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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