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| Date: | Sat, 10 Jul 1999 15:11:29 EDT |
| Content-Type: | multipart/mixed |
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<HTML><FONT SIZE=3 PTSIZE=10>I would like to join those who already spoke in thanking Ndey Jobarteh for her account of life and circumstances in a country that is reeling under the oppressive tentacles of a ruthless tyrant. Her vivid and heart wrenching descriptions are clear testaments of the extent to which unchecked creulty coupled with ignorance can enable people who otherwise can never oversee a boys scout troupe to pass themselves off as semi legitimate leaders. President Jammeh and his enablers are neither interested in success nor do they necessarily want to be in the good graces of the vast majority of the people of the Gambia. He is convinced he has just the right receipe to maintain his rule by instilling in people a palpable level of fear for their safety , use the increasingly scarce resources of the country to hook and bait enlightened but unprincipled people who would do anything to get a meal tickect. He is also counting on the population to just roll over and accept all maltreatment as a fait-accompli. I am all for summoning a brutal leadership to God as the ultimate arbitar but i am equally convinced that fighting back in whatever capacity one can muster at a given time in a bid to defend oneself is not only desirable but it is prescribed. If citizens rights of equal protection under the law is deliberately undermined by a government that authorises it's agents or vigilantes associated with it to tear down peoples doors and abduct them from their families in the middle of the night not be heard from for weeks, then most reasonable people would contend that acting in defending one's safety and dignity by fighting intruders is the only path. <BR>
We must all understand that rights without remedy aren't rights at all. Those who abuse innocent people through the tacit encouragement of this leader have never been held accountable , on the contrary as we see and hear , there is an increase in both the level of brutality and the number of people. No one personifies these excesses than this guy called Baba Jobe. Simply put why should people tolerate this fellow visiting this much misery on them? Simple. He has consistently gotten away with every instance of abuse hence enabling him to build an omnious reputation. Subjecting him to his own way would not only stop him but would serve as a significant deterent to those like him. Someone who threatens to shoot people has earned his own bullet in everymans defination of self defence. Freedom , list memebers, is our very essence and hence must be ferrociously guarded against those like Baba Jobe who want to take it upon themselves to deprive others of what was given to them by dint of their humanity.<BR>
As for the crushing economic and health crisis and the heavy toll it takes on the population , I am acutely aware of the practical efffects of the hardship. Family members and friends used to regularly transit at our home in georgetown en route for medical treatment at Basang . Not anymore. Since there is practically no medicine at the hospital there , folks are just staying home inevitably succumbing to early death. Lest we forget a functioning healthcare system and an economy with prospects are predicated on good governance consisting of leadership that both knows what they are doing and have a burning desire to do what is right by their people. We can take solace in the notion that brutal dictators like the certainty of the sun's rise have a definate and determined outcome. Never in the course of history has a leadership that visited creulty and corruption on it's people retired peacefully to their golden age . Their fates have ranged from being publicly executed to living as eye sores albeit in ill gotten opulence in countries and neighborhoods where they never succeed in being part of their adapted communities but are reluctantly tolerated as tyrants who stole to build the villa they are in.We must answer the critical question of how long we want to be subject to the current state of affairs. As every Gambian takes stock of their life and the ever increasing difficulty of just getting by coupled with a lack of faith in the rule of law i think we would be left with only two option: surrender the nation in effect and confer a coronation to Yayah Jammeh and spend a generation or more as a failed state or commit to removing him in a concerted effort not only limited to a political process he can manipulate but upto and including forcibily ejecting him . I can see some list members rolling their eyes and utterly rejecting even the consideration of the option of violence as a means to get us out of this devastating jam. I understand street battles runs counter to every thing that makes us who we are but i ask you to weigh that concern with the chilling reality of ruining the nation and in the process condeming hundreds of thousands of people to short and difficult lives under duress. We all have a responsiblity to be our brothers' keeper. Choosing expediency because it may be convinient in the short term to divorce oneself of all these problems we all know are crushing our people will haunt us as people who can do something to help. I simply don't want to surrender my country to Yahya Jammeh or Baba Jobe and the evil they entail.<BR>
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Karamba </HTML>
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