Halifa,
I shall first begin by accusing you of the Comtean enormities of believing
that expressly the social sciences and social scientists are divorceable from
belief systems and faiths and your attempts at the blatant seperation of
inseperable disciplinces which are symmmetrical; attempts which to be put it
very mildly is rather bizarre. In your piece, you distanced yourself from
belief systems and faith in social systems as a social scientist. You are not
the first to do or attempt this. This is academic suicide in the long run as
Auguste Comte realised after those long embittered academic frustrations and
stuck in the intellectual wilderness. Auguste Comte, the father of Sociology
on whom modern social sciences owe a lot of gratitude, attempted and espoused
this position very famously when he derided, scoffed at and chided
metaphysics, belief systems and faiths. Famously he declared that there is no
depth in darkness; that beyond reason, empiricism and the naked eye there
could be no vision for anything. This is an intellectual cul-de-sac. For
there is depth in darkness. Reason and empirism have their limits; to often
than not they have relied on PrePlatonic and Socratic experience, intuition
and "grope in the darkness" methodology as philosophical inquiry into truth
and knowledge. Contrary to your contention, Political Science, Economics and
Cultural Studies are inextricably hooked. They are symmetries that overlap
into what you Social Scientists asssume to be each's demarcated traditional
terrritory. A good Political Scientist is one fluid on both Economics and
Cultural Studies. And vice versa. Halifa to sum up my thesis : one, Social
Scientists being social beings themselves, are undetachable from beliefs,
emotions and faith. They cannot be some cold and dull empirist, that Comte
thought and believed he had discovered, that reduces the life force to cold
logic and data. Two, academic disciplines are fluidities and increasingly
each is discovering how much it owed to the other for what traditionally you w
ould call the sphere of the other. Why do you reckon that modern Sociology
has come to resemble so much of Psychology and it's (Sociology) traditional
sphere has been gobbled up by Psephology (pollsters) and Think Tanks? You
depart from Nyerere when it comes to your school of thought only your love
for Africa unites you. What then is your school of thought? I've always
thought of you as Socialist and Socialists do believe in some belief systems
wheich have utopian oulooks. Am i missing out on somdething? Humour me
please. I will await your usual wiseacres on these.
You also raised the important issue of your role or should i say your
stance on both the Jammeh and Jawara regimes. Rightly so you postulated that
Jammeh is not Jawara. What struck me as Manichean deconstruction was your
using of two different yardsticks to deal with what is at best two essential
commonalities; the Jammeh and Jawara experiences. When you write of the
Jammeh experience, you become the Social Scientist in that you always point to
the past of Jawara and collate with it present realities thus the strident
politician -cum- critic totally absent. You may not sense and feel it but
your writings on the transition and the Jammeh experience since your legal
drama with the ersthwhile AFPRC has become duller, impassioned, and
noticeably beseeching cajole and compromise. You may not be aware of this but
unwittingly, you had become the chief ideologue of Jammehism. With your
writing bereft of its passion and stridency that was your trademark during
the Jawara experience, the AFPRC had no axe to grind, you played into their
grand designs of some modern Pan African re-awakening and crude patriotism.
Of course i do not dare accuse you of abetting with Jammeh for some closet
Machiavellian designs to spoof the people into a trajectory and skewed
transition in which the winner will be Jammeh who will succeed in legalizing
himself into a civilian president. But your departure from the stridency and
passionate journalism that you had so well displayed to great effect during
the Jawara experience had all but fizzled out during the Jammeh experience.
Of course you still write of how nothing much has changed; that only
personalities had swopped for the same system. Why do you give such a good
listening ear to Jammeh and prepared to understand the complexities that
surround the milieu that he governs under but lackadaisical to Jawara in that
regard?
Material limits constrain my ability to supply my thesis with the
necessary empiricism that would have made me not a speculator but one sincere
to engage you in your role during the transition. Nonetheless i will try to
provide you with examples and jog your memory a bit with what comes to my
mind. I hope you wouldn't accuse me of being biased and selective.
1. I remember when the draft constitution that eventually became the 1996
constitution for the Second Republic became public, the main dissension
against it was the limitation of the term of the presidency. For Jammeh to
tailor made this document that he supposedly consulted people over to fit his
grand designs and purposes, wilfully and mischieviously disregarding the
general view that was recommended by the people and the sage of recent memory
of the Jawara experience, that there should be a limitation to the term of
the presidency and you to ride to the rescue unwittingly (or should i dare be
provocative and say wittingly since this was blatantly against the wishes of
popular will) and you knowingly campaigned for the document inspite of the
realities. In your defence, you painted a Hobbesean state of fear of a civil
unrest and even Liberian/Rwandan type situations if we don't vote for it;
that since we have no choice but to accept that fundamentally flawed
document, it would be prudent to vote for it since there was no credible
alternative. Get this: the absence of choice is choice in itself. We had the
choice of totally rejecting the document and start afresh even if it means
the transition taking further twists and prolonging the elections. What is
the whole point of the constitutional exercises and the transition if we are
not able to fundamentally overhaul our body polity? For all your
intellectual precision and comprehension of issues during those crucial
periods, you couldn't fully fathom this ingredient and Jammeh's populism. In
your constant rebuttal of Liberal fears and concerns and defence of that
document in your paper, you postulated that if Gambians really want a term
limitation on the presidency, they would translate this during elections.
After each president's two terms, they would boot the president out in favour
of another new face. You used the same logic to concerns raised when Jammeh
deliberately changed the age of qualification for the presidency. If a thirty
year old like Jammeh stands infront of f the people seeking the presidencyand
they favour a forty year old, they would turn their backs on him during the
elections. How naive and simplistic!!! You were there monitoring the
elections did any of the latter happen despite it being a popular will of the
people? You might as well say we don't need explicit written rules and just
continue to rely on tacit mass approvals and disapprovals and turn every
election into a referendum. Halifa i need not remind you the relative
ignorance of the Gambian electorate and their misconceptions and reverence of
political leaders or Mansas. Such people need to be protected from, guile,
tyranny and excesses of our leaders by carrots and sticks, frameworks,
principles, rules and checks and balances in writing. If you think there has
been a fundamental shift in political behaviour and or approach since 1994,
then i overestimate your comprehension of Gambian politics. In July 1994 we
simply changed autocratic populism for authoritarian populism. Here is the
difference; Jammeh is a cunning listener to public opinion and a great
manipulator. Do you honestly believe that Jammeh out of largesse and mercy
for us decided to set up a thing like NCC to review his timetable? With
international isolation and mass backlash looming over his head like the
sword of Domocles, he knew he was doomed without some dialogue with the
people and seek their consent on the contentious time table to civilian rule.
Had you stood by principles and not seduced by the comeback of the ancien
regime and the Hobbesean paranoia you kept injecting into debates during the
transition, common sense would have pointed you towards Jammeh buckling under
a public backlash if he had lost the referendum. He needed us to continue
spitting at the face of international isolation. Jammeh comprehended this
more than you do despite your intellectual profundity.
Ironically, you spent the best part of 1996/7 writing a plethora of
hysterical open letters to the president warning of imminent constitutional
crisis if he doesn't act as you would like him to. Your forerunners were
saying this when you were busy campaigning for that flawed document. It
seemed your letters were archaic missives from the national archives. With
hindsight have you regretted for being agitator-in-chief for frustrating
Liberal attempts to modify that flawed document before it becomes the supreme
law of the land?
2. When the death and manner of death of Ousman Koro Ceesay was announced,
as to be expected with a nation hanging on the throes of a Hobbesean fear,
there was an alarming paranoia, hysteria and knee jerk reactions that were
absolutely out of proportion. The ruling council and apologists were thrown
into a state of panic. Again you unwittingly (wittingly?) came to the rescue.
Your so called investigations into the "accident" helped calmed the
pernickety nerves of the AFPRC and its apologists. As usual you exhorted
everyone to hold its nose since claims and counter claims had the stench of
those collaborating with outsiders plotting to throw the Gambia into anarchy.
Classical Hobbesean state of fear at work. You went on to investigate;
investigate you did for the shoddy, warped and shrouded in amatuerish
investigative journalism that you eventually published in your paper
hogwashed with Inspector Morse codes no one can decipher possibly only you.
Your findings could have been the job of a novice news hound on his/her
first assignment. What did it prove? Tosh. Yet for all your re-echoing of the
ethics journalism and cautioning of reporters to refrain from knee jerk
reports that cannot be substantiated, you entered into a hog wash mish mash
of sophistry that made Koro's looked an unfortunate "accident". Halifa
silence sometimes speaks volumes than actual words. Where was the AFPRC
during this period? They regrouped and strategised making passioned pleas
for information and shedding crocodile tears. Save praise Koro's work ethics
and integrity what they did do? No police investigation , no coroners
inquest, no compensation for the grief stricken family. A full police
investigation and a coroners inquest serves to vindicate the AFPRC if their
hands are as clean as they've always maintained. Why didn't they do it? You
are puzzled like me. If your neighbour's house is ransacked, and you are the
prime suspect would you Halifa forbid the police to search your house? Are
you not calling for the raising of eye brows and wagging of tongues? I must
admit that since those confusing days to this very day, i'm none the wiser on
this issue with only endless questions. Cynically, cannily and subtly, the
APRC changed the budget speech day from June to December. For June being the
month Koro died, always had people asking questions; questions that always
leaves the APRC jumpy and fidgeting for answers. Answers even that school
children would find implausible. Perhaps you will ride to the rescue of the
Koro Ceesay family and make fresh investigations. Koro's family would love to
know how their beloved one died. They would appreciate that more than anyone.
3. I don't know why the AFPRC allowed you to operate whilst the ban on
political activities was effectively on all First Republic politicians and
parties. But your sneering and derisory humour that you entertain your
readers with whenever a First Republic politician opens his mouth was a tell
tale. Remember when a group of First Republic politicians openly petitioned
Jammeh about their concerns of the transition which was undergoing crisis
then; the sneering and derisory humour that was forthcoming from you was fit
for a piece in Private Eye. You mocked their concerns and lobbed their
questions, concerns and points (and solid ones at that) into the arena of
jocular banter. Halifa were you the only concerned intellectual of that
period? Do others have nothing to contribute? Does everything have to be
Halifa style during the transition to befit acknowledgement from you?
Everything and anything that escapes the Halifa prism is codswallop? I have
read you no where where you acknowledge the contributions of others to the
debates that ensued during and after the transition. With the usual snooty
elitism so common amongst Left wing intellectuals, you see yours as the only
credible way/alternative dismissive of other alternatives. No wonder you
awarded yourselves medals of Champions Of The Transition for coming to the
rescue of the Gambian people. Saviours and servants of the people indeed. I
pose you this question: are we not where we started before wrestling with a
authoritarian populist masquerading as a new democrat? In short back to
square with the struggle?
I have decided to take you on the aforementioned themes at the moment. As
the debates heats up, more and fresh attempts will be made to take to you to
task for your role during the transition. Please note that this is not a
mischievious attempt to paint you black. On the contrary it is a cordial
invitation to engage you in a dialogue over that traumatic period of our
nation's history when we had "the hands of history on our shoulders" ( to
pinch a phrase from Tony Blair) to construct a democratic polity and future
worthy of reverence by us and worthy of emulation by others.
I anticipate your usual wiseacres.
Cordially,
Hamjatta Kanteh.
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