Vote, Vote, Vote for Halifa Sallah and NADD - Abdoulie Jallow (BambaLaye) –July 30, 2006 I am a pro-democracy peace and justice loving NADD enthusiast who's going to make it clear to the world there can be no better leader to spearhead the massive socio-political re-engineering needed to set The Gambia in the right direction but for the intelligent, charismatic peace loving Hon. Halifa Sallah. Come September, I plan on persuading and indulging every voter-aged Gambian I know to cast their ballot for Hon. Sallah. How, pray tell, does an unrefined new age penman, NADD fanatic democracy loving self designated proxy campaigner in favor of a preferential option for the poor, come to such a pass? Through a bout of moral indignation, that's how. My multiple disillusionments with Yaya Jammeh and those aiding and abetting his feat for becoming the most notorious dictator in the sub-region, intentionally or otherwise, have boiled over. When Yaya Jammeh presided over the cold blooded massacre of more than a dozen innocent student activists, something in me snapped. "That's it," I said, "I've had it. There's no way this hand's going to hold a ballot or strike a key to help elect this fellow, never in my life time. That occasion reinforced my conviction in the brutality and callousness in Jammeh and his regime. Yet we still witness bloody handed penmen writing to Yaya’s musings over the various and blatant mismanagement of the economy and what has now become the daily destruction of decent human life. Cynical? Opportunistic? Or another sincere but tone-deaf judgment call? Does it take a whole village to save these spin doctors from themselves? I am also affronted by Ousainou Darboe’s and Hamat Bah’s cavalier rejection, at the helm of hope, of the will and intent of the people - those supporting the opposition - in unification of the opposition in NADD. I am still grappling with Ousainou’s excuse of the existence of mistrust where it would have been difficult to ascertain given his consent to conspire and Hamat’s story of baked and unbaked cakes in congruence with mistakes made by the UDP and NRP. Tells more of their leadership qualities than what could have gone wrong in NADD. In Ousainou and Hamat’s current efforts to pander to the prevailing winds and out-tough the macho-Yaya, it is blatantly apparent they cannot reverse the course of NADD. Nor are they likely to become any less vulnerable to economic mismanagement given their lack of a concrete or clearly laid out strategy to resolve the country’s socio-economic and public management woes. Hamat’s notoriety in the phenomenon of “futoy-mu-tack” wouldn’t help their cause either. In their eye-on the-main-chance mode of operation whatever seems to fly will be adopted. Whatever groups (or old friends) or principles that have to be abandoned along the way will be sacrificed with dispatch. Enough already. In a desperate act of protest and total confidence in the possibility for a better Gambia, I'm ready to persuade and indulge every voter-aged Gambian I know to cast their ballot for Hon. Sallah and NADD. Contrary to superstitious belief, my hand or my pen will not fall off. With Hon Sallah at least I can get one important piece of my consistent ethic-of-life agenda championed; the innocent, the suffering, the downtrodden may have a bit more chance for some protection. Finally I suppose when facing the choice between Yaya, Ousianou and Halifa there's no avoiding the age-cum-experience question. On balance I admire Halifa's generational approach to the cultural forces that shaped his era more than I like the confusion and self-indulgence that produced the so-called “futoy-mu-tack” reconciliationists. Obviously to possess Halifa’s particular formative experiences you have to have been exposed to the socio-economic anomalies of the people at their level for as long as Halifa has. Social work has been Halifa’s life by any measure. I hope Gambian voters will be aware of the damage done by Yaya and not judge the candidates by the amount of money dished out to them in their most dire conditions. Well, who knows how this particular life-of-a-nation-determinant exercise in choice is going to play itself out? Comedy, tragedy, farce? Right now it's taking enough energy for me to cast a heretofore thinkable NADD vote in September; I'm no longer going to be held captive by the renegades of the “futoy-mu-tack” phenomena occupying the frontals of APRC and UDP/NRP. -- -BambaLaye ============================================== "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -Martin Luther King Jr. ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤