List managers, In my opinion, sometimes the way people communicate reflect their own opinion of themselves. Professor Assan or whoever he is can post any vulgarity he pleases. As far as I am concerned, I will not return the compliment. Both Mr. Dampha and Hamjatta seem to suggest that I have been disrespectful to Dampha. Let them reproduce anything to substantiate that and I will offer my unreserved appology. They referred to my use of the words ABSURD, SELFISH and VULGAR. May I explain that when I first used absurd, what I said, was that it was absurd to narrow down the UDP defeat in kiang mainly on vote buying. This was not directed at any individual. In my dictionary the meaning of absurd is given as: foolish, ridiculous, unreasonable. Now in the context I used the word absurd, does it mean I was being disrespectful to anyone. My use of the word vulgar, which in my dictionary means: illmannered; in bad taste was in response to one of his postings titled:Acute Low Expectation Syndrome (ALES). In that posting, he referred to me thus: "The inteligent APRC supporter, having mortgaged his soult to the devil, and with a mindset of an impotent intellectual prostitute, will not have the guts to challenge the APRC leadership to do what is right." In that post Mr. Dampha used the word prostitute no less than four times, called me gaulible and a hypocrite. This, I consider very vulgar or in other words, in very bad taste and thus replied thus:. "Mr. Dampha, Initially, I was not going to respond to this vulgar post but decided to refer you to these quotations: "The courage to speak must be matched by the courage to listen - E.C. MacKenzie" And " The right to heard does not include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert Humphrey". Have a good day." My defence of the APRC projects does not mean that I condone what happened on April 10 & 11 nor does it mean that I condone the human rigts record of the regime. My views on those issues are very clear. That does not, in anyway, make a hypocrite. I have the right to view every act of this government as I see fit and would not dare try deny anybody else that same right. The issues that affect the lives of the Gambian people is not only limited to good governance. It is up to politicians to explain to the electorate what these issues are and convince them that they should vote for them. I will end here by quoting Sir Henry Cambell-Bannerman who wrote: "Good government can never be a substitute for government by the people themselves". In America, the founding fathers, in oder to avoid a majority of ill-informed people electing a president of the US by popular vote, invented the electoral college. As we don't have such a system in the Gambia, it is incumbent upon all of us, regardless of party ffiliation, to debate the issues that affect our lives soberly and with respect and decency. It will be very counter productive, if in debating issues that affect our lives, we are not willing to entertain diverse opinions. Our perceptions of what is best for our country, like competence, truth, beauty and contact lenses, is the eye of the beholder. Best wishes and bye 4Now, KB Jobe. ========================================================== "There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to solve" (MIKE LEAVITT) =========================================================== _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------