Thank you Mr. Ndure. Much appreciated.

Baba


On Nov 4, 2017 4:18 AM, "Omar Ndure" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Baaba, thanks again for a well articulated piece. I do concur with you.
> Indeed "WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO CHOOSE WHICH DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES TO EMBRACE
> AND WHICH TO DISCARD". What an irony!!!
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Fri, 11/3/17, Baba Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>  Subject: We Can Do This
>  To: "Community of Gambianist Scholars" <COMMUNITYOFGAMBIANISTSCHOLARS
> @listserv.miamioh.edu>, "The Gambia and Related Issues Mailing List" <
> [log in to unmask]>, "wagmembers" <[log in to unmask]>
>  Date: Friday, November 3, 2017, 11:05 PM
>
>
>
>  We Can Do
>  This
>
>  By Baba Galleh
>  Jallow
>
>  If you think democracy is hard, try
>  dictatorship. Try a
>  system where one man assumes absolute power, usurps the
>  rights of everyone in
>  the country, turns himself into a malignant god on earth,
>  kills innocent people
>  left right and center, has a horde of minions telling him he
>  will live forever,
>  and assumes a monopoly on what constitutes wrong or right,
>  truth or lies,
>  justice or injustice and wisdom or foolery. If you think
>  democracy is hard, try
>  a system in which a village idiot struts around clad in the
>  fake garbs of holy
>  piety, uttering confused noises and insisting on being the
>  most righteous, most
>  just, and most wise individual to ever walk this earth. Yet,
>  dictatorship, hard
>  and bad as it is, is much easier to manage than democracy.
>  That is because the
>  path to democracy is strewn with slippery slopes and
>  frightening corners that
>  threaten to crush and annihilate all that would walk towards
>  democracy. While
>  there is no easy path to freedom, as Nelson Mandela famously
>  put it, the path
>  to democracy is even harder as South Africans and
>  increasingly Gambians are
>  learning.
>
>  Yet, we cannot afford to stop, or to
>  fail in building a
>  democratic culture in our country. We cannot afford to be
>  pessimistic about the
>  future of our country. We cannot afford to be afraid of the
>  slippery slopes and
>  frightening corners of democracy. We cannot afford to allow
>  the mistakes of the
>  past or the challenges of the present to derail the Gambian
>  renaissance. We
>  cannot afford to allow despots in exile and their minions to
>  laugh at us and
>  say we told you so. We have more than what it takes to turn
>  The Gambia into a
>  model democratic nation in Africa and in the world. But we
>  cannot afford to be
>  complacent or to imagine that democracy will just happen
>  easily, or that it
>  will happen just because we say it will happen.
>
>
>  It is not enough for us to declare
>  to the world that we are
>  committed to the principles of democracy, human rights and
>  the rule of law. We
>  must make sure that our lofty pronouncements of fidelity to
>  democratic ideals
>  are matched by fidelity to practical democratic actions and
>  steps towards the
>  actualization of a true democratic culture in our country.
>  We can start by
>  realizing that there that there are and there will be
>  obstacles and threats of
>  all kinds along the path, but also by recognizing that we
>  are more than capable
>  of dealing with whatever obstacles and threats may arise on
>  our path. We must
>  react to these obstacles and threats not with fear and the
>  knee-jerk reactions
>  motivated by fear, but with sensible and measured actions
>  whose outcome will be
>  success and a step closer to our desired state of democracy
>  and progress.
>
>  We must realize that there are no
>  half-measures in
>  democracy. We cannot at once be democratic and undemocratic.
>  We cannot pledge
>  allegiance to democracy and act in ways that threaten to
>  derail our progress
>  towards democracy. We cannot pick and choose which
>  democratic practices to
>  embrace and which to discard. Democracy comes in an
>  indivisible package of the
>  good, the bad and the ugly and we must be ready to deal
>  consistently with all
>  of them in a democratic manner. A nation cannot be half
>  democratic, half
>  dictatorial. It has to be either one or the other. The
>  moment we start acting
>  in undemocratic ways, we expose ourselves to sliding further
>  down the path of
>  dictatorship because that is the much easier path to follow.
>  We must realize
>  that it is also the much more expensive path, the path to
>  destruction and
>  failure. And we cannot afford to destroy ourselves or to
>  fail. Small actions
>  that may be justified by reference to issues of national
>  security often
>  multiply in short order and become a mass of undemocratic
>  actions that
>  inevitably leads to the derailment of a democratic process.
>  We cannot afford
>  that in the new Gambia. And since we are more than capable
>  of avoiding a
>  derailment of our democracy, we must recognize the smallest
>  missteps we make
>  and correct them as a matter of urgency.
>
>  The path to democracy is full of
>  annoying noises that we
>  must nevertheless listen to and manage with utmost care and
>  intelligence. Democracy
>  gives rise to a multitude of voices may have nothing
>  important to say, but that
>  may want to say something anyway because it is their right
>  to do so. These
>  voices are not to be shouted down or silenced. They must be
>  allowed to have
>  their noisy say in the democratic space. Yes it may be hard
>  to listen to
>  citizens who say things just because they have the right to
>  say things, whether
>  these things make sense or not, whether we like these things
>  or not, whether we
>  agree with these things or not. But there is simply no
>  alternative to allowing
>  them to have their say, and making the most of what they
>  have to say. The
>  challenge is to understand that becoming democratic
>  inevitably presupposes
>  becoming an unwilling interlocutor to all kinds of opinions,
>  some directed at
>  us, some directed at our critics, but all purportedly
>  directed at the quest for
>  a better common national space. The right of our fellow
>  citizens to free
>  expression of peaceful opinion, however uncomfortable it
>  makes us feel, must be
>  tolerated and protected as much as our own right to free
>  expression of peaceful
>  opinion is protected.
>
>  The greatest obstacle to democratic
>  progress in Africa since
>  independence has been fear: fear of protests, fear of
>  critical public opinion,
>  fear of the truth, fear of losing our privileged positions
>  in society, fear of
>  being thought weak. All these fears inspire a strong desire
>  in us to do
>  undemocratic things even as we reaffirm our commitment to
>  democracy, human
>  rights and the rule of law. In a dictatorship, these fears
>  inspire a hatred of
>  all things democratic and the very concepts of human rights
>  and the rule of law
>  which insists on tolerance and civility. But these fears are
>  ill-inspired. They
>  should not exist at all in the democratic mentality.
>  Peaceful protests,
>  critical public opinion, the truth, and losing privileged
>  positions are all
>  part of the democratic process. And the democratic mentality
>  should not
>  entertain fear of the democratic process. The way to deal
>  with uncomfortable events
>  and processes on the path to democracy is to manage them
>  intelligently, not to
>  suppress them or paint them in the evil colors of the devil
>  out to destroy us. If
>  there is hard evidence of a desire or intention to
>  deliberately disrupt the
>  public peace, then we can legitimately step in to take
>  corrective action. In
>  the absence of such hard evidence, intelligent management is
>  our best option.
>
>  Crisis is an integral part of the
>  democratic process and
>  must be managed rather than muted. Generally, efforts to
>  avert crisis through
>  undemocratic measures only leads to greater and deeper
>  crisis. We must believe enough
>  in the power of our human and Gambian intelligence not to
>  let fears, often
>  unfounded, to derail and subvert our democratic process.
>  Because that,
>  precisely, is what the enemies of democracy would like to
>  see. If a particular event
>  in our emergent democratic culture is perceived as a threat
>  to our national
>  security, we must do everything possible to make sure that
>  it does not in
>  reality pose such a threat, not by arbitrarily stopping that
>  event, but by
>  thinking intelligently about how to manage the event so that
>  it proceeds
>  peacefully as planned. The capacity to think in strategic
>  democratic terms
>  grows from the capacity to recognize that there is no easy
>  path to democracy,
>  and that ever so often, we may need to take action that is
>  both intelligent and
>  courageous, and never to take action or fail to take action
>  out of fear of
>  expressions of the democratic spirit. As Nelson Mandela
>  again reminds us, “To
>  be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to
>  live in a way that
>  respects and enhances the freedom of others.” We have made
>  some significant
>  steps in this direction, especially in our tolerance of the
>  former despot’s
>  party. But again, Mandela tells us, “After climbing one
>  great hill, one only
>  finds that there are many more hills to climb.” We can do
>  this. We must do it.
>  We cannot afford to fail. And we will not fail if we
>  recognize and embrace the
>  reality that there is no easy path to
>  democracy.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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