Jobe, I had to laugh at your childish attempt to bring disharmony to the
Opposition by labeling some of us as angry and trying to applaud Ebrima and
the way he is debating you. What do you expect from me? To dish Ebrima or
quit calling you a hypocrite because I want your approval? What you Jobe
think of me, is meaningless to me. I am very comfortable with who I am and I
do not seek the endorsement of supporters of child murderers. I have nothing
but praise for the way Ebrima is approaching you. Contrary to popular
belief, I am a very democratic fellow. I hate telling people what to do. If
you noticed, I never tell people to quit discussing certain topics and go to
topics I think are more important. I believe there are several ways to skin
the head of a cat. I respect Ebrima's ways. It will not make me change my
ways, but I will not seek to impose my ways on Ebrima. I also do not expect
Ebrima to impose his ways on me. I praise Ebrima's approach because if
nothing else, he made you swallow your garbage. If you doubt me, go reread
your messages about Ebrima as late as last weekend. Was it not you who was
boasting that you are here to tell a side different from the 'lies Ebrima's
Sources were feeding us'? Now Ebrima is a hero to you. See why I said that
you are a phony. You have no conviction.

Now to the answers you attempted to give me. You attempted to absolve Yaya
by saying that the trigger happy animals that massacred our children were
NOT acting on Yaya's orders. I hope I made myself clear this time. You are
trying to play ignorant when you know full well what I am talking about. Put
in another way, if these 'inherently evil soldiers' were there and are still
there, how come we have other student demonstrations that did not end in the
cold-blooded massacre of 14 innocent and defenseless children? If you
downplay the orders Yaya gave to those animals, who are you trying to
absolve and who are you trying to lay blame on? I do not know who you think
you are dealing with when you expect us to just swallow this gibberish from
you. Pretending you do not understand what I meant when I debunked your
hypocrisy.

I am glad that you admitted that you veered off from the debate topic Ebrima
was engaged in. You just proved my point that rather than accusing me of
clouding the debate, you should have done an introspection first and see
whether you, yourself adequately addressed the topic of debate. I was not
the one that brought in some extraneous matters into the debate. You did
that. I was not talking about Nigeria or Gambia of 1981. I was talking about
a crime committed against our people in 2000. I was not talking about
accidents either. You are the one that always bring these matters into the
discussion in order to minimize Yaya's despicable role in the massacre of
our children. You did the same thing the other time when we were discussing
the massacre and you attempted to focus us on my personality and the
accident at the Sankung Sillah Plant. But at least you had the decency this
time to admit that you veered off and you quitted accusing me of clouding
the issues.

It is the height of naivete for educated Gambians like yourself to try and
extricate Yaya from the activities of parliamentarians. Do you honestly
believe that the parliamentarians are responsible for the Indemnity
legislation or any legislation for that matter? Do you honestly think that
if we had a more democratic person as our president the parliament will act
the way it has acted in the past? This is a rubber-stamp assembly.
Ten-year-olds know that. It is mind-boggling that seemingly informed people
like you do not see the light. Or may be you saw it but you are craftily
trying to divert people's attention. You want us to focus on those impotent
parliamentarians and leave your benefactor (Yaya) alone. Well, we are not
that gullible. We know that with Yaya gone, it would be a piece of cake to
deal with those APRC stalwarts. Those parliamentarians cannot order the
murder of our children and  have their wishes granted. Those
parliamentarians are not emptying government coffers without impunity.
Simple logic demands that we focus on the person that will not hesitate to
order the massacre of our children. We refuse to focus on those impotent
rubber stamps. We also refuse to primarily focus on the 'inherently evil
soldiers' you theorized about in a bid to absolve Yaya of liability.

Rather than giving us the example of countries where junta leaders' orders
were disobeyed, why did you not give us an example where Yaya's orders were
disobeyed? That would have been more pertinent to the discussion. In order
to convince us that Yaya's orders were not the deciding factor here, you
should have shown us examples of cases where Yaya was disobeyed by his
security forces. Don't veer off to other countries. All the evidence here
point to the fact that Yaya ordered the massacre. Up to this day, he has not
punished a single person for acting without his (Yaya's) permission. You
see, the difficulty in your argument is that, if we concede what you are
saying that the security forces did not act on Yaya's orders, the logical
conclusion is that Yaya should have punished those security forces for
acting ultra vires (insubordination). That never happened. On the contrary,
Yaya took credit by indicating that he was teaching the students a lesson.
Your argument does not hold water. You do not have evidence to support your
speculations. Veering off to other Dictatorships will not help you here.
Talk about specifics that will show us that Baboucarr Jatta, Sankung Badgie,
Ousman Badgie, Baba Jobe, Isatou Njie-Saidy, Sarjo Jallow et al acted
against Yaya's orders vis-a-vis the massacre of our children.

I noticed how you craftily tried to make it a matter of 'either or' when you
asked me to opine about who to blame: security personnel or Yaya. I say not
so fast. I blame both of them. Unlike you, I am not obsessed about absolving
Yaya of liability. I might be obsessed with other things, but I will never
fanatically support a child murderer. If you unleash an untamed animal to a
defenseless child, would it be logical for people to just focus on the
animal and absolve you of liability? I understand that unlike animals, our
soldiers have independent minds and should reason. But apart from the
gullible like you, we all realize the duress these soldiers work under. I
submit to you that had they defied Yaya's orders, they will be six feet deep
by now. All the soldiers that have been framed and killed for bogus coup
plots lost their lives because Yaya believed that those people were not
following his orders. The only reason the culprits here are walking the
streets of Banjul scot-free, is because they implemented Yaya's diabolical
orders. I blame all of them. Yaya, the soldiers, the National Assembly
Members, the Commission of Inquiry, the Coroner, and cronies like you that
are bent on clouding the issues and trying to absolve Yaya of culpability.
He is as guilty as sin. It is not a matter of 'either or. It is a matter of
'both' and 'all'.

The question you still have categorically NOT answered is why if you believe
that: "Unfortunately, since then [Yaya took over] we've gone through many
nightmarish episodes, never experienced in the history of this country. Many
people sencelessly lost their lives, many were sent to jail and many others
harrassed and detained." Emphasis mine ---- why do you still support Yaya?
The developments 'people yearned for 'and Yaya implemented?

And you wonder why I think that you are gullible and a phony? A robot could
have implemented those projects. All they needed to do was look at the blue
prints from the Jawara people, go beg Taiwan, and bingo. Does a robot
deserve your support? For your reasoning to hold water, only incumbents will
be re-elected for office. They are the only ones that can implement certain
projects. The Opposition cannot build roads or schools or hospitals. That
these projects were stolen from the Jawara regime and implemented during
this regime, does not mean that we should tolerate child murderers as our
leaders. This is a direct question I noticed you have avoided on numerous
occasions: Is Yaya the best Gambian to lead us? Give us his credentials.
Some of your arguments would have held water if Yaya was running against PPP
and their inept civil service. Yaya is not running against PPP. He has more
PPP people in his party than say UDP. He is running the same inept civil
service that he inherited from PPP. Matter of fact, the service worsen under
his watch. So what are you talking about when you want to convince us that
we should support Yaya because he was better than Jawara? We want to hear
how he is better than Ousainou Darboe or Hamat Bah or Sidia Jatta. That is
what we are interested in. Let Yaya run on his record.

I see you regurgitate the APRC propaganda against the various opposition
parties. I will not even deal with that. One, I am not a politician that
your comments affect. Secondly, you are just expressing perception from an
APRC crony. I do not expect you to give an honest opinion about for
instance, the influence of PPP in the current political climate. The facts
speak for themselves. What party does characters like Buba Baldeh and Nafa
Saho belong to? What party does people like Fatoumatta Jahumpa and Aji Fatou
Sallah support? Where did Famara Jatta work pre-1994? Where were you
pre-1994? Were you not part of the same inept civil service that could not
implement projects with the PPP machinery? Recycling these silly and
childish lies about the Opposition will never make them truths.

I am glad that Ebrima has tamed you somewhat. At least you admit that Yaya
is a Liar. You also admitted to Saul Khan that Yaya was a Murderer. You also
admitted that votes were Illegally Bought in Kiang. Well, we will catalog
some more. And then the million dollar moment, would be to get you to
explain how after everything you know, you still fanatically support Yaya.
KB



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