*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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