Mr Bah,

When everything is said and done, i only hope that political historians pay
enough attention to the extent which the PDOIS/Foroyaa institutional
indoctrination of young minds and wilfully turning them into programmed
fanatics, had ended playing into the hands of the devil that has since July
22nd 1994 held our dear country hostage. That the so-called PDOIS
enlightenment had invariably churned out robotic minds with no sense of
independent thinking is not in doubt. I mean look at the alarming rate at
which programmed fanatics are clambering out of the woodwork and helping to
obfuscate things they don't have the capacity to fully discern and make
rational judgements of. The so-called PDOIS enlightenment certainly has its
downsides; the programmed fanaticism of people like Jamba Jobe, Bass Ndow et
al is testament to that. Pipsqueaks like Jamba Jobe think people don't their
real identity; so they think that they have the latitude to wet-dream and
spew all sorts of  irrational nonsense here, non-stop. Well, i got news for
the Brother: we know the coward behind the pseudonym of Jamba Jobe. I'll just
let him stretch himself thin and then i'll remind him of his encounter with
Chongan at the Senegalese embassy in London. Let the midget continue to make
a fumbling fool of himself. His day of reckoning is just right around the
corner. Until then, i'll just keep on enjoying his irrational outbursts.

 Anyway, enough of that digression on what amounts to nothing more than a
cursory glance at a crowd of fanatical pipsqueaks who are always on standby
for a Saint Halifa of the Diocese of Churchill's Town to press the green
button on his remote control for the programmed fanatics to start singing
from the hymn sheet of irrational nonsense. I have to confess here that right
from the onset when you challenged our position vis-a-vis the formation of
the Alliance and what really took place, i took yours to be an honest and
truth-seeking appraisal of our country's fundamental problems. And for the
life in me, i really did believe that your appraisals, challenges or
interventions were rooted in a profound understanding of what has actually
gone wrong with our country's body politic and what corrective measures we
need to pursue in order to better the situation. This is why i took your
interventions with the moral seriousness i believed then that they deserved
and accorded you with due respect. I regret to announce that i no longer view
you as such. The reason for this is very simple. In your last correspondence,
you noted:

"The fact that to you the Gambian people are horses and the political party
traders can engage in political horse trading underground reflects the height
of your political decadence."

Here your political ignorance is unmasked. Who on earth ever told you that
when people speak of political horsetrading they refer to it to mean that
people or voters are horses and politicians are the traders? What ignorance!
Needless to say that you used your ignorance of basic political metaphors to
confuse and distort a simple unambiguous point i was then making. To help you
understand horsetrading as a political metaphor, let me reach for my
Britannica. My Britannica informs me that political horsetrading means:
"negotiation accompanied by shrewd bargaining and reciprocal concessions."
Certainly, this was the context: having recognised that inherent differences
still exist amongst the Opposition parties, there was the need to enter
"negotiations accompanied by shrewd bargaining and reciprocal concessions" so
that at the end of the day there could be some form of political coalition of
the Opposition parties against Jammeh and the APRC. You ignorantly failed to
grasp this simple moral truth. Shows i'm talking to the wrong person in terms
of political profundity.

On other matters, you showed yourself to be a sophist. When you insist on
calling the Alliance a PPP-UDP fudge, you forward no convincing evidence. On
the contrary, you descended into the usual the Foroyaa conspiratorial
innuendoes of saying intriguing things without beefing it up with evidence.
In this instance, you wrote:

"Sincere Gambians recognise that a blunder has been made by the opposition.
If each political party stated its political agenda for a coalition in order
to at least give the image of a united front, the political parties could
have selected a coalition candidate in the first round or tell the press that
they have agreed to think
of a coalition in the second round. This is a simple truth that a person like
you fails to digest. I mentioned that the UDP declared that it was going to
launch its presidential campaign on the 18th. August. I also indicated that
only the PPP has endorse Darboe's candidature so far. You confused this and
claimed
that Mr. Darboe was not exclusively selected by the UDP to lead the
coalition. These are two different things: The UDP announcement came before
the announcement of the coalition. You claimed that this is gross
misrepresentation of the fact .However, you did not present any fact to
refute what I have said, instead you continued to speak for the NRP leader,
even though I have transmitted a press release signed by the chairman of the
inter party meeting which made no mention of PDOIS, NRP or GDP. I am sure you
must have known by now that Assan Musa Camara has informed the nation that he
will not register the GPP for the coming Presidential and National Assembly
elections. Which then is the other party ? I rely on facts to inform people
what is happening on the ground and you rely on second hand information to
mislead the people in the L"

Where to begin? The distortion that i was attempting to speak for the NRP
leader? Where does this fabrication come from? Where did i state that i was
speaking for the NRP leader? Can you kindly contextualise for me where i
clearly indicated that i was speaking for the NRP leader? The truth of the
matter is that i merely pointed out the fact that albeit being away, the NRP
leader upon learning of the Alliance, did send a message of solidarity to the
Alliance. If you are have problems reading what i write, i respectfully urge
you to seek clarifications before you make wholesale comments on them and end
up distorting my views.

Again, in your blatant attempts to distort reality you said that the UDP did
announce its presidential candidate as Mr Darbo even before the Alliance
announcement? When exactly did this announcement take place? Who exactly made
the announcement? Was it reported in the papers? Was it an official press
release? If so, who signed it? Instead of recycling APRC lies and distortion,
Foroyaa ought to start being responsible and stop distorting reality in order
to enliven its prejudices against the Alliance. The fact of the matter is
that there was never an official UDP announcement of a presidential candidate
before the Alliance one was announced. This, Foroyaa will never be able to
distort.

Furthermore, you pathetically tried to sell the view that the Alliance is a
PPP-UDP concoction and has no other political parties backing save those two.
This is a fabrication. The fact of the matter remains that even though it
remains unregistered, the GPP supports the Alliance. Indeed, members of the
GPP and its leaders like Camara and Femi Peters grace the Alliances power
structures with influence and working for an Alliance victory against Jammeh.
Also, despite the fact that there has been no official NRP statement, those
close to the leadership and in the know, have unequivocally stated that - at
the very least - the leader of that party subscribes to the formulation of
the Alliance and had sent the Alliance a solidarity message. How then is this
a PPP-UDP affair? Is Foroyaa not reducing its columns into a rcycling plant
of APRC disinformation nonsenses?

Finally, in a bizarre attempt to beef up PDOIS' coalition credentials, you
wrote:

"PDOIS was the first party to suggest that coalition can come in the second
round. This advice was not heeded to. Secondly, PDOIS provided an agenda for
a transition programme of one year characterised by civic education to
enlighten the Gambian people so that inducement and intimidation will be
things of the past; the opening of the national media to all political
parties to put their programme before the people for a period of one year;
the ratification of what the APRC had removed or included in the constitution
and other laws; to be followed by presidential election after one year so
that the people can make their choice of parties. PDOIS was waiting for other
political parties to come up with an agenda before an inter party meeting
could be set up.. The developments which followed leading to the 13th. August
fiasco has nothing to do with PDOIS. PDOIS acted in good faith throughout.
Foroyaa simply exposed what was happening"

Of course PDOIS' seated ambivalence towards the UDP and the PPP will never
let it act in good faith. PDOIS feels dogmatically antithetical to both the
UDP and the PPP. In fact PDOIS always insisted that the UDP is a front for
the PPP. To make matters worse for this deep seated ambivalence, there is a
personality obsession baggage to all this. This is precisely why during the
1996 elections, PDOIS was staking out positions that aligned it - wittingly
or unwittingly - to the APRC. PDOIS always viewed the UDP as Trojan horse for
bringing back the PPP and so felt that to avoid that being the case it staked
out positions that involved, amongst others, anti- Jawara and PPP rhetoric
and unwittingly providing allure to the APRC's poses. More to the point, this
deep seated ambivalence best explains PDOIS' low-risk and soft criticisms of
the APRC regime and its disastrous record in office. This, in my view, is
what explains PDOIS' current deep seated ambivalence towards a coalition with
the other Opposition parties, especially those parties that have former PPP
members within their ranks.

Which takes me to your assertion that PDOIS has clearly stated its position
on the coalition issue from the outset. This is simply not the case. I
remember being amongst those who literally forced Halifa to unequivocally
PDOIS' position on the issue of political alliance with the other Opposition
parties. It took us ages before we can bring a straight answer from the
gentleman! The fact remains that PDOIS neither published a clear position on
this issue nor did it publish a framework paper on what can act as a basis
for mutual cooperation between the Opposition parties. Come on fill me in.
Where were these things published? Instead, what we had was Halifa granting
interviews and stating things that never added up to clear political position
on the alliance.

Finally, let remind you - as if that were needed anymore - of the fact that
the year 2001 ain't 1989: the latitude Foroyaa had to write in its heydays of
the late 80s and 90s and brow beating people into accepting their versions of
the truth, is no longer the case. If Foroyaa tries to distort things, it will
find people equally equipped to handle any wilful attempts to create mischief
for the Alliance. Let Foroyaa fight for what it believes and let others do
their own thing. If Foroyaa ever attempts to distort the current political
configuration and or smear the Alliance, i promise you it will be tit for
tat. That is the essence of the matter.

Hamjatta Kanteh

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