Dad, I thought I read this at Freedomnews. If I didn't know any better I'd think Halifa likes to talk. A lot. Jesus friggin Christ.
Haruna. There is progress being made in the world you know. I wish Halifa can help the La-Guinea Forces Vives in this their time of need. What????

-----Original Message-----
From: Modou Nyang <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sun, Dec 6, 2009 5:24 pm
Subject: Part 2 of Halifa's Response to the Freedom Editorial




Part 2
Pa , I have cast a fleeting glance at some of the reflections conveyed to me by those who are keenly following my attempt to expurgate what I consider  to be unfair  comments levelled against me. Interestingly enough after i have asked for Part One to be forwarded to you one person, a non Gambian, who does not know me  did accuse me of  arrogance and recalcitrance but was asked by others to either make substantive contribution to the debate or hold his breath . As far as I am concerned there is nothing to clarify or argue regarding opinions on personality traits or emotive disposition of a person. Wisdom dictates that one simply takes note of them and moves on. Sometimes, they are aimed at steering a person towards his or her humble self. At other times they amount to an attempt to cover up unpleasant facts with angry invectives. I am convinced that the issues you have raised should be contextualised so that it could engender a seriously meant debate regarding the very future of the multi-party system in our country and the very destiny of our people. I am an internationalist in terms of world view and would entertain dialogue and debate with any one, from anywhere, who is interested in a viable way forward for our country.
Allow me to reiterate in passing that nothing is more important than the battle of thought, words and deeds in the quest to carve a destiny of liberty, dignity and prosperity for our people, one that our children and children’s children could be proud of. Those with visions and missions are likely to become more inspired and enlivened by such battles of ideas. Those with parochial preoccupations are easily intimidated and put off by them. Let us move on to consider in good faith all the evidence one could put on display in the public space regarding the subject you have raised and about which I  have personally been invited by you to  express an opinion. 
Allow me to reiterate again that the fundamental task which confronted the representatives of the various opposition parties was how to create a mechanism that could permit them to coalesce temporarily without negating their individual interests. What was required of each of them is to embrace the value that psychologists refer to as deferred gratification. Each party had the power to determine the final product of our negotiation and  the duty to respect what we mutually endorsed and pursue its interest within the confines of the architecture and guidelines we had established. Now some are claiming that the middle ground which made unity possible was a mistake. Some are even giving the impression that they were tricked to move to the middle ground. One of the leaders even claimed that he was pressured to sign something like an oath at the eleventh hour. Some are asking whether NADD aimed to be an Alliance of political parties, a coalition or a merger. Some are asking why it was necessary to go to the extent of creating NADD when a coalition of parties could have been initiated and led by the party with the majority of supporters. Some have referred to alliances in Sweden and other European Countries in the formation of Governments. Conspiracy theories and intriguing prognoses of what happened are being hatched and machinations of all sorts are being alleged. 
Allow me to put everything in its clear perspective so that all doubts would be cleared once and for all. Time is not on our side. Procrastination in matters of clarity leads us to the path of making one step forward only to be followed by two steps backward.  
Let me now assert with all the emphasis I could muster that no one was tricked to sign a memorandum of understanding to establish NADD. First and foremost, allow me to share the content of the document which is said, by one of the leaders, to have been signed at the eleventh hour along with the Memorandum of Understanding. It reads:

 
”DECLARATION OF COMMITMENT/ ADHERENCE TO THE PRINCIPLES AND CONTENT OF THE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BY PARTY REPRESENTATIVES
I……………….. ………..representing The…………………………..solemnly declare that the whole membership of the …………………..have agreed to be faithful and bear true commitment to the letter and spirit of the Memorandum of Understanding establishing the National Alliance for Democracy and Development NADD and shall preserve, protect, defend and observe its principles, objectives , policies and code of conduct as prescribed by its organs.
In furthering the objectives of NADD we shall be bound by the dictates of conscience and the National interest.


Done at Palm Groove Hotel

This Seventeenth day of January
Two Thousand and Five.



Name……………………………..

Signature………………………….”



Pa, does any literate person need to be tricked to sign such a document just to affirm one’s commitment to what one’s party has reviewed and approved in advance before signature? Do you see the reason why I am characterising some of the explanations being given regarding the collapse of NADD as intrigues aimed at giving legitimacy to conspiracy theories without shouldering the burden of proving what is insinuated? Facts however are indeed very stubborn and even though I have tried to be very diplomatic, the demands for clarification and explanation are making it impossible for me to tailor the evidence to suit diplomatic designs. 
Let me now answer the questions point by point. Was any leader tricked to support the NADD idea? The answer is in the negative. Was the proposal to establish an umbrella party like NADD the only option or did we have proposals on the floor for a party to be allowed to lead if it could show that it had a larger following? If such a proposal was on the floor why didn’t the UDP support such an option?  Why should they make this an issue for abandoning NADD? 
For your information NADD went through six phases before it was fully established. Before the leaders made a decision to establish NADD I made a proposal  for the parties to disperse to build their own support base and re-convene six months before an election to decide on the terms for giving support to the leader of the opposition party which was likely to get the largest number of votes in an election. Supporters of the UDP continue to argue that it should have been allowed to lead the alliance since it was able to pull more votes than any other opposition party in previous elections but none of them has publicly asked their leaders why they did not adopt the first proposal put before them which complements the position they have been propagating after the collapse of NADD. Interestingly enough no party insisted on the first option. None of the leaders has explained why no party championed the first option. I will explain very clearly why that was the case at the appropriate place. The important point to note is that all the parties supported the second option. 
The second option entailed the establishment of an umbrella party which obliged the political parties to pool their material and human resources in order to contest elections under the same party tag, operate a transitional Government and create a level ground for genuine multiparty contest after the transition. This was unanimously endorsed without any conditionality or reservation expressed by any party.
The leaders commissioned the preparation of a concept paper elaborating on the objectives, name, structures and other characteristics of the Umbrella Party for consideration. It goes without saying that after the Concept paper was reviewed the following steps were taken to establish NADD: 
First and foremost, the leaders of the various parties agreed to establish a Technical Committee comprising two representatives from each party who were assigned the responsibility of working with the coordinator to review the concept paper and further put together the architecture of a memorandum of understanding for consideration by the executive. 
Secondly, the Technical Committee met and engaged in rigorous discussions for weeks or months before they could submit a blue print to the executive. Suffice it to say some of the members of the Technical Committee were former Permanent Secretaries or had Dr. before their names. 
Thirdly, the Technical Committee submitted its draft to the executive for onward transmission to the executive Committees of their political parties for review at the party level.
Fourthly, the members of the Executive Committee submitted reports on the positions of the different party organs on the draft Memorandum of Understanding.
Fifthly, after all parties gave approval the Technical Committee was asked to prepare the ground for the signing ceremony.
Finally, all executive members were asked to seek consultation with the relevant party organs regarding the registration of NADD.
NADD was registered after due consultation. There is therefore no room for trickery. Every thing was done in a transparent manner. I have tried to be as diplomatic as possible in all my previous analyses so that no one who had been in the executive committee would lose face. However, the attempt by some to show that they were tricked or pressurised to sign the memorandum of understanding is a bit far fetched. One has to look at the video recording of both the signing ceremony and the first inaugural meeting  to discover how elated all the leaders were for having created a formidable force to reckon with in Gambian Politics. This force proceeded to win many by-elections and was leading the APRC in popular votes when the results of the by-elections are combined.
The question now arises: Why didn’t the leaders of the UDP insist on a UDP led Alliance when we met in 2004  as they are doing now? Why did all opposition parties irrespective of size agree to sign a Memorandum of Understanding which guaranteed the sovereign equality of all member parties for the period of the transition? Was it out of generosity or a by product of historical necessity? Was the appropriate candidate for a flag bearer obvious or were we compelled to open the post for contest? Was there any need for a primary or was it engendered by greed? 
To answer these questions we have to look at the state of each political party at the time of the negotiations in 2004 and determine whether any of them had the moral authority and political muscle to demand for others to accept its leadership.
Once we shed light on the true political state and weight of each of the political parties which came together in 2004 to form an alliance one should be able to see very clearly why the UDP did not embrace the proposal, which was made, for the opposition parties to go their separate ways and come together, at least six months before the Presidential elections, to embrace the candidate of the party which had the largest number of supporters. 
For your information when we first met the UDP was emerging from two splits. You would recall that the UDP was forged in 1996 as an Alliance between the former ruling party and the former opposition parties that were banned from contesting in the 1996 Presidential elections. The first split occurred in 2001 when Jammeh decided to remove the ban on the former ruling Party, the PPP and the Former Opposition parties NCP and GPP. The PPP and NCP decided to register their parties while the UDP was still registered and had drawn membership from the two parties. The GPP did not venture to be registered. However after the registration of the PPP and NCP they still agreed to meet with the UDP and the leader of the GPP to discuss about an Alliance. PDOIS and NRP were not given adequate notice to participate. Eventually, The PPP and the former GPP leader decided to endorse the Candidature of the UDP leader and the NCP leader decided to go on his own.  This was the first split. Many of his supporters however felt that it was too late in the day for the NCP leader to win. Hence they stuck to the UDP. Others felt that the UDP was under the grip of the former ruling party hence they sunk to political apathy. The NCP leader therefore decided to develop an Alliance with the ruling APRC to contest the National Assembly elections as a way of settling score with the former ruling Party.
The UDP presidential candidate conceded defeat by calling President Jammeh to congratulate him after the 2001 Presidential Elections. Internal party pressure compelled 
the UDP leader to change his position on the results of the 2001 Presidential elections. Eventually the party declared the elections to be unfair and made a declaration to boycott future elections until the anomalies were remedied by the Independent Electoral Commission. 
Political inactivity gripped the party. The PPP withdrew its support. The former Propaganda Secretary also withdrew from the UDP to form NDAM and began to appeal to the young activists in UDP to join his movement. This was the second split of the UDP. 
Hence when we met in 2004 the UDP had no seat in the National Assembly and had declared that it will not participate in elections again until electoral reforms were made. This had driven many of their supporters into political apathy and many of the supporters of the NCP leader who stayed on after the split deserted to join the APRC when the NCP leader became Speaker of the National Assembly. 
Pa, let me ask you this simple question: If you were among the leaders who met to form an Alliance would it have been automatic to select the UDP leader as flag bearer of a credible alliance? If the answer is in the negative then you should equally understand why the issue of majority and minority opposition parties was not raised by the very party which should have had an interest in raising it. Facts are irrelevant if you do not situate them within the context of time and circumstances. This is the verdict of objective reality and commonsense and it is incontrovertible.
In fact, the greatest dilemma confronting the UDP at the time was how to convince its supporters to have confidence in participating in election again which they claimed was won but was stolen by might. This was evident when I led a delegation to Jarra West after the incarceration of Baba Jobe, to consult the people regarding candidature. I was accompanied by the current Minority leader in the National Assembly who could bear me witness. The people just did not see any need to participate. Protest votes were in the offing and a young man by the name of Fadera who was encouraged to either stand as an Independent Candidate or for PDOIS was a favourite. He already had over a thousand people who signed his nomination papers. The delegation had to convince Fadera to give chance to Kemeseng. A big debate ensued whether Kemeseng should go on a UDP ticket or an Independent one. They could not understand how they could unravel the UDP boycott. It was one of Fadera’s supporters who proposed for Kemeseng to stand as a UDP candidate. Let me emphasise that the current Minority leader is a living witness to what is narrated. To make a long narration short, my office in SerreKunda, with Faye Susso coordinating the initiative,  had to mastermind the transportation of a thousand registered voters who were from Jarra but came to the Urban area for one purpose or another, to go and vote for Kemeseng. Kemeseng won the July 2004 by-election. He polled 4375 votes while Musa Alkali Essa Saidykhan of the APRC polled 3348 votes. For your information my Constituency office as a PDOIS National Assembly member, gave a loan to the emerging alliance to settle a number of bills connected with his election and victory, which has never been paid up to this very day. If we were motivated by narrow party or selfish interest would we have deprived a PDOIS Constituency of Funds or PDOIS supporter of Candidature in favour of a UDP candidate? Suffice it to say, Kemeseng also stood as NADD and won the by election which followed the declaration of our seats vacant. However, when he left this Alliance between the Majority opposition party and the other socalled less than five percent mass base parties and stood for the Majority opposition party he polled 2760 votes while the APRC candidate, Njai Darboe polled 5024 votes in the 2007 National Assembly elections. 
The lesson is therefore clear. There was more to NADD than the simple arithmetic of adding the votes of less than five percent parties to those of more than five percent parties. I will come to this later after considering the state and weight of the other parties.
At the time of the discussion NRP had participated in the 2002 National Assembly elections. It did put up candidates in ten Constituencies and won only one. Hence, compared to 1997, its seats had reduced from 2 to1 seat in the National Assembly. Would you have automatically selected the leader of such a party to be the Presidential Candidate of an opposition alliance because of political weight? If your answer is in the negative then you are coming closer to the reason why NADD was born out of historical necessity and not out of historical generosity.
Thirdly, PDOIS also participated in the 2002 National Assembly Elections. It put up five candidates and won two seats. Compared to 1997, its seats increased from 1 to 2 seats. In the other 3 seats it had 40 percent, 34 percent and 20 percent of the votes respectively. Would you have automatically selected a PDOIS leader to be the presidential candidate of the alliance? If your answer is in the negative then we are almost at the threshold of discovering what gave birth to NADD. 
It goes without saying that NDAM had just been established and had not participated in any election. In the same vein PPP had just broken its link with the UDP and had not even participated in any election. Would you have agreed for their leaders to be automatically made the political leaders of an opposition alliance in the name of their parties?  If your answer is in the negative then you would have drawn the conclusion that all the leaders who met inevitably had to draw, that is, no leader at the time had the political weight to be automatically chosen to lead an opposition alliance to victory in the name of his party. This fact is incontrovertible. Faced with this historical fact, times and circumstances dictated that we either gave each party time to reconstitute itself and grow to earn the desired political weight and the  resultant peer confidence and support to lead others to victory or combine our energies, resources and intelligence to build something that had more political weight than all the parties combined. Both proposals were made and all parties chose the latter. What then is the qualm? 
The weight of NADD was not the sum total of the weight of its parts. NADD was an entirely new entity which was fundamentally different from each of its parts. It sought to impress that novelty in principle, programme and practices on the people so that irrespective of their ideologies and political association they would see the need to rise up from their political apathy and embrace what was not designed to put any individual political party in power  but would instead empower the people once and for all so that their sovereign will power would  be the determinant of the sovereign existence of the future Gambian  State and Government, for all times. This new entity had no automatic leader. One had to work for and earn the trust of all the executive members or the majority of people who would have participated in a primary, to be a Presidential Candidate. The sincere and honest thing to have done is to work within the structures agreed upon to seek a mandate. Interestingly enough, those who had interest in leadership but worked within the structures are being accused of being greedy. One person who claims to be a PDOIS supporter even expressed his contempt for the PPP and questioned why I should end up being a bedfellow of Juwara and OJ. He has forgotten that they asked us to put Ideology aside and form an alliance which could only be possible by creating a middle ground with its principles, and procedures which all had to adhere to. NADD was formidable because each Gambian could find in it a person or programme that one could identify with. This is why it was able to overcome political apathy.
In fact NADD was so formidable that the President of Nigeria had to come to the Gambia to mediate between it and the APRC Government. The Memorandum of Understanding which was signed was read over the National Media in all the Languages. A new era of multi-party politics should have dawned. Instead of NADD leaping forward after Obasanjo’s departure it was deserted by two parties. A tale of two camps became the order of the day.
Each house tried to defend itself while each crumbled under the weight of public disbelief that a force which could motivate a whole head of state to come to the Gambia to negotiate its protection and security could crumble like a house of cards just after his departure. The reason for the collapse however is simple. 

See Part 3 which will deal with the split and collapse of NADD and Part 4 which will deal with the way forward.





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