Conteh. your statement below summarise it all.Ancestor Cheik Anta Diop in his book barbarism or cilisation under the chapter how to define cultural identity made a detail explanation to confirm your summary of common cultural identity.the MASTER urgered the present generation of african to study , develop and popularise a program of african conciousness to stop the decline into attitudes that leads to evil sin or barbarism. >"We are so intermingled that no Gambian can claim >>to be 100% one tribe. It is deplorable that we >>witness discrimination in the US and yet we continue >>to exercise this evil sin." The statement of Manneh below needs to be given more impotance and reflection in the process of discussions,analysis and agreements leading to a unified electoral opposition to the aprc regime and beyond.infact all areas of the gambia needs to be subjected to similar and more detail analysis to enable us have a better picture of the gambian reality. Given the serious influence of ethnic opportunist conciousness in the gambia,i have problem in understanding why we have not subjected this question to serious surgical analysis earlier.look at the barbarism it is causing. some questions for reflections what is ethnicity in gambian contex? what is ethnic chavinism in the gambian communites at home and in the diaspora? what is ethnic opportunism in intra-gambian relations? which social groups benifits from ethnic opportunism? what was ethnic politics and in precolonial gambia? what was ethnic politics in colonial gambia? what was ethnic politics in post 1965 gambia? what was the relationship of ethnicity and class benefits in post 1965 period? how was ethnic representation in local and national political institutions? what was and is ethnic politics in every village, contituency district and region? what was and is the ethnic character of political parties and special pressure groups? what role did ethnicity play in the process of the 1981 coup de`etat? what role did it play in pre and post 1994 coup de etat? what is the relationship of ethnicity and class benefits in post 1994 coup? what role is ethnicity playing in the present gambian and diaspora communities? how will the unity tendency in the anti aprc opposition deal with this ethnicity question in the pre election period? how do we develop a national consciousness platform in the process of the anti aprc national democratic struggle and beyond? what is the character of ethnic politics in the immidiate sub region of the gambia? how is this ethnic politics influencing the gambian political situation? "In any political campaign, one need to know the type of people you are dealing with and must follow certain approach or tools to solicit their support. You must be conversant with the realities on the ground. >Anywhere in the world, politicians target certain influential interest >groups such as trade unions, race and tribal groups, gender and age >groups,students, religious organizations, etc. This is not peculiar to any >decent politic as long as providing the needs of these groups is put on >high premium during campaign. Similarities is what matters but not our >differences.I don't like tribalism either." >Cheers >Lamin thank you all _________________________________________________________________________ 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------