Buharry,

I hope you had your fill of "chuckles", sniggers and smirks as you pored over my breath-takingly naïve ideas that you responded to. For someone who registered his displeasure with my handling of Pa Samba Jow and his crowd, your sarcastic in-your-face response to my posting, beggars the question whether it is not very rich of you to lecture anyone on how he/she responds or behave him/herself towards other members on the List? From the very outset, I have always taken you very seriously and treated your positions, even if we disagree, with decency and respect. I want to continue the tradition. Unless of course you give me reason not to.

Concerning the points you raised, I don’t see any relevance of going into detail again what my position is vis-à-vis the struggle against Jammeh: its effective-ness, practicalities or guarantees of success. I, however, will take you on this "empirical" evidence thing and above all, try to give the debate a new lease of life by identifying a grey area that hitherto was in dispute and that which I have noticed recently as something we are likely or on the verge of reaching some consensus.

I was marvelled by the extent that you went to belabour the point on "empiricism" and what connotes "empirical" evidence. Not only this, but your laboured and indeed, futile attempts to weigh down my definitions of "empirical" evidence, was not only narrowly confined, but bordering on the periphery of the inscrutable of one who has still not clearly grasped the demarcation of "empirical" evidences as it is in the natural and physical sciences on the one hand and the political and social sciences on the other. Indeed, in your kind lectures on the notion of "empiricism" or "empirical" evidence, you presumptuously wrote that:

Then you continued on the same brazen length that:

Splendid. Where did you ever read me stating such spurrious claims as you charged or insinuated above? My exact definition of "empiricism" in that posting goes thus:

"Most misconstrued was your perception of the nomenclature "empirical". It seems that you and those who keep parroting after you, conceive of "empirical" or empiricism to mean presentation of ONLY variables or statistical data to support one's postulates or thesis. This is a very narrow conception of the terminology. Empiricism or "empirical" evidence as it applies to the social and political sciences, is not narrowly confined to the presentation of variables and statistical data. Suffice to say that tangible materials and or events can constitute "empirical" events at any rate in the social and political sciences, which is our concern here. At preliminary or embryonic levels, researchers/scientists of the physical and natural sciences certainly do make use of such tangible observable materials and events and hence their qualification as "empirical" evidence. If evidence involves real life tangible/observable experience, then it qualifies to be called "empirical". In fact, the early proponents of empiricism like Hume, Locke, Berkeley, et al were not natural or physical scientists and did not necessarily use variables or statistical data in their works. Yet, these three can, without any fear of exaggeration, be labelled as the founding fathers of "empirical" evidence at any rate in Western Thought. In my posting, I gave such observable/tangible evidence of the US Congressmen's Report, the IMF Scandal, the terrorist attack on Mr. George Christensen's radio station and the continued harassment of the civilian population as "empirical" evidences that the opposition strategy is not working and lack-lustre." [note the emphasis]

For the sake of clarity, adjudication and avoidance of the perversion of the language of "empricism", compare and contrast the above definition with that of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Hondereich, Professor of Ethics at Exeter College:

"A statement, proposition, or judgement is empirical if we can only know its truth or falsity by appealing to experience." [OUP, p.226, 1995. Any quarrels should be forwarded to the OUP, Walton Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP. I’m sure the editors wouldn’t mind hearing your version when they start working on the next revised edition.]

In nowhere is it stated above that "empiricism" must and invariably always constitutes " the basic tenets of scientific enquiry upon which it is based." On this theme of "scientific enquiry", most professional scientists will be laughing when they hear a discipline like Human Resources claiming to conducting "scientific enquiry" or laying claims to scientific attributes. This is one of the stuff scientists’ call quack about the humanities, social and political sciences. Within these aforesaid disciplines [with perhaps, the exception of economics which scientists grudgingly accept as having genuine scientific attributes] themselves, controversies and debates still rage on about the validity of their claims to scientific attributes and thus the paradoxical nature of the social and political sciences. Just as it is a paradox to claim to have a conservative revolution [as American conservatives were claiming of the Gingrich take-over of Capitol Hill], there is still amongst mainstream political theorists that it is a paradox to call the study of politics a science.

Empiricism, as I informed you earlier, at any rate was a 17^th and 18^th century reaction against the prevailing philosophical traditions/orthodoxy of rationalism and scepticism in metaphysics. It certainly can be traced earlier than Locke, but was made popular by Locke who was trained as a physician but whose major works were all in normative disciplines like social and political theory. From the very outset, empiricism was largely in the domain of philosophy and its normative offsprings like political economy [as economics was then known] ethics, epistemology, logic, etc, etc. It was only in the late 19^th and early 20^th century that it began to take radical attributes and associated with the exactitude, predictions and indeed, "the basic tenets of scientific enquiry". It’s 20^th century popularisation especially in the social and political sciences certainly has a lot to the influential Logical Positivists associated with Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle and their British collaborators in Cambridge like Russell, Moore, Ramsey et al.

To claim as you did, that to qualify for empiricism, a work has to have the "basic tenets of scientific enquiry" which you described as "… objectivity, reliability, validity, causality, relation etc. The relationship between concepts, variables, measuring instruments and units of measurement is also basic to empirical research", is to put question marks over of the empiricism of major works in normative disciplines. Going by your yardstick above, Milton Friedman’s celebrated and explosive essay, The Relation Between Economic and Political Freedom, Berlin’s Two Concept of Liberty or Rawls Theory of Justice, will commensurably not make it past your litmus test of "empiricism" and "empirical" evidence. Yet, all these cited works are distinguished hallmarks of empirical exercises in academia at any rate in social, economic and political philosophy. I have yet to see anyone challenge their claims to empiricism. Unless, of course you wish to start the ball rolling. As the Harvard Mathematical Logician, Harry Scheffer, once noted, "Scientific progress, is simply not possible in philosophical fields like epistemology, ethics or moral philosophy." Suffice to say that the manner in which these disciplines employ or make use of empiricism cannot be scientific at any rate not in the narrow sense you projected "empirical" evidences. Great works in moral philosophy like Adam Smith’s A Theory of Moral Sentiments is indeed an empirical work and its empiricism is sui generis. Yet, none would read it and discover in it your strict litmus test of what empiricism constitutes. I might not be exposed to research supervision or have a Masters under my belt, but hey brother I do know my script.

Curiously, when Halifa was responding to similar contentions in my posting, he didn’t focus his energy on or indeed, attack the validity of my empirical evidences: the IMF Scandal, the terrorist attack on Radio 1 FM, the US Congressmen’s Report, the flattering comments of some senior State Department officials on the APRC gov’t, the belligerence of the incumbency, etc, etc. For there is no doubt in his mind that the aforesaid is indeed a conflation of empirical evidence which spells out a pattern: That whilst the APRC still continues with it’s tyrannical assault on the Gambian people [manifested here by the terrorist attack on Radio 1FM and Jammeh’s threats of "six feet deep"], it is in correspondence with relative flattering, positive and respectable international [manifested here by the IMF Scandal, the Congressmen’s Report and flattering though arguably throw-away comments by some State Department officials] engagement. The pattern is simply that whilst it reigns with impunity on the home front, it gets away with it on the international scene.

To counter my argument, Halifa wisely distinguished between how I measure/interpret/see the effects of their strategy and how they infact intended it to be. Whilst I chose general events surrounding Jammeh and its effects on him, they are using the reaction of the people as their "barometre". As he himself put it,

" Herein lies our difference. You determine effectiveness on the basis of whether Jammeh is being pressurised to do one thing or the other. We determine our effectiveness on the basis of whether we are address the aspirations of the people at each given moment and whether the people approve our methods or not."

This, needless to say, is not only a fair assessment, but I cannot conceivably argue with the profundity of this judgement because the lack thereof of any form of empirical evidence at this stage to gauge how the Gambian people feel about the current political arrangements. We will perhaps be in some good position to gauge this during the local gov’t elections in November or if some exhaustive and reliable poll were to be conducted today.

When I was answering your response, I didn’t challenge the validity of your empirical evidences like the institution of both the Coroner’s Inquest and Commission of Enquiry into the 10^th and 11^th April gruesome murders, the rescinding of the IGP’s earlier decision for the UDP not to rallies and the remorseful tones of Jammeh when he came back from Cuba after the events. Rather, I focussed attention on whether they were enough to claim that the opposition strategy was working effectively. I went on to demonstrate analytically how these empirical evidences you cited can arguably be said to have occurred not because of PRESSURES, but out of NECESSITY. Tentatively and with historical hindsight, I forwarded the thesis, that without any pressure internally from the opposition, all the aforesaid would have happened anyway if the APRC were keen on saving itself. It was the logical thing to do.

In my view, the debate if it is to be healthier, needs to be released from the sterilities of your and arguably Halifa’s concerns for what Orwell calls a "hypertrophied sense of order". For instance, I’m beginning to see bridging of differences between Halifa and me, when he rhetorically quizzed:

"Hence, one fundamental question that must be addressed is: what is the minimum condition required to give elections a chance? Does such a condition exist in the Gambia?"

Since I have responded to this question earlier by indicating that "Fact is, under the current political arrangements, none except blind fanatics to the political process, can expect elections to be held under FREE and FAIR conditions. Not only is the body politic corrupted, discredited and bankrupt by the reaches of the tentacles of the executive, but it is so fundamentally flawed and tilting favourably towards the incumbency that holding/participating in elections under such circumstances is to commit political suicide and legitimately strengthen the dictatorship", it is you and else who believe otherwise who should be asking yourselves at what stage would enough be enough for you. At what stage would participating the political or electoral constitute gross negligence or not serving the interests of the Gambian people? This should be the debate now. It is this grey area that could help further enhance our mutual understanding of the Gambian problem and the solutions that it calls for. Debates should all in the end help clarify our positions and create a conducive environment for cooperation even if we have differences. Anyway, that’s how serious I take them.

Hamjatta Kanteh

PS: IF THERE IS ANY DISSONANCE IN THE VIEWS EXPRESSED HERE, DO PLEASE EXCUSE THEM. I HAVE BEEN VERY BUSY LATELY. AND TOO SHATTERED TO EVEN EDIT THIS.

Thanks