IT WITH FEWER AND BETTER WORDS.

MINE WAS AN ADVICE, ALBEIT STRONG IN AREAS, BUT I WANT YOU TO TAKE YOUR TIME AND CONSIDER WHAT YOU HAVE GAINED FROM IT AND WHAT I STAND TO GAIN FROM READING YOUR FUTURE MAIL:

1. I WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WAS DISSAPPOINTED. I'M SURE OMAR AND SAMBA AND MANY MORE WILL RESUME ENJOYING YOUR WORK.

2. YOU DID SAY HALIFA ASKED YOU FOR A COMPREHENSIVE POLICY POSITION. IF YOU COULD NOT PRESENT IT IN A WAY FOR THE MAELSTROM AUDIENCE'S CONSUMPTION, I WOULD FAX IT TO HIM OR MAIL IT VIA THE POST OFFICE. THERE ARE CERTAIN DISCUSSIONS THAT CANNOT BE DISSEMINATED AS MASS COMMUNICATION MATERIAL.

3. I CAUTION YOU NOT TO TAKE MY DISGUST AS NON-COMPREHENSION, RATHER A WASTE OF MY TIME AND APPARENTLY THAT OF TWO OR THREE OTHERS. I AM TOTALLY AGAINST DUMBING-DOWN THE AUDIENCE'S INTELLECT. TECHNICAL PAPERS ARE USUALLY PRESENTED TO A SPECIALIZED GROUP OF PEOPLE. YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL IN PRESENTING MATERIAL HERE IS FIRST TO HAVE IT READ AND FOR YOUR READER TO WANT TO READ IT ALL. TO COMMUNICATE. I HOPE YOU WILL RESPOND ACCORDING TO YOUR AUDIENCE'S TASTE. YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO PRESENT SUCH IMPORTANT WORK AND HAVE IT LANGUISH UNREAD ON THE MAELSTROM WOULD YOU?

4. YOU HAVE ASKED FOR MY SOLUTIONS TO GAMBIA'S CURRENT PROBLEMS OR AT LEAST SUGGESTIONS TO MOVE US FORWARD POST-JAMMEH. I'M GLAD YOU UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS A WASTE OF VALUABLE TIME TO FOLD ONE'S ARMS IN WAIT FOR JAMMEH'S DEPARTURE. AS A MATTER OF FACT, ALL INDICATIONS ARE THAT WIN OR LOSE, JAMMEH WOULD STILL WISH TO STAY.

I BELIEVE THAT WE MUST HAVE VALID AND ENFORCEABLE CONTRACTS BETWEEN CITIZENS, BETWEEN STATE AND CITIZEN, BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS. ECONOMICS HINGES ON THIS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND INDEX OF RELATIONSHIP IN ORDER TO FUNCTION-WHATEVER SORT IS DESIGNED. SO AS YOU CAN SEE, THE JUDICIARY AND THE POLICE WILL BE MY PRIMARY FOCUS AND LET EVERYONE WHO WISHES TO ENGAGE IN INDUSTRY, DO SO WITHOUT FEAR OF PERSECUTION. THIS MEANS THAT WE MUST ACCOUNT FOR THE LIVES THAT HAVE DISSAPPEARED OR BEEN SUMMARILY TERMINATED EITHER BY PROSECUTION OR SURGICALLY WHERE THE JUDICIARY IS RENDERED PASSIVE. I AM OF THE STOCK OF SINN FEIN, ETA, AL-FATAH, ETC. AND THIS IS NOT THE PROPER AUDIENCE FOR MY SOLUTIONS. I ENJOY STRUCTURAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.

THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT I WILL RESUME ENJOYING THE WORK OF POETS AND ROMANTICS WITH APPROPRIATE INVESTMENT IN TIME. AND FOR THAT I THANK YOU. JUST KIDDING BEFORE YOU TAKE IT PERSONAL AGAIN. HAPPY COMMUNICATIONS!!

SINCERELY, HARUNA. 

3.

>From: Hamjatta Kanteh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Response to Mr. Haruna Darbo
>Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 18:21:39 EDT
>
>Dear Mr. Darbo,
>
>I'm sorry my last piece was not up to what you normally expect of me to the
>point where it had simply "disgusted" you [perhaps "disgust" was too strong
>and inept a word for you to use given the constructive nature of your
>complaints???]. Anyway, i make no apologies for the approach i have decided
>to adopt in this engagement with Halifa. In fact, given the nature of the
>task at hand, it is perfectly understandable. Allow me to explain.
>
>You were right about the esoteric nature of the piece and perhaps it is true
>also the piece was more of a "policy" document than a piece for an informal
>e-mail discussion group. That in itself is understandable. Had you followed
>this thread right from the very beginning, you would not have failed to
>notice that Halifa's request was more a "policy" outline than simply engaging
>him in polemical exchanges on political economy. Let us revisit Halifa's
>initial requests; perhaps, that can to some extent, help explain my approach.
>Here is what Halifa requested:
>
>"We would like you to give us your alternative liberal economic plan. ..... I
>hope you will abandon demagogy. The 21st century is no longer in need of
>rhetoric. This is why I give you facts and not rhetoric. I have given you
>Gambian realities not soviet realities. I hope you will not go back to your
>intellectual escape routes by talking about other countries rather than
>concentrate on your highly indebted poor country. Words! ! Words! are what
>Africa is tired of. Facts! Fact! Facts! are what Africa needs. ....This is
>your country after 36 years of independent. What is the economic system of
>management which can become successful here? I pause for your reply.
>
>Halifa Sallah"
>
>If you examine very closely what Halifa is insisting on here, then you should
>have no problems at all in understanding why i looked rather out of place
>with the more formal and pedantic thrust of my arguments presented in my last
>two slots. The gentleman was asking for a comprehensive political and
>economic programme and there is no doubting that the task required of me was
>not a simplistic, populist and polemical diagnosis, prognosis and
>prescription of the African plight but rather a more rigourous, dull and
>systemic one. Of course this has the negative impact of turning some or most
>people off. That is regrettable. Yet, the serious-ness of the issue at hand
>allows for a degree of alienation of readership - not everyone is likely to
>be interested in serious "policy" debates on political economy and sad to say
>not all subscribers to this List would feel comfortable with that arcane
>world.
>
>I'm a great believer in and all for the idea of mass consumption of lateral,
>rigourous and serious thinking. This is of essence if we are serious about
>changing peoples lives for the better. After all, what is the purpose of all
>these ideas if only a small coterie of specialists can decipher what you are
>trying to say. What i don't buy - especially in this so-called modern
>"information age" - is the idea of diluting or dumbing-down serious and
>rigourous debate in the name of mass consumption or such weasel words like
>"clarity and brevity". There is a sense in which if you scratch the surface
>of this call for "clarity and brevity", you would stumble across a vast array
>of intellectual laziness that bespoke of a modern laid-back attitude towards
>everything in life. I pray this is not the case with you.
>
>As for my faceless critics operating under noms de guerre, they can cowardly
>rave and rant all they want but it can't neither disarm my consistent and
>critical pen nor silence my strident voice. Their hopeless, petulant,
>pitiable and self-righteous indignations simply can't crack a tough nut like
>me. I'm afraid to even make a slight dent, they are gonna have to be nastier
>than they are currently doing. Even then they simply can't break me. This boy
>ain't for turning. The day they have the guts to write under their real
>names, i'll gladly take them on any issue of importance to my agenda. Till
>then, let them continue their cowardly gripes and foolish attacks.
>
>Be all that as it is, i hope i can still count on your patience and support
>as i prepare my final slot, which, sad it is to say, will be a continuity in
>approach of the earlier two pieces and not a discontinuity. Anyway, i hope we
>can look forward to your own plans for the country's social, political and
>economic renewal after Jammeh. Let us face it: none has any monopoly over
>anything on this List; we all ought to contribute to the debates in whatever
>way we possibly can. What i have always been doing is to contribute modestly
>whatever little i feel is appropriate to the debates. All of us, in varying
>degrees of our innate peculiarities, are limited by our mortalities and can
>only contribute as we are endowed. Let us keep that at the back of our minds
>and constructively engage each other and stop the spiteful, unproductive and
>snide caricatures that this List has, of late, become infested with. I hope
>you will always make it a moral duty to constructively criticise me - as you
>earlier did - and else that you disagree with. That way, we all stand to gain
>enormously from the vast assemblage of talents on display here.
>
>For me, all questions in life are ultimately moral questions and as such,
>their answers are ultimately moral answers. Criticism for me, therefore, is a
>moral endeavour and i take it with all the serious-ness i can possibly
>muster. In fact, i never tire in telling people that i'm a Critical
>Rationalist: criticisms through such critical modes like introspection and
>retrospection are the chief tools for self-improvement and betterment. You
>only have to stay with me for a mere 24 hours to realise this distinct trait
>in me.
>
>In conclusion, i hope we can rely on you later to tell us how Gambian society
>can become wholesome again after Jammeh. I am of the opinion that we ought
>not to wait until after Jammeh before formulating our political economy;
>rather, we ought to be on it as we speak. This forum ought not to be an
>outlet for merely venting out our frustrations, angers and anxieties with
>Jammeh, and how under him our dear country is heading towards the abyss. We
>ought to have serious "policy" debates on all those things that affect our
>peoples. I believe that was what i was modestly engaging Halifa in.
>
>All the best,
>
>Hamjatta Kanteh
>
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