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.

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