These are extraordinary times. They come but rarely in the annals of human history.

In Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, we witnessed how ordinary citizens, sometimes one, driven to the ultimate sacrifice of risking their lives and property, subdued institutionalized criminality in their nations, to usher in a new dawn of civilized coexistence and considered peace. These events began as peaceful demonstrations by unarmed civilians simply because what structure of opposition political party engagement there was, if any, was rendered either obsolete or moribund by design. Opposition party officials and mere supporters have been systematically picked off, abducted, kidnapped, assassinated or exiled. Hope of peaceful change was gradually decimated. Ordinary citizens suffered in burdensome silence, trepidation, and vortex’s anneal. All the while in palpable fear of intractable massacre. And such opportunity for gracious rehabilitation is foreign to the institutionalized criminal’s considerations. The perfect sobriety that is the bane of his arsenal for protection against the impending prosecution.

We have been informed that our honorable opposition party leaders have expressed discomfort at initiating peaceful demonstrations to challenge these and those extremes of Yahya for fear of intractable massacre. Yet others lament and even sufide in the conjurer’s chagrin to yield a more perfect replacement of the institutionalized criminal. Such fatal indecision at high noon is the perfect recipe for both intractable massacre and a musical chairs for odious criminals. Both cautions to yield the very conditions they purport to prevent, buying the institutionalized criminal more latitude and time to entrench.

In Gambia, we are afforded the unique opportunity of witness and and projection. We have at the most five opposition political parties – UDP, NRP, PDOIS, PPP, and GMC. Gambia is comprised of close to 10 tribes, 20 unique communities, and up to a million individual interests. Under ordinary circumstances where the five opposition political parties vie independently to govern every five years, the successful party must govern the uniquenesses of our tribes, communities, and interests. It should leave nothing to the imagination to assert that the successful party will be called upon to harness greater faculty in order to successfully govern a million disparate interests than to hold 5 disparate parties in transient communion. Verily, if you cannot, with purposeful expedition, form a united front of 5 opposition political parties against one institutionalized criminal, how do you propose to govern for a million disparate citizens? Will you be up to that task, with your enormous sobriety and saintly caution?

For those who express fear of WHO will replace Yahya after ridding yourselves of your executioner, I share this consideration with you; The work to identify the replacement for Yahya, is the work of all of us who encourage you to unite behind any one of you. It is not the work of any one one citizen, opposition party leader, or opposition party. We are not tasking you with that burdensome discernment. We have declared that any one of you will be sufficiently ideal considering the avowed criminal that you replace. And should any of you who has the privileged honor to govern for us turn out to be equal to or worse than Yahya, we the citizens will replace you yet again, with another of our number. Surely, you must be confident in our ability to replace any of your good number after we replace an unrepentant criminal. Besides, the discernment of our governor is not the purview of any single individual, opposition party leader, or opposition party. That is why we will organize our elections and vote. Indeed you are vying for our votes to so proceed.

The APRC serves only as cover for the intituionalized criminal. In effect, the APRC is part of the criminal’s arsenal to inoculate himself against the inevitable and impending prosecution that he gleans on the walls. There exists among your APRC coleagues, as it were in the fortified Fatah councils, conscientious persons and fellow citizens, who are trapped in vortex’s anneal, yearning for relief and freedom. You must allow yourselves to shine in the glory of yielding such relief for them, the promise of exalting expedition. The Tripoli and Benghaazi brigades undertook the dangerous journey to free Tripoli, risking there may never have been a disenchanted corps of Tripolides, who had been waiting for just such an expedition in considered faith. Luckily, such a cauldron of suffering was waiting with baded breath, for this vote of confidence from the brigades. In Gambia, there is presently no need for displacement or commuting of despair. It is ever-present, everywhere.

We do not pretend to instruct you on the manner of management of your political parties, nor do we desire to browbeat you into communion you do not wish. We merely encourage you to do the people’s will and come together. We encourage you to hearken to the call of your partisans variously. If you ignore your own partisans, you may be participating in sealing your own fates and that of your coleagues in your parties.

Haruna Darbo

The Global Democracy Project.