Mr Bah, When everything is said and done, i only hope that political historians pay enough attention to the extent which the PDOIS/Foroyaa institutional indoctrination of young minds and wilfully turning them into programmed fanatics, had ended playing into the hands of the devil that has since July 22nd 1994 held our dear country hostage. That the so-called PDOIS enlightenment had invariably churned out robotic minds with no sense of independent thinking is not in doubt. I mean look at the alarming rate at which programmed fanatics are clambering out of the woodwork and helping to obfuscate things they don't have the capacity to fully discern and make rational judgements of. The so-called PDOIS enlightenment certainly has its downsides; the programmed fanaticism of people like Jamba Jobe, Bass Ndow et al is testament to that. Pipsqueaks like Jamba Jobe think people don't their real identity; so they think that they have the latitude to wet-dream and spew all sorts of irrational nonsense here, non-stop. Well, i got news for the Brother: we know the coward behind the pseudonym of Jamba Jobe. I'll just let him stretch himself thin and then i'll remind him of his encounter with Chongan at the Senegalese embassy in London. Let the midget continue to make a fumbling fool of himself. His day of reckoning is just right around the corner. Until then, i'll just keep on enjoying his irrational outbursts. Anyway, enough of that digression on what amounts to nothing more than a cursory glance at a crowd of fanatical pipsqueaks who are always on standby for a Saint Halifa of the Diocese of Churchill's Town to press the green button on his remote control for the programmed fanatics to start singing from the hymn sheet of irrational nonsense. I have to confess here that right from the onset when you challenged our position vis-a-vis the formation of the Alliance and what really took place, i took yours to be an honest and truth-seeking appraisal of our country's fundamental problems. And for the life in me, i really did believe that your appraisals, challenges or interventions were rooted in a profound understanding of what has actually gone wrong with our country's body politic and what corrective measures we need to pursue in order to better the situation. This is why i took your interventions with the moral seriousness i believed then that they deserved and accorded you with due respect. I regret to announce that i no longer view you as such. The reason for this is very simple. In your last correspondence, you noted: "The fact that to you the Gambian people are horses and the political party traders can engage in political horse trading underground reflects the height of your political decadence." Here your political ignorance is unmasked. Who on earth ever told you that when people speak of political horsetrading they refer to it to mean that people or voters are horses and politicians are the traders? What ignorance! Needless to say that you used your ignorance of basic political metaphors to confuse and distort a simple unambiguous point i was then making. To help you understand horsetrading as a political metaphor, let me reach for my Britannica. My Britannica informs me that political horsetrading means: "negotiation accompanied by shrewd bargaining and reciprocal concessions." Certainly, this was the context: having recognised that inherent differences still exist amongst the Opposition parties, there was the need to enter "negotiations accompanied by shrewd bargaining and reciprocal concessions" so that at the end of the day there could be some form of political coalition of the Opposition parties against Jammeh and the APRC. You ignorantly failed to grasp this simple moral truth. Shows i'm talking to the wrong person in terms of political profundity. On other matters, you showed yourself to be a sophist. When you insist on calling the Alliance a PPP-UDP fudge, you forward no convincing evidence. On the contrary, you descended into the usual the Foroyaa conspiratorial innuendoes of saying intriguing things without beefing it up with evidence. In this instance, you wrote: "Sincere Gambians recognise that a blunder has been made by the opposition. If each political party stated its political agenda for a coalition in order to at least give the image of a united front, the political parties could have selected a coalition candidate in the first round or tell the press that they have agreed to think of a coalition in the second round. This is a simple truth that a person like you fails to digest. I mentioned that the UDP declared that it was going to launch its presidential campaign on the 18th. August. I also indicated that only the PPP has endorse Darboe's candidature so far. You confused this and claimed that Mr. Darboe was not exclusively selected by the UDP to lead the coalition. These are two different things: The UDP announcement came before the announcement of the coalition. You claimed that this is gross misrepresentation of the fact .However, you did not present any fact to refute what I have said, instead you continued to speak for the NRP leader, even though I have transmitted a press release signed by the chairman of the inter party meeting which made no mention of PDOIS, NRP or GDP. I am sure you must have known by now that Assan Musa Camara has informed the nation that he will not register the GPP for the coming Presidential and National Assembly elections. Which then is the other party ? I rely on facts to inform people what is happening on the ground and you rely on second hand information to mislead the people in the L" Where to begin? The distortion that i was attempting to speak for the NRP leader? Where does this fabrication come from? Where did i state that i was speaking for the NRP leader? Can you kindly contextualise for me where i clearly indicated that i was speaking for the NRP leader? The truth of the matter is that i merely pointed out the fact that albeit being away, the NRP leader upon learning of the Alliance, did send a message of solidarity to the Alliance. If you are have problems reading what i write, i respectfully urge you to seek clarifications before you make wholesale comments on them and end up distorting my views. Again, in your blatant attempts to distort reality you said that the UDP did announce its presidential candidate as Mr Darbo even before the Alliance announcement? When exactly did this announcement take place? Who exactly made the announcement? Was it reported in the papers? Was it an official press release? If so, who signed it? Instead of recycling APRC lies and distortion, Foroyaa ought to start being responsible and stop distorting reality in order to enliven its prejudices against the Alliance. The fact of the matter is that there was never an official UDP announcement of a presidential candidate before the Alliance one was announced. This, Foroyaa will never be able to distort. Furthermore, you pathetically tried to sell the view that the Alliance is a PPP-UDP concoction and has no other political parties backing save those two. This is a fabrication. The fact of the matter remains that even though it remains unregistered, the GPP supports the Alliance. Indeed, members of the GPP and its leaders like Camara and Femi Peters grace the Alliances power structures with influence and working for an Alliance victory against Jammeh. Also, despite the fact that there has been no official NRP statement, those close to the leadership and in the know, have unequivocally stated that - at the very least - the leader of that party subscribes to the formulation of the Alliance and had sent the Alliance a solidarity message. How then is this a PPP-UDP affair? Is Foroyaa not reducing its columns into a rcycling plant of APRC disinformation nonsenses? Finally, in a bizarre attempt to beef up PDOIS' coalition credentials, you wrote: "PDOIS was the first party to suggest that coalition can come in the second round. This advice was not heeded to. Secondly, PDOIS provided an agenda for a transition programme of one year characterised by civic education to enlighten the Gambian people so that inducement and intimidation will be things of the past; the opening of the national media to all political parties to put their programme before the people for a period of one year; the ratification of what the APRC had removed or included in the constitution and other laws; to be followed by presidential election after one year so that the people can make their choice of parties. PDOIS was waiting for other political parties to come up with an agenda before an inter party meeting could be set up.. The developments which followed leading to the 13th. August fiasco has nothing to do with PDOIS. PDOIS acted in good faith throughout. Foroyaa simply exposed what was happening" Of course PDOIS' seated ambivalence towards the UDP and the PPP will never let it act in good faith. PDOIS feels dogmatically antithetical to both the UDP and the PPP. In fact PDOIS always insisted that the UDP is a front for the PPP. To make matters worse for this deep seated ambivalence, there is a personality obsession baggage to all this. This is precisely why during the 1996 elections, PDOIS was staking out positions that aligned it - wittingly or unwittingly - to the APRC. PDOIS always viewed the UDP as Trojan horse for bringing back the PPP and so felt that to avoid that being the case it staked out positions that involved, amongst others, anti- Jawara and PPP rhetoric and unwittingly providing allure to the APRC's poses. More to the point, this deep seated ambivalence best explains PDOIS' low-risk and soft criticisms of the APRC regime and its disastrous record in office. This, in my view, is what explains PDOIS' current deep seated ambivalence towards a coalition with the other Opposition parties, especially those parties that have former PPP members within their ranks. Which takes me to your assertion that PDOIS has clearly stated its position on the coalition issue from the outset. This is simply not the case. I remember being amongst those who literally forced Halifa to unequivocally PDOIS' position on the issue of political alliance with the other Opposition parties. It took us ages before we can bring a straight answer from the gentleman! The fact remains that PDOIS neither published a clear position on this issue nor did it publish a framework paper on what can act as a basis for mutual cooperation between the Opposition parties. Come on fill me in. Where were these things published? Instead, what we had was Halifa granting interviews and stating things that never added up to clear political position on the alliance. Finally, let remind you - as if that were needed anymore - of the fact that the year 2001 ain't 1989: the latitude Foroyaa had to write in its heydays of the late 80s and 90s and brow beating people into accepting their versions of the truth, is no longer the case. If Foroyaa tries to distort things, it will find people equally equipped to handle any wilful attempts to create mischief for the Alliance. Let Foroyaa fight for what it believes and let others do their own thing. If Foroyaa ever attempts to distort the current political configuration and or smear the Alliance, i promise you it will be tit for tat. That is the essence of the matter. 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------