During President Clinton's campaign for the presidency, there was a
famous political one-liner which was a theme central to his campaign
strategy: "It is the economy, stupid."
The other day I was reading a newspaper columnist who was making the
same kinds of argument, but instead of the economy his arguments were
about creating jobs. He drew the same parallels and came to the
conclusion that: "It is all about jobs, stupid."
Reflecting on the Gambia's political situation, and everything that
had transpired from the first republic to the second republic, it had
become increasingly true that all the dynamics were, and still continue
to be motivated by interest. Therefore, the bickering, the posturing,
and political fist-fight notwithstanding: "It is all about interest,
stupid." But whose interest?
I remember asking this queston before, and I will ask it again. The
answer may determine the kind of political climate that can be nurtured
going forward.
Rene
-----Original Message-----
From: Modou Nyang <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, Feb 3, 2010 6:00 pm
Subject: Re: The Way Forward For Democratic Change
Uncle Haruna, i think it is you who should answer the questions you
raised. However, i will not question whether you are alright or not.
For you to question if i am alright or not lays bare your hypocritical
approach to the issues being discussed with pretensions of giving
advice.
Deal with the issues raised and forget whether i am alright or not.
Nyang
--- On Wed, 2/3/10, Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Way Forward For Democratic Change
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 4:46 PM
Dad, are you alright????? What is wrong with UDP selling an agenda of a
UDP-led coalition or a NADD selling an agenda of a NADD-led coalition.
It is selling isn't it??? I imagine you'll have to leave it to us to
buy either wouldn't you???? Can you go drink some milk for a minute and
settle down???? Negotiations are about comparing competing values. I
never knew you to be so worked up about nothing. What??? Haruna.
.
-----Original Message-----
From: Modou Nyang <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, Feb 3, 2010 4:02 pm
Subject: Re: The Way Forward For Democratic Change
Re: The Way Forward For Democratic Change
Modou Nyang
It is interesting to read addressed to emanate from a so-called UDP
steering committee in the UK aimed at responding to an article
published four months ago. However, the purpose and object of this far
too much belated rejoinder is clear to any critical thinker. It is a PR
attempt at presenting the UDP’s cowardly desire to lead at any cost.
Unlike during the run up to the 2006 Presidential election in which the
UDP leadership were not brave enough to put forward their ambition of
having their partners in NADD to wily-nilly select it’s party leader as
a presidential candidate, and backing out of the Alliance only after
their 'behind the scene cake sharing deals backfired; now they are at
least bold enough to put their agenda forward, albeit through some
so-called coordinators and steering committees. The objective of this
so-called rejoinder is an attempt at selling the UDP’s ambition of
having the opposition parties flocked together in whatever fashion but
have Ousainou Darboe and the UDP as a front to support it’s feeble
agenda to challenge Yahya Jammeh and his APRC.
Whilst Ousainou Darboe, the UDP leader, continues to pay lip service to
the desire of having a united opposition to contest the 2011
Presidential elections in interviews just to pretend that he and his
party are open to genuine unity among the opposition parties, they set
free their proxies to sell their true agenda to the public.
Notwithstanding, the gang masquerading in a steering committee in the
UK cannot just go by their game plan without engaging in a smear
campaign. They needed a wall to lean on to to sell their nefarious
agenda. And in Halifa Sallah and his work to promote the formation of a
united front against the APRC they found a perfect position for
marketeering. Hence it is now clear to every Gambian that all the noise
is a simple PR job at presenting the UDP’s “rally behind a UDP led
alliance” agenda to Halifa’s Agenda 2011's proposal geared towards
exploring mechanisms to form a united front against the APRC. It is
left to the Gambian people to decide which of the two agendas will
better serve their interest.
The fact that the so-called steering committee will pick up it’s
argument immediately after letting us know their bone of contention
with Halifa by telling us Halifa has a “longstanding reluctance to
rally behind a UDP led alliance and/or candidate,” is enough to discern
the chaff from the grain. Why should Halifa “rally behind the UDP? The
so-called steering committee never told us. However, it is worth
mentioning that there is enough to rally for in present day Gambia. The
Gambian people who have been and continue to suffer so much under the
APRC government are calling loud and clear for a 'rally behind' their
call. It was one of such rallying calls by the Gambian people that
Halifa responded to by demanding a stop to their humiliation during the
APRC Governmetns’s “policy of screening of witches”saga. This is what
every honest Gambian knows Halifa to be readily available to give his
full support and service - not cake sharing deals. But let’s face it.
Why rally behind a UDP led alliance or candidate? Since the so-called
steering committee did not tell us why, but went on to argue that it’s
party’s performance in the 2006 presidential election is due to a “lack
of adequate prior preparation”in their attempt to situate the UDP and
it’s leadership of being in a position to lead and bring about change
in the Gambia, one may take this argument as an answer to the above
question. However, this preposition is not only selfish and insensitive
of the plight of the Gambian people, but far from the truth. If one may
agree that the UDP did not have “adequate prior preparation” to execute
their electoral agenda in the 2006 presidential election, one should
also ask what was responsible for their equally poor performance in the
National Assembly and the Local Government elections three months and
seventeen months later respectively. I hope lack of enough “prior
preparation” will not be the scapegoat again when out of 128,451
registered voters in the KMC, the UDP Mayoral candidate pooled only
8,479 . And in Banjul the UDP managed only 1067 out of a voter register
of 19,441. This was the trend in all the contested Local Councils
throughout the remainder of the country. Was “adequate prior
preparations” a cause to blame too, faceless steering committee
members? Yes. The so-called UDP steering committee wants the Gambian
people to believe their side of the story. They wrote:
“UDP’s drop in votes has to be put into the right perspective if one is
to avoid misreading the result and distorting facts. The voter turn-out
in 2001 was almost 90% [89.71%]. This figure had dwindled down to
58.58% in 2006 amounting to a registered drop of 31.1%, and this is
notwithstanding the fact that the national voter register had been
updated with 219,630 new voters. This is clearly a significant drop and
has undoubtedly affected the general performance of the opposition in
the 2006 presidential election. This is the conventional wisdom and it
also explains why UDP had fewer votes in 2006 than in 2001".
Dear steering committee, does it make any sense for 219,630 as you put
it, to register to vote in an election only to decide to stay at home
on election day? Sure it was not only for the pleasure of being in
possession of a voters card that motivated them to queue out under the
sun to get registered only to have a voter card for keeps. After all,
one must posses a form of documentation first to get registered and the
majority of them registered by presenting National ID cards. The
question you raised by your own statistics which you knowingly refused
to address is:
WHY DIDN’T THEY VOTE? WHY DID THE UDP FAILED TO AT LEAST EQUAL THEIR
2001 VOTES EVEN IF THEY COULD NOT ATTRACT THE NEW OR OLD VOTERS WHO
WERE NOT WITH THEM FIVE YEARS AGO?
It is this question that the authors of the so-called rejoinder decided
to gloss over that Halifa tried to answer when he said: “Any careful
observer could detect that the country is crying for a new democratic
dispensation and political leadership which could inspire the people to
take charge of their destiny. The victory of the Independent candidates
confirms that a non partisan agenda is a way forward for political
change at the executive, National Assembly and Council levels.”The
people have rejected all the candidates that contested the 2006
elections. Nearly half of the registered voters did not bother to vote
for any candidate because of dissatisfaction with the system, one way
or the other. But yet still the steering committee is not done. They
want us to believe that a Ousainou Darboe and UDP led coalition is
capable and can deliver the goods in 2011. They continued:
“It is therefore untenable to use this as some kind of empirical
evidence to the suggestion that a party led alliance is unsellable. It
wasn’t like if these votes were lost to another party[s]. These are
votes which weren’t in the pond for any party to fish. In other words,
they did not participate in the electoral process. There is no evidence
to the suggestion that this is due to the type of alliance adopted by
the UDP or some form of protest specifically directed against it. In
fact Halifa’s own view was that the low voter turn-out was due to the
NADD fall-out while the UDP blame it inter alia on the harassment and
intimidation tactics employed by the incumbent. So 219,630 voters were
never in the pond for any party to fish".
Dear steering committee, I know you will not answer in the positive.
Hence I will tell you this is one reason why we need a strategic
alliance to fish out those 219,630 valuable voters among many others to
rescue our country from it’s present predicament. It is not only
putting forward a person backed by few people to contest as president,
instead it is to convince the dissatisfied voters - those 219,630 and
others who failed to register at all and even those innocent ones at
the APRC, to vote for a program that will free them forever and put
them on the track of prosperity. That is all. Nothing more, nothing
less. After inspiring the people to change a rotten system, all and
sundry can freely and openly call for the support of their program to
guide the country forward. In this way there will be no lame duck
blaming of harassment and intimidation to your misfortunes. After-all,
the intimidation will always be there as long as Yahya Jammeh is in
charge. Fabricating Lies:
“The lost of NRP leader’s Upper Saloum parliamentary seat in the 2005
by-election which was by the way necessitated by Halifa’s clandestine
registration of NADD as a political party against every sound legal
advice, and in contravention of the Preamble and Part1[1] of the
Memorandum of Understanding that explicitly established NADD as an
alliance, has had a demoralising effect on the party’s base
particularly in the Central River Division, and due to the dogmatic
wrangling within NADD, they too have not had a chance to adequately
prepare their base for the upcoming election.”
I have heard this before. First, it was in Brikama when the UDP
organised a rally together with the NRP few days after Ousainou Darboe
announced his resignation from NADD. It was one of the senior members
of the UDP - Dembo Bojang the chair of that meeting who was peddling
the lie that the remnant parties in NADD then conspired to have Hamat
lose his Upper Saloum seat. And again here comes the lie once more. And
in order to effectively sell this lie to the people this time, lack of
“adequately preparation” did not affect voter outcome in constituencies
like Sami and Kiang West, but only “in the Central River Division” and
then blame it on the registration of NADD and Halifa Sallah. The tactic
here is to continue to appease Hamat and the people who may still be in
support of him to believe that the UDP loves them so much that they are
taking up their party’s and erstwhile leader’s fight. But why did Hamat
not regain his seat in the 2007 NA elections? The steering committee
still wants us to believe in the 'lack of adequate preparations' as the
cause. Out of the four contested seats in the 2005 by-elections it was
only the Upper Saloum seat that was lost. Before the by-elections non
of the incumbents were engaged in any kind of preparation to maintain
their seats. And for the argument that the registration of NADD was
clandestine and failed to heed “sound legal advice” can be best
addressed by the parties concerned. I, as any other ordinary Gambian,
at least at the PDOIS level, were not privy to any internal happenings
during the NADD negotiations despite having the coordinator and two
Central committee members in the negotiating room. Most of what I know
about the inner dealings within NADD was what was in the open through
press releases and later in the newspapers. Here they come now:
“Halifa’s claim that he had proposed a party-led alliance before is not
strictly true. What happened was that PDOIS like all other parties knew
very well that UDP’s position was to have a party- led alliance with
the rest of the parties. They also knew that none of the parties
including the NRP were at the time ready to support this proposal. As
the chairperson of the meeting that was convened to discuss possible
proposals for the creation of a coalition/alliance of all opposition
parties, Halifa then felt obliged to put this proposal to the meeting
alongside his own, the NADD option. At the end, the UDP position could
not earn support from the other parties and that is how the NADD option
ended up being adopted.”
So “none of the parties including the NRP were at the time ready to
support” your UDP party led agenda and in the end the UDP position
could not earn support from the other parties. And that is including
the NRP as you just told us, steering committee members? Could this be
due to all the parties well publicised claims that only a united front
was capable of dislodging Jammeh and the APRC from power? Yes, all the
parties have said this over and over again. But now the UDP through
it’s so-called steering committee in the UK wants us to believe that
they are equipped to do the job single-handedly. And to go further that
Halifa has a history of opposition of a party led alliance and to use
the 2001 example as evidence is a continuation of the attempt of
smearing of the image of Halifa further. Every keen follower of Gambian
politics in the second republic can tell what exactly transpired in
2001 at YMCA or Girl Guides. The events of that meeting which even the
NRP that is now being pampered by the UDP for it’s own interest, was
not in attendance, [and therefore] cannot be called a genuine attempt
at forming a united opposition. Both PDOIS and NRP were not in
attendance at that meeting which was hastily convened. What it in-fact
revealed was the internal differences among the original founders and
supporters of the UDP, which resulted to the split of Sheriff Dibba and
his NCP from the UDP. Hence 2001 was only the UDP as it was, with the
exception of only the die-hard NCP supporters who followed Dibba. So it
is not true when the UDP wants to blame Halifa for what happened in
2001. He was not at the meeting neither the party he belonged to as a
result of the manner in which the meeting was organised. If there will
be a response from PDOIS or Halifa, I am sure this would be more
adequately addressed. This so-called steering committee’s malicious
attempt at reinventing facts tells well of the character of the authors
of this rejoinder. They want us to believe that the UDP ended it’s
boycott by contesting the Bakau council and Jarra West by-elections.
Yes it is true the elections were contested before the signing of the
NADD MoU in 2005. But it is being economical with the truth not to add
that the elections came at a time when negotiations for a united front
were already in progress, and in fact, all the opposition parties took
part in the campaign to get both Rambo and Kemeseng elected.
The Jarra West seat was more critical. The people there were made to
believe that there was no need contesting elections due to the problems
in the system to justify the UDP’s boycott in 2002. Time and resources
from all the opposition parties were expended to campaign for the two
candidates as it served as test for the ground for the emerging
alliance/coalition that was being negotiated. I was in Bakau at the
time; from nominations to the counting of the votes - I only missed the
trip to Jarra but watched the tapes and know the input of the different
parties and Halifa in particular. So it is a lie to project that Halifa
opposed a party led alliance. The fact of the matter is that the UDP
never tabled it’s wishes. All they did was to try and broker 'cake
sharing deals' with some of the negotiating parties at NADD. This may
tell us why Hamat and his NRP, whom this so-called steering committee
confirmed were not in favour of a party led alliance in the beginning,
later ganged up with them and try to fool the Gambian people that they
needed only 5% of the votes to add up to their 2001 votes to win the
election. It is this 'cake sharing deals' which later crumbled, and it
tells the UDP’s level of despise of OJ for daring to contest the
flag-bearer-ship of NADD.
The steering committee would not even tell us why Hamat was not present
during the first meeting to nominate candidates for the position of
flag-bearer of NADD and why the other representative of the NRP, Dulo
Bah, did not vote or seconded Yaya Jallow’s nomination of Ousainou
Darboe for NADD flag-bearer. Instead of honestly and openly negotiating
with their partners, the UDP opted for other tactics at the back of
their other partners. I hope they learn from that lesson and bravely
and honestly negotiate for the support of their position.
In concluding, I will state that figures presented by Halifa were an
attempt to prove that larger majority of registered voters and non
registered eligible voters are yearning for a new leaf in Gambian
politics and one option that will make that possible is giving the task
to the people themselves to choose who is to lead them. I will deal
with that issue in another article.
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