Rene, thanks for your outlook.  Come 2006, Gambians are going to decide
whether they want a change for the better or remain a begging people.  As
you intimated, if the people want to take back their country, nothing can
stop them.  However, if for one reason or another they want to maintain the
status quo, then we will live with the misery we voted for.  Just like one
cannot describe hunger to the hungry, the overwhelming majority of Gambians
know the pain they lived with for the past decade and I am certain that the
people will have no choice, but to vote Jammeh and the APRC out.  If the
machine on the other hand want to maintain power at all cost, then they are
in for a rude awakening, for, like you rightly stated, the very people that
vote them out, will not let them get away with it.  The victory we foresee,
starts with each Gambian doing their part to make it happen.  We are all
stakeholders and getting rid of a dictatorship is never a spectator sport.
Together, we can achieve uncommon results.

Chi Jaama

Joe

>From: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [>-<] Gambia shall be free
>Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 11:30:59 EDT
>
>     Imagine in 2006 after the Gambian people have voted, and the majority
>of
>the people who have voted are convinced that they have voted the incumbent
>government out of power. Also, imagine the incumbent government trying to
>skew
>the election in their favor. What will be the reaction of the Gambian
>people?
>
>      This is where the unexpected will happen. If the majority of the
>Gambian
>people sincerely voted their incumbent government out of power, I am apt to
>believe that they will exert their power to make their will stand.
>
>      What is this power? And, how can it be manifested?
>
>     When I think about democracy, I think about an ideal. An ideal that is
>good, noble and is desirable. What makes this ideal not to conform with the
>reality is the characteristic nature of the people who shape that reality.
>Thus
>reality is the sum total of the social, economic, political, moral,
>cultural and
>religious underpinings to which a society is anchored. The ideal is to make
>such a reality better; the ideal is to make such a reality people-oriented,
>in
>essence to make such a reality democratic.
>
>      It is this ideal; this democractic appeal to better governance, the
>rule
>of law and social justice that directs and dictates the minds of
>conscientious people who will make it a social as well as a political
>reality.
>
>       True, we have dictatorships and hostile regimes who denigrate the
>state's instruments of governing to serve their own selfish interest, and
>institute
>instruments of coercion to instil fear, create docility and apathy, and
>make
>the people subservient to the whims and caprices of one individual.
>
>        This is the reality to which the "superstitious" nature of
>democracy
>has been most pertinent; this is also the reality that the democractic
>forces
>wants to change for the better. What makes the difference is the
>appropriation
>of power as an instrument of subjugation by those who want to maintain the
>status-quo, as opposed to the appropriation of power as an instrument of
>democractisation by those who want to change the status-quo. The mechanism
>in which
>such a power is instituted to defend the integrity of the state; to resist
>the
>denigration of the state's instruments as a coercive force of subjugation
>against the will of the people, is the challenge that is central to the
>democratic
>struggle.
>
>      The state and its institutions, within the framework of our
>constitutional setting, is the only form of organized social structure to
>which we all
>subjugate our freedom either freely or coercively. To which we all relegate
>our
>power, which carry the force of law and can also be abused as a vehicle to
>subvert the will and power of the people.
>
>       But, so far as it has been clearly delineated that power belongs to
>the
>people, and on whose behalf governments derive their authority to govern, I
>believe the people can always take back this authority to govern.
>
>         Rene
>
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