Fatou Ceesay,

What you have stated is an opinion. I respect your opinion.

You have mentioned the suffering of many people. There is no where that I
have claimed that I have suffered more than anybody. As you rightly put it,
whatever may have happened to me at any given time in the political life of
this country is my own choice.

You have mentioned the suffering of the Gambian people. Who is responsible
for that suffering, and how? Who has governed this country up to 1994? What
has actually changed since 1994? I have never been a policy maker, nor have
I ever been a member of the National Assembly or House of Representatives.
If you truly care about the suffering you mentioned, your major
preoccupation should be to question how they came to be impoverished and
what needs to be done to eradicate their conditions.

You have mentioned that my role during the coup period should be questioned.
You claimed that I was the only one who was allowed to function. Don't you
mean that we were the only ones who earned respect by taking a principled
stand when the coup occurred and then defied the ban on Decree No. 4 while
your "Foday Dusubas" handed themselves to the military and pledged their
support?

We had no seat in the House of Representatives. We could have comfortably
sat down like everybody else and waited for whatever the future may have
brought. When we challenged Decree 4 and went to court, we could have easily
found excuse to go on exile and start exposing the Jammeh government from
abroad. We would have been heroes of some people then. Instead, we stayed in
The Gambia. We are not offered any job by any government that we have taken.

In order to intensify the struggle for the establishment of a constitutional
order, we established a Democratic Front prior to November 11, 1994
incident, which had the aim to establish a National Conference comprising
representatives of all political parties. In my reply to Hamjatta, I will
post the declaration and petition that were prepared. What is questionable
about calling for a national conference? Instead, a National Consultative
Committee was established to determine the timetable.

In order to return to constitutional rule, we created a minimum programme of
either restoring the 1970 Constitution or any other constitution which is
better. No one has argued that the 1997 constitution is worse than the 1970
constitution. What is rather strange is that critics are defending
politicians who maintain an inferior constitution from 1970 to 1994. This
unthinking attitude is not really impressive.

When the draft constitution was voted for at a referendum, we immediately
started to rely on its spirit to call for a return to an electoral system.
What is questionable about this?

Now, you mentioned about the groundnuts. This clearly shows that you are
completely out of touch with the realities in The Gambia. FOROYAA and PDOIS
have been the most consistent in explaining problems of the groundnut trade
to the farmers. We have written countless number of letters on this issue
and have launched countless number of rallies to show how an industry which
had enabled GPMB to have D101 million in 1978 was driven to total bankruptcy
by 1993 that in its final years GPMB could only purchase less than 3000
tonnes of groundnuts and was later sold in 1993 for D20 million with D6
million being advanced and the rest paid by instalment for a period of two
years.

We explained to the farmers how the Jammeh government gave the impression
that it could set the price of groundnuts without being the buyers; that
this set it into conflict with GGC which bought GPMB and which refused to
purchase groundnuts at the price set by the government for the sole purpose
of currying the favour of the farmers.

We have shown how the government promised to subsidise GGC only to fail in
its commitment. We have shown how the government seized GGC's assets and
thus provoked international arbitration which put the groundnut trade into a
complete halt.

We have told the farmers that if the government had any commitment from the
turnover of the parastatals of almost D900 million, it should have been able
to set aside a long time ago money that could be utilised to purchase the
groundnut of the farmers.

We have told the farmers that as of December 31, 1998, the Assets Management
and Recovery Corporation is said to have recovered more than D170 million
and that such accounts could have been utilised to purchase groundnuts, sell
it abroad and return the money.

We are glad that in our rallies farmers understand that the PPP government
and now the APRC are not committed to the eradication of their poverty, but
are both following prescriptions from their donors.

Fatou, it is good to be a critic. However, it is better to do your
investigation before you launch any criticism.

You have mentioned that I am a politician and that gone are the days when I
will make people put foot in their mouths. We all know what such statements
mean. Nobody can close the mouth of anyone. When the term is utilised, it
simple means that when one has nothing to defend one must keep quiet; to
continue to defend the indefensible is to sink into frivolity.

Fatou, you did mention about Koro Ceesay. FOROYAA is  a newspaper. It has
reporters and editors. When its reporters investigate a case and are ready
to stand by their reports, we the editors have no choice but to publish
their findings. When we published the findings of our reporters, we
concluded with an editorial comment that we could not come with any
conclusive evidence; that even though the findings of reporters seem to
indicate an accident, a Coroner's Inquest was essential to establish the
cause of death. This is what the editorial of FOROYAA indicated. This is a
legitimate position which covers us if findings went either way. We trusted
our reporters and knew that they reported what was known to them in good
faith, in the public interest.

We, as Gambians, went beyond what we published. We went to the hospital to
follow the whole case until we were convinced that post mortem was done. Mr
Sam Sarr went all the way to the then Attorney General, Mr Mustapha Marong,
to emphasise the need for a Coroner's Inquest. This is how far we had gone
which we have never published.

Needless to say, a press release issued by the then Chairman of the AFPRC
reported him to acknowledge responsibility for Koro's death. Koro's parents
constantly re-echoed that they were promised by the State's delegation that
investigation would be done into the death of Koro. What other action should
be more influential in getting the State to act? What did you want us to do?
To fabricate information that had not been given to us by our reporters?
Suppose we fabricated information and it was later found to be the contrary,
could anybody say that we had acted in good faith?  Can you tell us who
killed Koro Ceesay and how? can you tell us the source of your information
and when you got the information? Can you tell us whether such information
was given to any newspaper in The Gambia at the time? Can you tell us what
was done with the information, at the time?

Anybody can utilise any issue to try to discredit anyone. Koro Ceesay's
death should be the concern of all Gambians and all of us should put
whatever pressure we can for a Coroner's Inquest to be held. Without that
anybody can speculate regarding the cause of death.

Finally, we are on record opposing the ban of any political party. It is the
right of every Gambian to elect or be elected in accordance with the
limitations that are reasonably justifiable in any democratic society, such
as age, and so on and so forth.

Politics is not a wrestling match. OJ will tell you that after the teething
period, when the PPP threatened that it would uproot PDOIS after the 1987
elections which required us to say the appropriate things to the PPP, I had
never even mentioned his name on a political platform not to talk about
engaging in any form of character assassination. PDOIS has always been
interested in systems, policies and programmes. We have never been intereste
d in personalities.

Let me inform you that from 1983 to 1992, my passport was seized. Lamin Kiti
Jabang, who was Minister of Interior then would confirm that it was in 1992
that I received my passport, but I have never mentioned this in a political
rally in order to win any form of sympathy.

In our view, the Gambian people should cast their votes for any party which
has the programme to eradicate their poverty. Hence, we are not competing
with anyone. We are simply putting our message across to the people. If they
trust that the programmes we put before them can address their needs and
aspirations and that we are the type of people who can address their needs
and aspirations, they may vote for us. In five years, they should be able to
determine whether our words will match our deeds. If our words fail to match
our deeds, they have every justification to boot us out. This is a very
simple process. It does not need anybody to be a "Dusuba", or a "Number
One".

Greetings.

Halifa Sallah.

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