Mr. Darbo,

I had mixed emotions reading your comments. There is no doubt in my mind that you appear quite sincere but the shifting of perspectives, factual errors and the pettifogging are quite disturbing.  I have never accused Hassan Jallow of anything, never called the NADD leadership liars, never professed or practiced Hegel to my knowledge, and never ever condoned Yaya's brutality against the innocent.
If anything I am the first Gambian to ever register in public the atrocities of the AFPRC against Ousainou Darboe, Waa Juwara, Koro Ceesay and Assan Njie.  I was the first and only Gambian online to accuse the APRC government of foul play when Ousman Sillah was fatally shot and wounded.  I also condemned the murder of Deyda Hydara....This is all on record with the archives.
In the beginning, I vehemently supported NADD with the presumption that it was a merger in law as a political party and not some foolish alliance.  Now we all know the true story about NADD after that fateful Supreme Court decision, and as a result I hold them to a very high standard of robust criticisms for their own benefit.  People who never want to see you progress shall never disclose to you what they are thinking.  I speak my mind in the open, and perhaps always make enemies in the process.  In my opinion the only  "fundamental political principle" that dictates consistency in public life is the principle of citizenship and not the kind of clientelism I see amongst the NADD supporters online.  Clientelism is based on self-interested attitudinal support (i.e. uncritical loyalty and obedience to some political agenda) , and citizenship is based on the rationality of ideal speech acts (i.e. logic, free speech, clarity and the redemption of validity claims).  I will consistently
 choose citizenship any day over party loyalty.

Finally,  you seriously went off tangent and mistaken/conflated Nietzsche with Hegel non of whom have anything to do with the Nazis.  Nietzsche, and not Hegel, who thought of the over-mensch or superman would have never never endorsed Nazi ideology.

I need to go at this moment...till later.

Ebou

[log in to unmask] wrote:
[ This e-mail is posted to Gambia|Post e-Gathering by ]


Even where your claim that you are "the first and only person on any Gambian forum online pushing the theory that the rule of law in the Gambia is nothing but a rigged legal system and an extension of Yahya's governmentality" is an exaggerated falsehood, I have no quarrel with the essence of your "theory".


Having started from the above, how did you arrive at the allegation that Hassan Jallolw was a judicial activist legislating from the bench?

On dispassionate analysis, the Supreme Court decision on the four opposition National Assembly seats may be right, but the decision's justification is grounded in a document which is fundamentally flawed if viewed against the democratic doctrines of the separation of powers, the sovereignty of the people, and the rule of law. This particular decision, from every possible perspective, and in all the circumstances of the case, adds nothing to promoting the rule of law.

As to judicial activism, you may want to better inform yourself by investigating the political and jurisprudential backdrop against which that concept emerged in your adopted United States. Your fellow Republican travellers employ the terminology as an epithet against the perceived liberals on the federal bench, from the District Courts, through the Circuits, to the Supreme Court, but especially the Supreme Court.

On your JD course at Georgetown – if you took constitutional law, that is - you would have encountered two of the seminal cases in your nation's constitutional jurisprudence: Plessy v Ferguson (1896); and Brown v Board of Education of Topeka et al. (1954). In your considered judgment, which of these courts was activist in light of the letter and spirit of the American Constitution?

Was it the Plessy Court that decided the United States Constitution sanctioned discrimination along lines of race, or the Warren Court that, in Brown, overruled Plessy, on the grounds, inter alia, that the decision supporting so-called "separate but equal" facilities in public education violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment?

As to your "pragmatic prudence", the delineated choices before Gambians – and notwithstanding Emerson and Gandhi – dictate consistency in fundamental political principles. Or are you a relativist on questions of right and wrong, a disciple of the Hegelian philosophy that supermen in public life must be allowed to operate outside the constraints, i.e., rules/laws, applicable to lesser mortals.

Like you, Hegel was an ideas man, and at the height of his career as a professor at the University of Berlin, his lectures were famous for the audiences they attracted. Students apart, they pulled in the political elite, and more crucially, the German General Staff. Centering on German martial glory, Hegel's lectures were heady stuff.
Refering to his supermen as "world historical individuals", he was among the key thinkers who provided the intellectual justification for Hitler's totalitarianism. On matters of political morality, your relativism dangerously mirrors those of Hegel and his neoconservative progeny inhabiting the corridors of power in DC.

Your precondition for "doing business" with Jammeh is for Edward to go. The abject failures of the APRC are larger than Edward. The failures are systemic. You certainly cannot fail to appreciate that reality from the plight of your "pragmatic" forebears at the managerial, ambassadorial, and cabinet levels of our public life since 1994. If you have any appreciation of the cardinal features of the rule of law, you should be aware that Jammeh resides outside the Laws of The Gambia. He is the Law!

It is perplexing that as you gravitate between plotting the armed overthrow of Jammeh on the one hand, and cuddling him for his practical statesmanship on the other, you are hell bent on shooting anything Gambian that flies. You insinuated Dr Abdoulie Saine has political ambitions, that Ousainou, and Halifa, are electoral fraudsters and liars, that NADD was killed by the Supreme Court decision, ranted against someone teaching African bullshit at some lowly college, and on goes the gripe. And you have the audacity to characterise anyone as self righteous! It is your potentially fatal attraction to Jammeh that is incomprehensible.

You are better off directing your gun at the implacable fore of freedom and political pluralism, rather than train it on targets even an expert marksman like Ebou Jallow can't shoot down. I have no problem reading what you write, even when you foray into the realm of abstract and meaningless academic discourse.

If you take a swim in the seas of public life, and especially if you are Ebou Jallow, onetime spokesman of the AFPRC, and who allegedly absconded with millions in public funds, you should expect to be engaged. If you must criticise NADD, do so by all means, but be fair, and constructive.

And please remember that abusing state power to torture, imprison, and kill, is not a necessary equivalent of bravery. When the chips are down, the most brutal practitioners of state power are often the most cowardly of individuals. Doe begged for mercy. Saddam buried himself. Each of them committed unspeakable atrocities against ordinary, unarmed individuals, but were too scared to contemplate their own physical suffering.

Regardless of NADD's electoral fortunes in 2006, the tide of events will continue to go against your side of the spectrum. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads to fortune, omitted ….." You know the rest. Come off the wrong side of history. A post-Jammeh Gambia will be a big enough tent to accommodate even Ebou Jallow. No promise of immunity, but you benefit from the presumption of innocence, and a fair shot at testing the evidence against you in an independent court of law.

Don't come crying that we didn't warn you.



LJDarbo


>
> From: Ebou Jallow
> Date: 2005/08/07 Sun PM 06:05:52 BST
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: RE: [>-<] Cynthia, many thanks my darling :)
>
> Mister,
>
> Please show me where I "endorsed Jammeh's understanding of the rule of law" and what the hell is that anyway ? Listen, I am the first and only person on any Gambian forum online pushing the theory that the rule of law in the Gambia is nothing but a rigged legal system and an extension of Yaya's governmentality...Do you properly understand what I am saying? Why are some of you so eager to be self-righteous?
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
> Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour
>

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