Yus,
Surely, this ridiculous idea that Hamjatta Kanteh is the progenitor of all
Gambian ills must belong to the junk-yard of medieval myths. Moreover, there
is more to this needless fuss and knee-jerk obsession with Hamjatta Kanteh
than many commentators on this List have pointed out. The barbarous attack on
personal achievement, inferiority complex and envy are some that instantly
come to mind. Some people just hate the idea of others who legitimately excel
and in their acute inferiority complex-laden world, agglutinated with abject
envy, they simply can't stand people who are smart and forging ahead in life.
These are some of the reasons why some of these faceless wonders and freaks
are getting really worked up about the idea of attacking Hamjatta Kanteh.
Yet, it is precisely these character malaises that are largely responsible
for the Jammeh Mess. Let us not fool ourselves: Jammeh never stole power
because he wanted to end the parasitic nature of the PPP regime. He stole
power primarily because as a moronic under-achiever with acute inferiority
complex, he knows there is no way he could legitimately achieve what
industrious Gambians have legitimately achieved. Similarly, all these
personal attacks on Hamjatta Kanteh is a continuation of that abhorrent
tradition of envy, acute inferiority complex and damnable contempt for
individual drive for legitimate achievements. Let the attacks on Hamjatta
Kanteh continue. For as the cliche goes, small minds will always obsess with
personalities whilst those who legitimately endeavour to know more, will
discuss ideas and refrain from tittle-tattle. Let me now address the crucial
issues at stake here.
Because of our general disagreement on what voter apathy and or alienation
entail and their demarcation, and to avoid sinking into the abyss of
distorting personal opinion with authority, i propose i begin this posting by
appealing to a modicum of authority in psephology or the 'scientific study'
of elections [and also, of course, to help such loony fruitcakes, twits, and
compulsive obsessives like Ousman Badgy-Basen - who seems so ridiculously
obsessed with me - have a greater understanding of the issues at hand. For
the life in me, i can't just fully figure out how their lack of
sophistication to read basic stuff can ever be my fault. Was i ever a former
Gambian president or education minister who failed the Gambian education
system? Good grief! Reading these jumped-up nonentities and their mumbo-jumbo
scrawls, you would have thought that Hamjatta Kanteh is the mass murderer
responsible for the grisly April 2000 incidents. Something is amiss
somewhere. Where do these weird creeps hail from? Anyway, enough of this
digression.]. Since your assumptions on the absentee vote are premised mainly
on the voter apathy, I thought it prudent to at least bring a modicum of
authority on the subject. To this end, i finally had the courage to pull my
Britannica Encyclopedia off the shelf for consultations. On voter alienation
and apathy vis-a-vis participation in elections, Heinz Eulan & Roger Gibbins
[eds] wrote:
"Some people are conscientious nonvoters, although such people are rare.
Others, perceiving the vote more as an instrument of censure than of support,
may not vote because they are satisfied with the present government. This
group of voluntary nonvoters is also small, however. In fact, nonvoters have
been shown to be generally less satisfied with the political status quo than
are voters. [Representing here voter apathy] The vote is a rather blunt and
ineffectual instrument for expressing dissatisfaction, and nonvoting is more
likely to be symptomatic of alienation from, than of satisfaction with, the
political system. [Representing voter alienation]" All additives solely mine.
If you agree with Eulan & Gibbins' definition of both voter apathy and
alienation, can you then comprehensively tell us - based on 2001 evidence
vis-a-vis Kiang East by-elelections and not merely inferences, deductions and
suggestions from the 1996/7 general election figures - why voter apathy was
responsible for the abstinence of more 1000 voters who didn't show up at the
polls to vote? This should lead to a more specific answer from you.
From now onwards, i will change my tack of general approach to the mooted
issues by making your words - verbatim - the source of my query. This should
help us in not deviating from the crucial issues being contested and make us
more specific. Here goes:
Yus: <<The basic assumption for your “Njolfen” theory is based on
conjecture. It is taken for granted that because the by-election was
surrounded by extraordinary circumstances (incumbent’s death and
unprecedented economic hardships), the voter turnout would be unusually high.
There is nothing wrong with this except this conclusion is drawn from
inferences and not hard facts or solid numbers. If you had produced numbers
from by-elections similar to the one in Kiang East which show a definite link
between by-elections and high voter turnout, this assumption would have been
backed by empirical evidence. But this is not the case here. The same can be
said for the purported evidence (Baba Jobe and Kebba Jobe’s admissions plus
newspaper reports). An inference is made from these reports that the level of
voter-buyout was high when in fact there is no evidence to support this. If
Baba Jobe, Joke or the Independent had provided accurate figures which show
high levels of voter buyout, then your basic assumption would have been based
on more empirical evidence. >>
No. The theory or assumption is based on circumstantial evidence and logic.
The former is admissable as evidence by many courts and a liberal definition
of the meaning of empirical would not hesitate to admit circumstantial
evidence as empirical. I've always granted that i started off on a
conjectural premise. This was later supported by such circumstantial
evidences like local newspaper reports, the admission of such APRC bigwigs
like Baba Jobe and Kebab Joke and most recently by some UDP supporters who
stepped forward to aid their party in their investigations on the matter.
More to the point, no APRC heavyweight has - insofar as i can see - come out
and disavow or repudiate the claims of vote-buying. The logic of all this is
that it leads to a garnering of evidence that is on the whole circumstantial
but legally acceptable as evidence in some courts of law. In any event, the
UDP is contesting the Kiang East by-election results in court and more or
less they are going along the lines of Dampha and his compatriots thinking.
The judgment on that case shall, perhaps, be the denuder of all assumptions
professed on the issue and their incoherences or fallacies.
Yus: << On the other hand, my assumption about the high amount of absentee
ballots is based on empiric evidence or experience from past elections. The
claim being that because statistics show a regular pattern of less than high
voter turnout in previous elections in Kiang East, this predicament was not
surprising. A comparison shows a definite correlation between the absentee
vote of 1997 and that of 2001. This assumption is therefore not based on
conjectural but empiric evidence. A good example of a similar assumption
based on empirical evidence is as follows:
Based on statistics of previous elections, the voter turnout in the United
States has generally declined steadily since the 1960s. Therefore, a low
turnout during the just concluded presidential elections was definitely not
surprising.
This conclusion was derived from the statistics which show a decline in voter
turnout from then to present.. More specifically, studies have shown that
level of turnout in African and Gambian elections have been marred by a sense
of apathy from voters. This is strong empiric evidence to support my voter
apathy assertion. >>
Now, using past election statistics for the purposes of inferring, deducing
and suggesting are all good and well; insofar as one doesn't determinately
make sweeping statements from them about the present without scant empiric
truth linking the two different periods. No problems there as such. The
fundamental flaw with this, however, only comes when one attempts
chimerically to make sweeping conclusions from such statistics about the
present without scant evidence that empirically links the two different
periods. Suffice for me to say that the deductions, inferences and
suggestions that invariably ensue from using such past election figures
cannot by themselves be conclusive - at any rate, they need present empiric
truths to be anywhere near conclusive. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with
using the 1996/7 general election results to infer, deduce and suggest why
some 1000 votes were not casted. This methodology becomes threadbare if no
form of empiric evidence exists that directly links the 1996/7 general
elections with the by-elections of 2001. The link you have is conjectural
i.e, voter apathy - something you have to this very day not substantiated
with empirical evidence. You merely point at figures that are by no means
indicative of voter apathy. I again challenge you to empirically link 1996/7
general elections of Kiang East with 2001 by-elections of Kiang East. Without
such an empirical linkage, your assumptions fall apart at the seams.
Conjectural evidences like voter apathy, that you have so fervently appealed
to, cannot by themselves tidy away the incoherences that emaciate your
theory. Again, i challenge you to empirically demonstrate - with 2001 facts
and not inferring from 1996/7 general election results - why voters in Kiang
East in 2001 would be indifferent, disinterested and unconcerned about voting
in the by-elections. To the extent that you can successfully answer this
conundrum, shall settle the matter - once and for all.
Yus: << There is no need to belabor your actual ‘Njolfen’ theory because it
is shaky and you have done nothing to disprove this. However, to make things
worse you managed to somehow confuse the meanings of voter apathy and voter
alienation. You also mucked up the difference between conjectural evidence
and empirical evidence. The ‘Njolfen’ theory cannot stand by itself or even
with support from the conjectural evidence which you posited. This was my
main contention with this theory from day one. Now you seem to have come
around full circle to admit that there is no way this theory can accurately
explain the absentee vote. The following statement from you puts it all in
perspective: < point of exactitude. Yet this is a non sequitir: insofar as we
established that votes have been bought, it doesn't matter the amount bought;
for that alone, by itself, legally nullifies the by-election results. This is
the point.> >>
First things first. The evidence alluded to here vis-a-vis Njolfen, is
circumstantial. We have already stated the case for such a thing. More to the
point, i shall reach out for my Britannica again and make consultations on
'circumstantial evidence' so we don't distort our own opinions on it with
authority. My Britannica tells me that circumstantial evidence is a noun and
traces its origins to the 18th. century and defines it as: "evidence that
tends to prove a fact by proving other event or circumstance which afford a
basis for a reasonable inference of the occurence of the fact at issue." Now,
if you agree with this liberal definition of circumstantial evidence, i don't
quite see how you can attribute conjectural premisses to Njolfen when in fact
we forwarded such evidences like APRC bigwigs like Kebab Joke and Baba Jobe's
admission that votes were indeed bought, local newspaper reports confirming
that said admission and of recent UDP supporters coming forward to
substantiate the vote-buying claims; added together, all of whom tantamount
to being described as circumstantial evidence and admissable as evidence in a
court of law. If you disagree, can you please tell us why?
The reason why i brought up the question of 'exactitude' vis-a-vis whether we
are ever likely to know every Pateh and Samba whose votes were illegally
bought off them, is not to say that i doubt the evidences i appeal to. The
point was just that we are unlikely to know every Pateh and Samba whose votes
were illegally bought. This is a non sequitur given the circumstances and our
original premise: By itself, this point is not that important. For we need
not to trace all votes illegally bought before we can effectively conclude
that illegal influencing of the outcome of an election has occurred and thus
nullifying the by-election results. For us to have our blissful day under the
sun in court, we need not launch statistical inquiries as to the
probabilistic degree to which vote-buying influenced the outcome of the
elections. For the results to be declared null and void, a single illegally
bought vote should do. That was the point i was making all along.
Have a nice Bank Holiday Weekend; i'm off to Bournemouth, Dorset. Hope your
plane ride was not that bad.
Best wishes,
Hamjatta Kanteh
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