Mo, thanks for your thoughts and please bear with me for my delayed or
limited response due to deadlines at work. I noticed that the discussion
has moved away from finding the best roadmap to a future Gambia to what
percentage PDOIS can poll.
Back in 2001, I lobbied Ousainou (Fredericks, MD), Halifa, and Hamat when
they came to Howard University about the need for them to form a coalition
for I was convinced that the only way they can dislodge the APRC is to not
split the opposition vote. Ousainou, believed that he got the votes with
the help of PPP to win and I agreed to disagree with that projection. I met
with Hamat Bah with the same coalition proposal and he also indicated that
he has the numbers and has a chance at winning. I met with Halifa and he
also indicated that just like in Senegal, PDOIS want a first go at it and if
there is a second round, they will consider an alliance of some sort. PDOIS
also believed they had the numbers. I also disagreed with Halifa's
projection and did not believe that a runoff will result. Like most
Gambians, I knew better. It ended up that I divi up the contributions
according to the wishes of the contributors for the 2001 election campaign.
In 2003, when the opposition parties came to Atlanta, my belief in the need
for a coalition to dislodge Yaya never wavered. I never believe that any
party or a party with a few good men and women can get rid of an entrenched
dictator. Thus, while the organizers in Atlanta limited the gathering to
meet the people tour and for the politicians to tell us what we already knew
- bad governance in the Gambia, my focus was to push to them, again, the
idea of forming a coalition in 2006 to get rid of Yaya Jammeh. With Kebba
Foon and Momodou Drammeh, the leaders were invited to discuss that very
issue, in the presence of twenty five to thirty Gambians. Just like in
2001, I never thought about our liberation in terms of individual parties or
personalities, so, we would stray off course to at this moment be discussing
PDOIS. I thought our politics would at this point make us realize that NADD
is not PDOIS, but an ideal that Gambians brought about. What NADD (UDP,
NRP, NDAM, PPP, and PDOIS) crafted as a roadmap and all signed, and that you
and I championed, is what the NADD flagbearer, Halifa is running on.
So why are we discussing PDOIS at this time? I am addressing two platforms,
UDP/NRP and NADD's (NDAM, PDOIS, and PPP). Who has a plan for Gambia? If
it is fine by Gambians that not having a plan at all is ok as long as you
want Yaya out, then I say we have it coming to us. Aside from the killings
that Yaya committed, what is the difference between the APRC agenda and the
UDP/NRP agenda, and the NADD agenda? That is the question. Since there is
not one coalition, then the people must know what each coalition have for
us. Let us not waste our time on tactics for each flagbearer has to show us
what their side is composed of and to convince the voters. The same
erroneous calculation was made by the NDP/NRP support group (not Sidebeh)
that they had the numbers for a landslide victory in Kombo East, and we all
know what happened. How long must we continue to entertain that madness of
repeating the same mistake? Now, the same group is claiming to win again,
and sadly, when Gambians were supposed to have a united front and demand a
united coalition, we fall back to our previous malady of looking to
individual/group interest over the national interest of getting rid of a
monster that is killing us all. We cannot be philosophical about our
current situation, and I believe Gambians are conscious of what they are
engaged in, even as we claim to be tired of our dictatorship. As much as I
hate to live through a repeat of 2001, may be we do not mind it, as a
people. I am fighting for an ALLIANCE for a REGIME and SYSTEM CHANGE.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Chi Jaama
Joe
>From: Momodou S Sidibeh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: FWD: THE ALLIANCE for REGIME CHANGE/Sidibeh
>Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 16:04:58 +0200
>
> Sister Jabou Joh and Brother Joe,
>
> I had no intention to get to this point in this exchange. It feels
>premature, because there is likely to be a gruesome period of
>soul-searching amongst Gambians after the coming elections. But I also fear
>that, akin to previous periods of post-election trauma, all of that may end
>up into nothing more than having therapeutic effect. I hope I will be
>proven wrong, in all counts.
>
> It is true that scrutiny is necessary. In normal circumstances, I would
>have joined the fray to lay bare every political attempt at power in Gambia
>even if that alone is hardly sufficient. But my sensibilites are affected
>by the believe that the project towards "unifying" the Opposition even
>after September 22 would be crucial for the evolution of participatory
>democracy in our country. I tend to think that our proclivites towards the
>state of the opposition coalititon and the political alignments that the
>elections would produce, dictates present individual preoccupations.
>
> Ideally, we should demand the best and should not lower our standards.
>But the very essence of a coalition gestures precisely towards reaching
>compromises on those qualities we hold as best and of higher standard;
>endearing us to construct a half-way house between idealism and realism.
> But as I said, if one believes that the process is dead, the field opens
>up for internecine struggles of all sorts, exposing what is worst in
>eachother's closet of ideas. This should be unproblemmatic in developed
>polities where the contest for power rages within the realm of ideas. But
>where other variables such as unprincipled rivalry, vanity, ethnic
>identity, acquisitiveness, fear and even populism sway voter sentiments
>greatly, violent criticism is often taken personally. The effect is that
>the prospects for a future confluence of opposition parties becomes more
>remote than formerly. And not only that!
> We all know the UDP, don't we? It has been around for the last ten years,
>and so to seek certainty about its intentions in an election manifesto is
>like aspiring to define the APRC from dictated fiction gleaned from its
>Vision 2020 document. The UDP, like all of Gambia's post independance
>political parties (except PDOIS) rides on varying doses of populism,
>nevermind its professed assimilation of neoliberal, social democratic
>values. When sometime before the 2001 elections, Hamjatta Kanteh marketted
>Mr. Ousainou Darboe on Gambia-L as a most patriotic Gambian who sacrificed
>everything to wage a struggle against the quasi-military tyranny, some of
>us scoffed at that sort of politcal commerce. Mr. Darboe, of course,
>deserves much respect, but the party he leads, I thought even then, came to
>be the natural abode of disgruntled politicians and businessmen made
>homeless by APRC purges of the PPP and NCP. It posesses neither the
>ideological conviction nor the organizational tradition to carry the
>struggle for power beyond mere protest against corruption and the excesses
>of an egoistic political elite feeding on the spoils of power. It cannot
>control and alter the role of institutions even if it assumes state power.
>This conclusion brings me to the reason I think the coalition is of major
>importance.
>
> Since its formation in the mid eighties, PDOIS behaved like a modern
>politcal apparatus. It recorded and archived all its ideas about
>governance, presented its opinion about all issues of national and regional
>significance, debated and defended its positions on these and operated
>consistently as an alternative government. Because it keeps records, and
>because it can date(!) national events it has opened up itself to probing
>and and can easily allow for transparency and more importantly, running an
>effective adminstration. One might not like Foroyaa, but one can remain
>confident that it provides a consistent and progressive source of political
>currency, even if one may not agree with it at all times. With sufficient
>resources, such a politcal apparatus can create and control a very strong
>organisation, even if such an organisation may not necessarily be
>democratric in character. (I cannot vouch for how decisions were reached
>inside PDOIS, thus my scepticism). It is this character of PDOIS as a
>modern, workable institution, that appeals to educated, young Gambians,
>perhaps because it rekindles a familiarity with structures. Informed
>Gambians who oppose it are, therefore, easily identifiable. As important as
>they are, I would refrain from mentioning the characters of its leaders, as
>these, unlike the nature of the organisation they represent, are transient.
>There has never been a political party with such administrative,
>organisational and political potential in our country, and these are the
>qualities with which it would have infused the character of a coalition of
>opposition parties. NADD could have evolved into a society-oriented
>politcal movement, i.e a political instrument that reorganises society as a
>way of changing the state; as opposed to a state-based politcal group -
>which have invariably failed everywhere in Africa. NADD could have forever
>altered the nature of politics in Gambia!
>
> NADD's failure to mature into what we had hoped for is of historic
>significance in a state as small as ours, and the responsibility for this
>failure, spreads more widely than many seem to think. To resuscitate NADD
>at time a time when the struggle for power is at its peak is simply more
>difficult than doing so after the elections. I think that effort should be
>pursued with even more vigour, and I do not think continued internecine
>squabble will help it.
>
> Cheers,
> sidibeh
>
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