Joe and All,

Like everyone else, I have also been nursing an aching heart since Pa Nderry 
Mbai first reported the split inside NADD on February 1. I have tried to 
call both Sam Sarr and Halifa, but could not get to any of them. (I think I 
was simply looking for consolation, eventhough I knew Darboe's resignation 
was factual).

Well, we all have much to learn from what happened, but I will be utterly 
surprised if some people find the outcome unpredictable. Unfortunately, some 
have opted to feed us with this very unhelpful diet of tribal explanations 
as if events inside NADD could not simply be buried in concrete objective 
difficulties. Raising the ethnic issue simply plays into the hands of those 
reactionary forces bent on obscuring from helpful analysis the true dynamics 
of what went wrong inside NADD. Lets us just shove that tribal thing aside, 
not because it is unimportant, but because it has little relevance to the 
cause(s) of the breakdown inside the NADD exec. comm.

With time and energy, I would share my views of what went so horribly wrong. 
[Ahh but what use would that be anyway?]. But right now, I shall simply vent 
my anger at the entire NADD executive committee. Not just Ousainou Darboe. I 
find it unbelievable that this unfortunate outcome should have been 
unpredictable to any of them!

There are pertinent questions: did anyone believe that Ousainou Darboe would 
accept being sidelined as NADD flagbearer? After all the bad blood, can Waa 
Juwara and NDAM accept a Darboe leadership? Or can anyone contemplate Darboe 
accepting Waa Juwara, lacking a proven electoral constituency, to lead NADD? 
Would an OJ leadership not have been synonymous with reinstating the PPP, a 
most unthinkable prospect for president Jammeh and indeed many Gambians? Why 
was the issue of naming an outsider not pursued with greater vigour? And the 
Obasanjo-brokered reconciliation? Reconciliation for whom, the APRC and the 
NADD three or the Gambian nation and its tormented psyche? Put the past 
behind us? Whose past? What about our dead children of April 2000? What 
about Koro Ceesay and Deyda Hydara? Can a one/two-day sitting at some posh 
hotel by political leaders uttering some monumental words on mutual 
understanding reconcile the rest of us with the vivid horrors of torching 
newspaper houses, NIA's nocturnal visitations and the distant cries of 
tortured and dead Gambians? Is this what we should accept as reconciliation? 
At this price? At that meeting with a well-meaning Obasanjo, where was the 
voice of the voiceless?
A big YES to reconciliation. But at what price, no one seems to have thought 
about? Or perhaps I am the extraterrestrial here!
Indeed since NADD was in paralysis, it is understandable that it cannot take 
the initiative. But Jammeh was just buying the elections, by being 
statemanly now, forgiving the past, bringing in a hundred million Euro for 
the nation's biggest electricity project (?), and then hosting the AU 
summit.
As for NADD and whatever remains of it, it will be an uphill battle. I doubt 
if the damage done can be rapaired in a meaningful way in time for the 
elections.

cheers,
sidibeh

> 

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