Toure, I thank both you and Karamba for your brilliant rejoinders. Seems we are on the same wavelength on this topic. Hamjatta also moved the discourse further to articulate the ‘exit strategy’ we might wish to employ. As you all said, talks about boycott is not the end here. It should be a means to an end: removing Yaya from the State House. Together with Hamjatta’s great example about the Burmese situation, we can also study the Ivory Coast situation and what happened to Allasane Ouattara. If we study that situation, we will realize that Hamjatta’s fear about Yaya having a mock election is NOT a farfetched fear. It is important that the Opposition speak with a unified voice on this issue and other crucial issues surrounding the elections. If the boycott is going to happen, everyone should boycott. We should not have a situation like they had in Ivory Coast where the main Opposition parties will boycott and some minor elements in the Opposition will partake in the elections thus legitimizing a de facto Dictatorship. We must not allow Yaya to steal the elections. We must not allow him to also stay in power one extra day beyond his current mandate. If we cannot have a free and fair election under him, let us have one without him. Kick him out of the State House and have our own election that is going to be free and fair. As Hamjatta has said, if we want to exploit the boycott to the maximum, now is the time that the case should be made to the Gambian public and the international community. Every day things are going on in the country that blatantly tells us the election is being rigged. We had a flawed re-registration process. We are not clear about how to challenge the clearly doctored voter rolls. Some Gambian politicians have been unconstitutionally banned from participating in the elections. The APRC is using bribery to buy votes. The government-controlled media is not accessible to the Opposition. Opposition supporters are constantly harassed, arrested and hoist to court to defend bogus charges. Gambians in the Diaspora cannot vote. List goes on. Clearly, what we have is NOT a level playing field. Add to these shenanigans what we should expect on polling day. NIA and July 22 Movement thugs will be all over the place trying to prevent Opposition supporters from voting. Casamance refugees will be escorted by government thugs to go and vote for Yaya. These thugs will employ the same tactics they employed to disrupt the registration process and ensure that foreigners participate in our elections while Gambians are prevented from voting. If they fail in their endeavor to prevent Gambians from voting for the Opposition, they plan to tamper with the ballots cast and declare bogus results. That is why Gabriel Roberts went against his word (he gave to the Parties) and want to impose on the Gambian people, the wishes of Yaya. Toure, you are right to point to the absurdity in the reason Roberts proffered for counting the votes at a centralized location. This is ludicrous. As you rightly pointed out, the easiest way to eradicate any violence on Election Day, is to put the APRC thugs in check. They are the ones that engage in violence. The by-elections we just had, is quite instructive here. There were no reports of turmoil in Kiang where the APRC ‘won’. But in Baddibu, disappointed APRC supporters went on the rampage and attacked the UDP victors. In the end, UDP supporters whose compound was trespassed by APRC thugs ended up being arrested by the Police and taken to court. When the Magistrate freed the UDP supporters, the Magistrate was fired from his job. Now, how do you stop this thuggery by counting the ballots at a centralized location? See the ‘disconnect’? Roberts knows that he is trying to defend the indefensible. Fancy how he went to the Gambian press and childishly wanted to play semantics in an attempt to explain the unceremonious way the IEC/PIEC was taken from him and given to Johnson. Roberts is a shameless character. The man is not even ashamed to face the Opposition Parties he had a deal with, and tell them that the ‘higher powers’ (Yaya) has vetoed the deal. This man is pathetic. He also gave his word to the Diaspora, just to come up with a lame excuse for disenfranchising another set of Gambians perceived to be anti-Yaya. I knew from day one that he was lying when he said that he intended to register Gambians living in the Diaspora. This man is impotent and cannot do anything without Yaya’s clearance. Going back to the reason about the location for the vote counting. If one follows Roberts’ logic, then there should be no elections. Roberts is claiming that the voters will cause trouble if the votes are counted at the polling station. Would it not be the same voters that will be there earlier during the day to cast their votes? This is preposterous. Does not make sense. The root of the violence (the APRC thugs) should be attacked, rather than giving this illegal government another opportunity to steal the elections. Counting the votes at these venues does not mean that the votes will be announced there and the disappointed voters will go on a rampage. The only disappointed voters that have gone on a rampage were the APRC supporters in Baddibu. In the last General Elections, Yaya clearly stole the elections. Did we see any Opposition supporter go on a rampage? I wished they did. Cause if they did, we would not be talking about the Massacre of our children in 2001. Just like the APRC with the help of Roberts and the IEC are laying the groundwork to steal the elections, we should be on their back to ensure that this election is not stolen with impunity. As Karamba said, this is a matter of life and death. We must not allow them to ‘win’ this election by stealing it in broad daylight. We all know that Yaya CANNOT win a free and fair election in the country. The callous moron has nothing to offer us. I take this opportunity to also respectfully counsel the independent press in the country to watch its back and vigorously defend itself. I detect a very vicious and blatant lie being perpetrated against the press. The latest such lie coming from Sedat Jobe. The press should take these vermin to task. The press is NOT responsible for any trouble in the country. What do these people want? For the press not to report the crimes of this illegal government? The culprit here is the criminals leading us. It is NOT the reporters that report the crimes. How many times have we read reports of independent journalists seeking to get the government’s perspective just to be met by a hostile government functionary that does not want to talk to the press? The last example pertained to that despicable Sedat Jobe. When he was asked to talk about Baabaa Jobe, he refused to do so. Instead he cowardly sent out an inflammatory letter blaming people that have nothing to do with Baabaa Jobe’s crimes. To the people that criticize the independent Gambian press, I just have a simple question for them. How many libel/slander cases have the government won against the Independent or the Point or Radio One? That is how we guage whether the press is doing a good job or not. We have laws that govern what journalists should say. You do NOT guage what the press is doing by counting the number of times government thugs hoist journalists to the NIA and beat up or deport journalists. This is just evidence of lawlessness. APRC reaction to what the press is reporting by constantly whining (in the form of Sedat Jobe) or beating up journalists (like that soldier did just a few days ago) is no indication that the independent press is biased against APRC. If APRC is aggrieved by the reports in the papers, let them follow the law and bring libel and slander cases against the print media and broadcast journalists, respectively. Until then, the press should NOT sit by while the vermin blame them for the lawlessness of this government. The press is NOT inciting any violence. It is the thugs that are murdering our children and stealing our meager resources that are provoking the Gambian people. Toure, I thank you, Karamba and Hamjatta for your brilliant contributions. KB _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------