Thank you Mr. Ndure. It certainly takes more than ending dictatorship to
create a democratic culture. Yes I do remember you very well from your days
as Headmaster of Farafenni Senior Secondary School. Sorry we didn't get to
meet this past summer but now that the way is open I hope to visit home
regularly. I look forward to seeing you again after so long.

Warm regards,
Baba

On Oct 6, 2017 10:02 AM, "Omar Ndure" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thank you Baba. This piece is well articulated. There is indeed
> expressions of intolerance and disrespect in the country among supporters
> of political parties. As you rightly said if one has the comfort to
> criticize , one must be ready to also accept criticism in the same vein.
> But it seems this is not the case. This is not the type of democracy we
> fought and yearned for. Personally at some point I feel I am cheated simply
> because of what we are experiencing in the current manifestation of so
> called ' democracy'
> Baba, I would have loved to meet you if you have not already returned. You
> remember me @ Farafenni school? Mr. Ndure.
> --------------------------------------------
> On Thu, 10/5/17, Baba Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Easier said than done
>  To: "Community of Gambianist Scholars" <COMMUNITYOFGAMBIANISTSCHOLARS
> @listserv.miamioh.edu>, "wagmembers" <[log in to unmask]>, "The
> Gambia and Related Issues Mailing List" <[log in to unmask]>
>  Date: Thursday, October 5, 2017, 12:29 AM
>
>
>
>
>
>  Easier said than
>  done
>
>  By Baba Galleh
>  Jallow
>
>  Almost ten months
>  after the fall of the Jammeh dictatorship,
>  Gambians are beginning to learn, among other things, that
>  struggling for
>  democracy does not necessarily mean being democratic in
>  spirit. We are seeing
>  ample evidence that it is one thing to clamor for the
>  freedom of expression for
>  everyone, but quite another thing to respect freedom of
>  expression for everyone.
>  We challenged the Jammeh dictatorship and shouted it down at
>  every turn for
>  being intolerant of our dissenting opinion; but we now
>  display unbelievable intolerance
>  for other people’s dissenting opinion. All this points to
>  the difficulty of
>  tolerance and the human propensity to protect our opinions
>  against opposition by
>  others which, incidentally, is the very stuff dictatorship
>  is made of.
>
>  Yet, democracy is
>  indivisible and irreducible. If we struggled
>  for our right to express opinion contrary to the
>  dictator’s, we must further struggle
>  to make sure that people enjoy their right to express
>  opinion contrary to ours.
>  We cannot all belong to or support the same political party,
>  but we all belong
>  to the same nation and we must all support and nurture the
>  democracy we fought
>  so hard for over so many years. It is strange that the kind
>  of political
>  intolerance we now notice among and between Gambian
>  supporters of our different
>  national parties is the same and even often worse than the
>  kind of fanatical
>  jingoism and intolerance we fought against for over two
>  decades. Blind and
>  uncritical support for the AFPRC/APRC was what enabled the
>  fallen despot to oppress,
>  throttle and exploit us and our country for twenty-two
>  years. Ironically, we
>  are practicing a level of blind and uncritical support for
>  our political
>  leaders and parties today that is almost a carbon copy of
>  the blind and uncritical
>  support we opposed in Jammeh supporters.  The
>  level of vehemence with which we shout
>  down all opinion critical of our parties of choice is
>  sometimes even more
>  vitriolic than we ever saw under the Jammeh despotism. This
>  is true of the
>  supporters of all political parties inside or outside of
>  government, whether
>  these are part of the coalition government or not. On all
>  sides of the
>  political divide, we display levels of intolerance and
>  needless hostility towards
>  contrary political opinion that are truly unworthy of our
>  new democratic
>  dispensation and our democratic aspirations as a
>  nation.
>
>  It is a cruel paradox
>  that as a people we crave and cherish political
>  pluralism and civility but are not able to tolerate
>  political pluralism and
>  civility. We want others to tolerate our criticism and
>  respect our right to criticize
>  them; but we are not able to tolerate their criticism or
>  respect their right to
>  criticize us. We want people to respect our right to freedom
>  of expression on
>  all matters political in our country; but we cannot respect
>  people’s right to
>  express their opinions on all matters political in our
>  country. Even as we
>  continue to decry the kind of blind support and uncritical
>  obeisance that
>  distorted Gambian politics and society during the dark days
>  of the Jammeh
>  despotism, we are engaged in the same kind of blind support
>  and critical
>  obeisance to our parties and leaders in the new Gambia. The
>  roots and complexity
>  of this damaging syndrome lies in the fact that without
>  critical
>  self-evaluation, an without an unusual level of
>  introspection and a strong
>  capacity for humility, we human beings are very likely to
>  always maintain the
>  most favorable opinion of ourselves, which often translates
>  into a narcissistic
>  tendency to consider our ourselves, our views and opinions
>  beyond reproach and
>  near-infallible.
>
>  Do we ever stop to
>  consider that no human being ever admits that
>  they are a bad person? Even the worst tyrants in human
>  history, such as the one
>  we just kicked out of Gambia genuinely believe that they are
>  good people. The
>  worst tyrants in human history will never admit that they
>  are evil. Self-love
>  and self-preservation, which are key defining
>  characteristics of human nature,
>  do not readily allow us to admit our mistakes or recognize
>  our errors of
>  judgment. The capacity to do that requires deliberate effort
>  on our part. It
>  requires us to swallow our pride, even if we are sometimes
>  right, in order to
>  accept or at least tolerate other people’s assumption of
>  right in their positions
>  and opinions that are different or even hostile to ours. We
>  should consider
>  that the persons we are communicating with feel the same
>  level of entitlement
>  to respect and tolerance of their views that we feel
>  entitled to. We should
>  consider that the persons we are addressing want to be
>  respected as much as we
>  want to be respected.
>
>  As we struggle to
>  move our dear little country away from the
>  malignant and debilitating culture of intolerance and
>  oppression of the past
>  twenty-two years and towards a culture of kindness, mutual
>  respect and tolerance,
>  we must expend deliberate effort to recognize, respect,
>  enhance and uphold the
>  humanity of our critics and political opponents. We should
>  always remember the
>  ancient golden rule of human behavior – to only do and say
>  unto others as we
>  would like others to say or do unto us. Or, put another way,
>  never to do or say
>  anything to others that we would not like them to say or do
>  to us. This is
>  particularly important in the arena of national politics, in
>  conversations about
>  the direction in which we want our country to move.
>  Considering that we all belong
>  to the same nation, that we all love our country equally,
>  and that we all have
>  equal rights to ownership of our country, it is foolhardy
>  and self-defeating for
>  anyone to lay claim to sole ownership of anything in the
>  nation-state space.  Governments come and go,
>  parties come and go,
>  leaders come and go, and individual citizens come and go.
>  The only constant is
>  the nation-state space itself which, like a precious garden,
>  needs to be tended
>  and attended to with the utmost care by all its owners,
>  which to say all its citizens.
>  Those who try to claim a monopoly over ownership of the
>  nation-state (like
>  Yahya Jammeh did) will face the justified rage of all good
>  citizens of the
>  nation and will eventually fall into eternal historical
>  infamy, a fate as
>  dreadful as it is worth avoiding by all means necessary. We
>  fought for
>  democracy and tolerance. Let us practice democracy and
>  tolerance, however
>  difficult it is to do so. We know it is easier said than
>  done. But we know we
>  can do it. And we will do it if we embrace both the power
>  and the limitations
>  of our humanity.
>
>
>
>
>


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