Mr Kanteh,
  You called this paper a "RAG", For the sake of decency and political
maturity on this list, please consider your choice of words so that we can
all build a better Gambia. It seems you have a beef with these people but
they are doing the talk and also walking the walk.

Have a nice weekend




>From: Hamjatta Kanteh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: What's the Story? Ethnic Myth-Makers, Peddlers and Pharisees
>Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 10:15:46 EDT
>
>Kb,
>An excellent and timely piece; cogently argued and lays barea fundamental
>moral truth about Gambian society in the age of the madness and despotism
>of
>Jammeh, the AFPRC and its mutation, the APRC: the toe curling hypocrisy and
>lack of faith [whatever we so choose to delineate it], that dominates our
>public life. You were spot on about this aptly named “acute low
>expectations
>syndrome” or ALES  - as you put the acronym. It is precisely because of
>this
>ALES, that our public discourse, especially as it relates to Jammeh’s
>madness
>and despotism, is infested with moral and political relativism galore. If
>Jammeh plunders our State coffers, rest assured that there is a rag out
>there
>that will choose to ignore such facts and properly subject them to a
>forensic
>scrutiny as they used to do when the PPP was there. Instead they will
>choose
>to dwell on the past making silly conjectures, anecdotes, trivial
>personalisation and plainly hypocritical relativisation of issues. When
>children are butchered, rest assured that the smarmy hypocritical editors
>of
>the said rag would with their usual inebriated obsession with Jawara
>relativise the murder of the children by dumbly pointing at Kukoi and 1981.
>
>Brother, such is the twerpish disposition of the said hypocritical rag that
>every time they break from their tradition of inebriated obsession with
>Jawara and try to critique Jammeh, they end up with moral idiocy and
>conceit.
>In effect, one has to date back to Jesus and the Pharisees to beable to
>make
>sense out of the toe curling hypocrisy of this rag. They have subtly
>metamorphosed from the radical rearguard critics of the mishaps of the
>ancien
>regime to the resident rearguard refuters of the UDP and in extension
>making
>Jammeh sound logical or plausible. Reading the said rag mischieviously
>reporting on UDP activities and or utterances, one would be forgiven for
>assuming the the UDP is the gov't of the day and or the leadership were the
>very ones who ordered the butchering of the children in April 2000.  If
>Jammeh and his madness make ridiculous and treacherous allegations like
>incriminating the UDP with ethnic bigotry, rest assured that the said rag
>will attempt to make it logical/factual by giving the allegations
>intellectual muscle. For as long as one can actually recall, the APRC and
>its
>crowd of madness have always tried to tar the UDP with the past of PPP, NCP
>and the GPP and the so-called “Mandingo” bigotry and or hegemony. In
>their
>“analysis” of the by-elections, the said rag was quick to
>mischieviously
>carry side remarks reportedly made by certain nonentities at a UDP rally in
>Baddibu that went likethis: “Mandingos” should unite again certain
>groups,
>blah, blah………. I cannot ascertain the attributed assertions by the
>nonentities who were reported asuttering them during the said UDP rally.
>Indeed, such imprint could be gleaned from the said rag's "special
>election"
>published after the freakish 1996 presidential elections where they choose
>to
>highlight what they perceive to be the UDP's inflammatory ethnic remarks
>and
>deduced from it the treacherous allegation that the UDP harbours ethnic
>hegemonists. Be that as it may, since UDP official policy is not geared
>towards the ethnic hegemony of a particular ethnic group or to stretch the
>argument, none of the UDP leadership have declared such an agenda, one
>pauses
>to question: Why is the said rag and its editors hell-bent on making this
>treacherous charge against the UDP sound cogent and or holding water? But
>as
>sure as there is always a calm after a storm, such APRC bigwigs like Buba
>Baldeh were openly peddling the ethnic card in Kiang to the “Fulas” of
>that
>area to join forces with other ethnic groups to offer Jammeh a credible
>bulwark against the “Mandingo” hegemonists of the UDP. In fact Baldeh
>was
>the chief orchestrator of the move against the NRP Assembly Member of one
>of
>theKiang seats [Njadoe – I believe that’s his name] to force him to
>cross-carpet to the APRC. The same treacherous shenanigans were employed
>against the UDP in Njolfen where, albeit Hamat Bah’s decent efforts, the
>APRC
>was able to gainsome significant ground against the UDP - thanks to
>Baldeh’s
>treacherous peddling of the ethnic hegemony conspiracy of the
>“Mandingos”.
>Yet, the same rag that seemed to see theirs, as moral crusaders against
>ethnic bigotry never highlighted these damaging developments. Instead they
>choose to mischieviously highlight the fact that albeit Hamat’s
>honourable
>efforts to side with the UDP,the “coalition” failed to retain the seat;
>enough to spuriously conclude that the united opposition most have been
>calling for cannot defeat Jammeh at the polls.
>
>Now, during the 1996/7 elections, the same ploy was cynically used to
>instill
>ethnic fear amongst a certain section of the Gambian electorate that hated
>Jammeh and wanted to vote UDP. This was very effective in a last minute
>vote-swing against the UDP: Certain ethnic groups out of such fears voted
>APRC and to this day mistrusts the ambitions of the UDP. Indeed,shortly
>after
>the elections, at a State House parading of so-called community eaders,
>Yankuba Touray, in a rare public gaffe, painted this vignette of theAPRC
>strategy:  if the UDP lays claims to a large “Mandingo”
>support/loyalty/following, they will simply tell the rest of the ethnic
>groups to coalesce to the effect that no Gambian with a surname regarded as
>“Mandingo” will ever win the presidency. Not exactly Touray’s words
>but the
>gist of his message that day. It is also interesting that since Jammeh took
>over, his behind the scene efforts in ethnic associations proliferated to
>the
>point that a month passes without an ethnic association doesn’t have
>anaudience with him at State House. And with good reason too; if you are
>going to polarize the nation along such lines, better encourage such ethnic
>associations – and even sponsor their activities with taxpayer money. Put
>together such votes can very handy. These are the current bane of stuff
>about
>the ethnic agenda of Jammeh. Did the editors of the said rag highlight
>these
>amongst others? Did they bother to highlight the chauvinism of those who
>call
>themselves “Jolas” within the security services and its links with the
>insurrectionists in Southern Senegal? Did they ever to highlight the
>unlegislated affirmative action that Jammeh used to leap frog those he term
>as “Jolas” to the higher echelons of the State, especially in those
>positions like the security services that he uses to impose his will on the
>Gambian people?
>
>This ethnic conspiracy hogwash of  “Mandingo” arguments along the lines
>of
>divine and aristocratic claims to the Gambian presidency/leadership is, of
>course, nothing but sentimental nonsense – sentimental nonsense, that
>supposedly intelligent people want tomake look plausible by giving close
>scrutiny to every utterances made at a UDP gathering that will give
>intellectual muscle to their grand conspiracy theory legs to stand upon.
>Any
>objective observer of Gambian politics, familiar with whatever it was that
>prevailed during a nominal “Mandingo” like Jawara’s reign would be
>hard
>pressed to back these treacherous claims with substantive evidence. The
>inebriated and fanatically obsessed editors of that rag knew that before
>anyone heard of them, there were places Baddibu, Kiang, Jarra, Bakau,etc,
>etc, and such politicians like Dibba, Makalo and even Juwara who were
>relentless in their opposition to Jawara. But then that is the whole point:
>a
>pea-brained twerp like Jammeh needs to propagate certain falsehoods and the
>self-appointed mullahs of the said rag see it as their role to give
>intellectual muscle to such barbarous and treacherous claims. That is what
>there is to all these treacherous and cynically stupid conspiracy theories
>of
>ethnic hegemony fromthe “Mandingos”. Simply put: All these attempts at
>caricaturing the opposition as ethnic bigots is just romantic hogwash being
>subtly peddled by a despotic Dictatorship and its closet allies in a rag
>whose editors have quietly metamorphosed - without the batting of an eyelid
>by many – into hypocritical savants. In the very end, these idiotic,
>conceited, ridiculous and persistent attempts to tar the UDP with habouring
>ethnic hegemonists ambitions, reminds me of a story I read when I was kid:
>Remember that story of the chicken that chanced upon a thunderbolt that
>scared the living daylights of her and mistook it for the sky falling down
>and went to get the whole animal family she could summon, to come see the
>fallen sky? We know how that story that ended. Turned out to be a big hoax
>largely the feverish imagination of the chicken and her unfounded fears
>about
>imaginary stuff. As that same stuff happens in 2001Gambia: These twerpish
>claims that the UDP harbours ethnic hegemonist ambitions is not only
>sentimental hogwash but the deluded and unfounded fears of Jammeh and his
>allies – both open and closet – anchored on the periphery of figments
>of
>feverish imaginations.
>
>I can’t help but end this with a broadside I chanced upon last year when
>I
>visited the North. In one of those quirky Gambian gatherings, the editors
>of
>the said rag were the subject of one individual’s wrath. This gentleman
>told
>us an anecdote about the editors of that rag, which if substantiated,
>should
>explain some of their arrogance, condescension and hubris: At the height of
>their lampoonery of the PPP establishment, the editors of the said rag used
>to brag that Gambians can’t write and or engage in polemics; which is why
>all
>the challenges they threw at the PPP establishment’s intellectual heavies
>for
>debates have largely gone unanswered. Well, have we got news for them:
>turns
>out that Gambians after all can write and engage in polemics. And 1987
>Gambia
>is not 2001 Gambia. Evidence? Well, the last time such challenges were
>thrown
>on this List, the brags and chortles have been replaced with exasperation
>and
>gasping-for-air fight backs. Welcome to the age ofdiminished returns in
>polemics. And the sages were right: want to be reduced to an irrelevant
>has-been? Try putting on the apparel of peacock vanity, hubris,and
>undisguised hypocrisy.
>
>Hamjatta Kanteh
>
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