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Karim
Your thoughts noted,and our differing views on the issue of national heroism, and of the legitimacy, or otherwise, of July 22, is part of a larger debate about The Gambia we would like to live in as free and democratic citizens.
To start with, July 22 is not an uncontested illegality as far as I am concerned. The PPP era is not ancient history. To the extent that I lived it "live and direct" from1973, it was more contemporary affairs than anything else. When I left the Sixth Form, you were yet to enter high school. My experiences left me with a permanent dislike of the incompetent and blatantly nepotic administration of the Jawara regime. As for nepotism, it was diffused, i.e., not restricted to Jawara as Chief of State. As others joined the government, even those younger than myself, this sad state of affairs became entrenched, and as the years rolled by, the events of July 1994 became inevitable. You would recall my prediction on the pages of the Daily Observer in March 1994 that a forceful overthrow of the farcical Jawara regime was only a question of time.
If a coup was seen as a general possibility because of the state of public life then extant in our country, the question of illegality ought to be approached with some caution. Need I remind you that The Gambia, and Singapore, acceded to the ranks of independent states in the same month of 1965. Today, in terms of human and material development, the two countries inhabit entirely different political and economic planets.
I don't know about you, but in my political worldview, disinheritance is disinheritance regardless of the methodology utilised. If I disinherited you, would it matter whether I did it by administering morphine and completely numbing your perception of reality, or by applying the lethal force of a hammer to your head. In so far as the effect is the same, disinheritance is disinheritance. Supporting the coup, as I did, and still do, should be seen as independent of what obtains in The Gambia of the Professor. Under the stewardship o the Professor, July 22 went off the rails, but its essential necessity may not be seen as compromised beyond redemption. In 1994, it could have been any number, and, or, combination of security personnel, including your "national hero", organising a coup. The conditions were ripe for ejecting a corrupted civilian and military elite from our national councils.
As to imprisonment of civilian and military leaders in 1994, that was fundamentally a function of their antecedents, and had nothing to do with heroism associated with resisting the coup. Otherwise, how do we reconcile the arrest and detention of the likes of Prez Jagne? In any case, the factual recollections of different actors/players differ on whether heroism took place, or even where some semblance of it occurred, whether what transpired was properly regarded as heroism. Was there a constitutional order worthy of protection? Again, the answer here is not obvious. How many of us would have mourned the passing of the Professor's APRC even where some Gambian may regard any such eventuality due to force as unconstitutional?
Think it through Karim, and you may agree the gulf separating us is not unbridgeable. Your "national hero" was an integral part of the system. On the objective evidence then extant, he was part of the state of affairs Gambians rejected in 1994.
LJDarbo
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