This is a brilliant idea from extremely brilliant people. Jarama Mawdo


Muhammad Bai Drammeh

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On Mon, 2/1/17, Baba Jallow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 Subject: [G_L] New Gambia Movement Formed
 To: [log in to unmask]
 Date: Monday, 2 January, 2017, 17:11
 
 
 
 NEW GAMBIA MOVEMENT
 FORMED
 
 Motto: Power to the
 People
 
  
 
 Statement of Purpose
 
 Dear Gambians and Friends of The
 Gambia,
 
 At this crucial point in our country’s
 history, there is an urgent need for a comprehensive
 rethinking and a radical
 transformation of our national political culture. To carry
 out this important
 task of re-thinking and transforming our political culture,
 there is the need
 for a national movement of well-meaning and like-minded
 Gambians designed to
 bring about comprehensive, meaningful and lasting change to
 our country. For
 this reason, we hereby announce the formation of the New
 Gambia Movement (New
 Gambia) with the primary objective of transforming The
 Gambia into a
 politically enlightened and empowered Family Nation in which
 the people are the
 parents, the government, the
 children.
 
  After 30 years of the First Republic
 and 22 years of a banal dictatorship, The Gambia remains
 mired in the
 irreconcilable contradictions of the colonial legacy. The
 colonial encounter
 brought a new political system (the nation state) and
 transposed it upon our
 traditional political culture. At independence in 1965, a
 western parliamentary
 system was superimposed on our traditional African
 perceptions and
 understandings of the meanings of government and leadership.
 Over 50 years of
 independence, our two governments have done nothing to
 correct this anomaly.
 The overriding consequence is that most Gambians remain
 politically
 disempowered and unaware of the crucially important
 differences between
 constitutional authority and autocratic rule of the colonial
 and precolonial
 sort. Constitutional presidents are understood to be
 all-powerful rulers or
 kings - mansa, burr, lamdo,
 and constitutional governments are wrongly
 called mansa
 kunda, ngurr,
 and laamu. These
 political misnomers, used over and above their simple
 linguistic inferences,
 carry corruption-enhancing and power-abusing connotations
 that are exploited by
 people in power for their own selfish interests and to the
 detriment of the
 Gambian people.
 
 This persisting anomaly between the
 political reality of the constitutional nation state system
 and traditional
 African political perceptions has enabled unscrupulous
 politicians and
 dictators to pull the wool over our peoples’ eyes and
 exploit and oppress them
 with total impunity. Rather than correct this anomaly
 through comprehensive and
 rigorous constitutional education and political
 enlightenment, the two
 governments we have had since independence have tended to
 perpetuate the idea
 that they are actual
 mansayas (kingships) of the colonial and
 precolonial sort, with the brutal ruler of the just ousted
 dictatorship going
 so far as to assume the preposterous title of Babili Mansa,
 literally casting
 himself as a king rather than a constitutional head of
 state. Since the nation
 state and constitutional governance are here to stay, we
 feel that our best
 starting point towards the full empowerment of the Gambian
 people is to launch
 a Mental
 Revolution designed
 to correct the damaging anomaly between our political
 institutions and our
 political beliefs; and going forward, to help redefine the
 concept of public
 service for the greater good of the people. We intend to
 help transform The
 Gambia into a nation of enlightened and empowered citizens
 who will be able to
 democratically exert control over their leaders, and who
 will never allow
 themselves to be marginalized, oppressed, or denied their
 rights as Gambians
 and human beings with certain inalienable rights. Political
 power rightfully
 belongs to the people. But the people can only enjoy and
 exercise that power if
 they are adequately knowledgeable in key aspects of the
 political doctrines and
 institutions affecting their
 lives.
 
 The New Gambia Movement believes that
 Africa in general and Gambia in particular is mired in
 poverty and needless
 civil crises largely because from the time we attained
 independence, our
 governments have neglected our most precious resources
 – our
 people and their minds. They have failed to understand or
 refused to accept
 the reality that states (governments) do not build nations;
 that it is nations
 (people) that build states. Gambians need to fully
 understand that and be able
 to insist that their government does not have power over
 them beyond the
 regulated authority necessary to ensure an orderly, just,
 and law-abiding
 social environment. Gambians need to understand and be able
 to insist that true
 political power belongs to them, the people, for without the
 people, there can
 be no government. We can imagine a people without a
 government, but we cannot
 imagine a government without a people. The people are the
 reason the government
 exists. It is therefore a cruel paradox that governments
 whose existence cannot
 be imagined without the people would turn around and reduce
 the people into
 powerless and oppressed nonentities without any agency to
 assume their rightful
 status in society. The insincerity of many African
 governments manifests
 glaringly in their determination to snuff out the light of
 the people’s minds
 through censorship and other repressive laws, acts of naked
 brutality,
 emasculated judiciaries, and paper tiger parliaments
 accountable to the
 government rather than the people without whom they cannot
 exist. While the
 doctrine of separation of powers is outlined in our
 constitution, it has little
 bearing on the reality of how politics is conducted in
 practice. The New Gambia
 Movement is determined to seriously address this tragic and
 crippling situation
 through a rigorous and sustained national political
 education and popular
 empowerment campaign. 
 
 The New Gambia Movement places our human
 and intellectual resources and energies at the forefront of
 our national
 project, with a view to build popular political capacity and
 deliver sustained
 benefits to the nation. We are strongly convinced that as
 long as the people of
 a country remain unaware of and therefore unable to fully
 exercise their
 legitimate power over their government, they will remain
 vulnerable to the
 machinations of unscrupulous politicians and tin pot despots
 like the one we
 have suffered for the last 22 years. We believe that
 development is not
 necessarily about building infrastructures, though we
 certainly appreciate the
 importance of infrastructure as part of development. We
 believe that
 development is more about building minds and empowering
 people. Develop the
 people and the people will develop their country. Ideas are
 the building blocks
 of human progress and the more a country utilizes the ideas
 and intellectual
 resources of its people, the more that country advances. All
 inventions and all
 innovations, however revolutionary, however great, however
 transformative come
 from the minds of human beings. Indeed, it is impossible to
 think of any form
 of invention or scientific advancement that is not the
 product of the human
 mind. Yet in Africa and in The Gambia in particular, the
 light of human minds
 and intelligence is snuffed out with reckless abandon. Ideas
 with the potential
 to enhance the human condition are suppressed or ignored
 simply because they go
 against the selfish interests of governments. The result has
 been a tragic
 brain drain. Our brilliant minds are driven off into exile
 or choose to
 relocate to distant lands where their knowledge and skills
 are put to use in
 the service of societies only too happy to increase their
 own fund of intellectual
 resources. Meanwhile, our national mind is starved, our
 creativity is stifled
 and our development arrested. It is time to recognize that
 our people are our
 diamonds, our minds our petroleum. Our human resources are
 more valuable than
 any material resources we may ever
 have.
 
 The New Gambia Movement recognizes that
 bringing about the kind of positive fundamental
 transformation we need in The
 Gambia requires much more than a mere change of individual
 leadership or
 government, however important that is. It demands a radical
 transformation of
 our collective national mindset itself. It demands that we
 show serious and
 practical interest in our people, their minds and their
 creative potentials in
 art, science, music, industry and all other fields. If we
 are genuinely
 invested in the development of our human resource potential,
 we can turn Gambia
 into a society of innovative and empowered citizens with the
 capacity to transform
 their small country into one big, peaceful and prosperous
 city of lights with well-paved
 roads and much, much more. We in no way underestimate the
 colossal challenges
 such an undertaking involves. But we also do not
 underestimate the human
 capacity for creativity, innovation and overcoming
 challenges, however
 formidable. We believe we will be more successful in
 overcoming our challenges
 if we work together to find strategic solutions that will
 enable us to pull
 down some of the walls that have so far limited our capacity
 to develop. 
 
 The New Gambia Movement believes that the
 type of positive and sustainable political transformation we
 envision requires
 a home-grown, coherent, and workable ideology whose tenets
 and principles will
 be readily understood by all Gambians. We believe that the
 concept of the
 Family Nation fulfils this requirement. The basic tenet of
 the Family Nation is
 that Gambian society is one big traditional Gambian family
 in which the people
 are the parents and the government, the children of the
 nation. Actualizing the
 Family Nation requires conscious, practical and sustained
 efforts at
 transposing traditional Gambian family values onto our
 political culture and
 government. In this way, we can help transform Gambia into
 one big traditional
 Gambian family to which all Gambians belong, irrespective of
 political, religious
 or any other affiliations. In the Family Nation we envision,
 all the people,
 irrespective of their political, religious or other
 affiliations will be
 treated as the parents of the nation; and the government
 will be treated as the
 children of the nation. If our presidents, politicians,
 security forces and
 civil servants understand themselves to be, and are
 understood by the people to
 be the children of a Family Nation, they will be constrained
 or otherwise
 rendered incapable of doing things that will have adverse
 effects on the
 country. A police officer will hesitate to harass a taxi
 driver if he remembers
 that the taxi driver is a person from the same family; that
 in fact, the cab
 driver is his or her parent.
 
 In order to turn our small country into one
 big Gambian Family Nation, we will strive for the
 actualization of the idea of
 the nation as school – the Nation School. In basic terms,
 this means that the
 entire country will be conceptualized as one big school
 within which all
 citizens are involved in an ongoing process of political
 education and civic
 empowerment. We reject the notion that Gambians must be
 literate in English
 before they can learn about their country’s constitution
 or any other aspects
 of Gambian, African or global affairs. Our national
 languages are as good as
 any to serve as mediums of national instruction, conducted
 both through our
 national media and through face-to-face forums with
 well-qualified experts in
 the required fields. As soon as we possibly can, we intend
 to establish or
 advocate the establishment of an Institute or Center for
 Gambian Studies which
 will serve as a vehicle for the political enlightenment and
 empowerment of all
 Gambians. This center or institute will be engaged in the
 active production and
 dissemination of knowledge on all aspects of Gambian studies
 especially in our
 local languages. As soon as feasible, we intend to seek
 regular platforms on
 our national media – especially Gambia Radio and
 Television Services - and to
 organize regular public meetings across the country at which
 we will engage the
 Gambian people in a discourse on constitutional and
 governance matters
 affecting their lives as the sovereign citizens of a
 constitutional nation
 state and as citizens of the wider world within which our
 country is embedded.
 We welcome ideas that will lead to the establishment of
 other institutes in all
 artistic, scientific, and technological fields to help in
 the creation of
 knowledge, wealth, and improvements in the quality of life
 of the Gambian
 people.  
 
 As
 we launch this new and challenging
 project, we remain fully aware that no idea is perfect and
 that there is always
 room for error, revisions and improvements. For this reason,
 we will keep an
 open mind, be ready to listen to new ideas, and be willing,
 even eager, to let
 our idea of the Family Nation evolve to its highest possible
 manifestation. The
 New Gambia Movement offers its services to the Gambian
 people as a civic
 engagement platform totally dedicated to the transformation
 of our country into
 a Family Nation and a Nation School in which the
 government’s work is a true
 reflection of the rhythm of life of its empowered and
 enlightened citizens. We crave the
 support and
 involvement of all Gambians and friends of The Gambia in
 this effort. And we
 humbly pray for the blessings, guidance, support, and
 protection of the All
 Mighty God, to Whom alone all knowledge and power
 belongs.
 
 We invite all Gambians
 and friends of The Gambia who identify or
 agree with the ideas, sentiments and vision outlined in this
 statement to
 please join and support the New Gambia Movement by clicking
 on the link below. There
 are no membership fees. Please enter your real name, your
 country of residence (your
 state if in the U.S) and your email address to facilitate
 effective communication
 and the building of a coherent organizational structure.
 Please share as widely as possible on social
 media and other
 platforms and forums #ForTheGambiaOurHomeland!
 Thank you and Happy
 New Year!
 
  http://www.newgambia.org/home/join-our-movement
 
 The New Gambia Movement is also on
 Facebook. Please click here to like/follow us on
 Facebook.     
                
 
 Sincerely,
 
 Dr. Baba Galleh Jallow,
 U.S.A
 
 President
 
  
 
 Dr. Omar Janneh, UK
 
 Vice President
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
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