Yus, Surely, this ridiculous idea that Hamjatta Kanteh is the progenitor of all Gambian ills must belong to the junk-yard of medieval myths. Moreover, there is more to this needless fuss and knee-jerk obsession with Hamjatta Kanteh than many commentators on this List have pointed out. The barbarous attack on personal achievement, inferiority complex and envy are some that instantly come to mind. Some people just hate the idea of others who legitimately excel and in their acute inferiority complex-laden world, agglutinated with abject envy, they simply can't stand people who are smart and forging ahead in life. These are some of the reasons why some of these faceless wonders and freaks are getting really worked up about the idea of attacking Hamjatta Kanteh. Yet, it is precisely these character malaises that are largely responsible for the Jammeh Mess. Let us not fool ourselves: Jammeh never stole power because he wanted to end the parasitic nature of the PPP regime. He stole power primarily because as a moronic under-achiever with acute inferiority complex, he knows there is no way he could legitimately achieve what industrious Gambians have legitimately achieved. Similarly, all these personal attacks on Hamjatta Kanteh is a continuation of that abhorrent tradition of envy, acute inferiority complex and damnable contempt for individual drive for legitimate achievements. Let the attacks on Hamjatta Kanteh continue. For as the cliche goes, small minds will always obsess with personalities whilst those who legitimately endeavour to know more, will discuss ideas and refrain from tittle-tattle. Let me now address the crucial issues at stake here. Because of our general disagreement on what voter apathy and or alienation entail and their demarcation, and to avoid sinking into the abyss of distorting personal opinion with authority, i propose i begin this posting by appealing to a modicum of authority in psephology or the 'scientific study' of elections [and also, of course, to help such loony fruitcakes, twits, and compulsive obsessives like Ousman Badgy-Basen - who seems so ridiculously obsessed with me - have a greater understanding of the issues at hand. For the life in me, i can't just fully figure out how their lack of sophistication to read basic stuff can ever be my fault. Was i ever a former Gambian president or education minister who failed the Gambian education system? Good grief! Reading these jumped-up nonentities and their mumbo-jumbo scrawls, you would have thought that Hamjatta Kanteh is the mass murderer responsible for the grisly April 2000 incidents. Something is amiss somewhere. Where do these weird creeps hail from? Anyway, enough of this digression.]. Since your assumptions on the absentee vote are premised mainly on the voter apathy, I thought it prudent to at least bring a modicum of authority on the subject. To this end, i finally had the courage to pull my Britannica Encyclopedia off the shelf for consultations. On voter alienation and apathy vis-a-vis participation in elections, Heinz Eulan & Roger Gibbins [eds] wrote: "Some people are conscientious nonvoters, although such people are rare. Others, perceiving the vote more as an instrument of censure than of support, may not vote because they are satisfied with the present government. This group of voluntary nonvoters is also small, however. In fact, nonvoters have been shown to be generally less satisfied with the political status quo than are voters. [Representing here voter apathy] The vote is a rather blunt and ineffectual instrument for expressing dissatisfaction, and nonvoting is more likely to be symptomatic of alienation from, than of satisfaction with, the political system. [Representing voter alienation]" All additives solely mine. If you agree with Eulan & Gibbins' definition of both voter apathy and alienation, can you then comprehensively tell us - based on 2001 evidence vis-a-vis Kiang East by-elelections and not merely inferences, deductions and suggestions from the 1996/7 general election figures - why voter apathy was responsible for the abstinence of more 1000 voters who didn't show up at the polls to vote? This should lead to a more specific answer from you. From now onwards, i will change my tack of general approach to the mooted issues by making your words - verbatim - the source of my query. This should help us in not deviating from the crucial issues being contested and make us more specific. Here goes: Yus: <<The basic assumption for your “Njolfen” theory is based on conjecture. It is taken for granted that because the by-election was surrounded by extraordinary circumstances (incumbent’s death and unprecedented economic hardships), the voter turnout would be unusually high. There is nothing wrong with this except this conclusion is drawn from inferences and not hard facts or solid numbers. If you had produced numbers from by-elections similar to the one in Kiang East which show a definite link between by-elections and high voter turnout, this assumption would have been backed by empirical evidence. But this is not the case here. The same can be said for the purported evidence (Baba Jobe and Kebba Jobe’s admissions plus newspaper reports). An inference is made from these reports that the level of voter-buyout was high when in fact there is no evidence to support this. If Baba Jobe, Joke or the Independent had provided accurate figures which show high levels of voter buyout, then your basic assumption would have been based on more empirical evidence. >> No. The theory or assumption is based on circumstantial evidence and logic. The former is admissable as evidence by many courts and a liberal definition of the meaning of empirical would not hesitate to admit circumstantial evidence as empirical. I've always granted that i started off on a conjectural premise. This was later supported by such circumstantial evidences like local newspaper reports, the admission of such APRC bigwigs like Baba Jobe and Kebab Joke and most recently by some UDP supporters who stepped forward to aid their party in their investigations on the matter. More to the point, no APRC heavyweight has - insofar as i can see - come out and disavow or repudiate the claims of vote-buying. The logic of all this is that it leads to a garnering of evidence that is on the whole circumstantial but legally acceptable as evidence in some courts of law. In any event, the UDP is contesting the Kiang East by-election results in court and more or less they are going along the lines of Dampha and his compatriots thinking. The judgment on that case shall, perhaps, be the denuder of all assumptions professed on the issue and their incoherences or fallacies. Yus: << On the other hand, my assumption about the high amount of absentee ballots is based on empiric evidence or experience from past elections. The claim being that because statistics show a regular pattern of less than high voter turnout in previous elections in Kiang East, this predicament was not surprising. A comparison shows a definite correlation between the absentee vote of 1997 and that of 2001. This assumption is therefore not based on conjectural but empiric evidence. A good example of a similar assumption based on empirical evidence is as follows: Based on statistics of previous elections, the voter turnout in the United States has generally declined steadily since the 1960s. Therefore, a low turnout during the just concluded presidential elections was definitely not surprising. This conclusion was derived from the statistics which show a decline in voter turnout from then to present.. More specifically, studies have shown that level of turnout in African and Gambian elections have been marred by a sense of apathy from voters. This is strong empiric evidence to support my voter apathy assertion. >> Now, using past election statistics for the purposes of inferring, deducing and suggesting are all good and well; insofar as one doesn't determinately make sweeping statements from them about the present without scant empiric truth linking the two different periods. No problems there as such. The fundamental flaw with this, however, only comes when one attempts chimerically to make sweeping conclusions from such statistics about the present without scant evidence that empirically links the two different periods. Suffice for me to say that the deductions, inferences and suggestions that invariably ensue from using such past election figures cannot by themselves be conclusive - at any rate, they need present empiric truths to be anywhere near conclusive. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with using the 1996/7 general election results to infer, deduce and suggest why some 1000 votes were not casted. This methodology becomes threadbare if no form of empiric evidence exists that directly links the 1996/7 general elections with the by-elections of 2001. The link you have is conjectural i.e, voter apathy - something you have to this very day not substantiated with empirical evidence. You merely point at figures that are by no means indicative of voter apathy. I again challenge you to empirically link 1996/7 general elections of Kiang East with 2001 by-elections of Kiang East. Without such an empirical linkage, your assumptions fall apart at the seams. Conjectural evidences like voter apathy, that you have so fervently appealed to, cannot by themselves tidy away the incoherences that emaciate your theory. Again, i challenge you to empirically demonstrate - with 2001 facts and not inferring from 1996/7 general election results - why voters in Kiang East in 2001 would be indifferent, disinterested and unconcerned about voting in the by-elections. To the extent that you can successfully answer this conundrum, shall settle the matter - once and for all. Yus: << There is no need to belabor your actual ‘Njolfen’ theory because it is shaky and you have done nothing to disprove this. However, to make things worse you managed to somehow confuse the meanings of voter apathy and voter alienation. You also mucked up the difference between conjectural evidence and empirical evidence. The ‘Njolfen’ theory cannot stand by itself or even with support from the conjectural evidence which you posited. This was my main contention with this theory from day one. Now you seem to have come around full circle to admit that there is no way this theory can accurately explain the absentee vote. The following statement from you puts it all in perspective: < point of exactitude. Yet this is a non sequitir: insofar as we established that votes have been bought, it doesn't matter the amount bought; for that alone, by itself, legally nullifies the by-election results. This is the point.> >> First things first. The evidence alluded to here vis-a-vis Njolfen, is circumstantial. We have already stated the case for such a thing. More to the point, i shall reach out for my Britannica again and make consultations on 'circumstantial evidence' so we don't distort our own opinions on it with authority. My Britannica tells me that circumstantial evidence is a noun and traces its origins to the 18th. century and defines it as: "evidence that tends to prove a fact by proving other event or circumstance which afford a basis for a reasonable inference of the occurence of the fact at issue." Now, if you agree with this liberal definition of circumstantial evidence, i don't quite see how you can attribute conjectural premisses to Njolfen when in fact we forwarded such evidences like APRC bigwigs like Kebab Joke and Baba Jobe's admission that votes were indeed bought, local newspaper reports confirming that said admission and of recent UDP supporters coming forward to substantiate the vote-buying claims; added together, all of whom tantamount to being described as circumstantial evidence and admissable as evidence in a court of law. If you disagree, can you please tell us why? The reason why i brought up the question of 'exactitude' vis-a-vis whether we are ever likely to know every Pateh and Samba whose votes were illegally bought off them, is not to say that i doubt the evidences i appeal to. The point was just that we are unlikely to know every Pateh and Samba whose votes were illegally bought. This is a non sequitur given the circumstances and our original premise: By itself, this point is not that important. For we need not to trace all votes illegally bought before we can effectively conclude that illegal influencing of the outcome of an election has occurred and thus nullifying the by-election results. For us to have our blissful day under the sun in court, we need not launch statistical inquiries as to the probabilistic degree to which vote-buying influenced the outcome of the elections. For the results to be declared null and void, a single illegally bought vote should do. That was the point i was making all along. Have a nice Bank Holiday Weekend; i'm off to Bournemouth, Dorset. Hope your plane ride was not that bad. Best wishes, Hamjatta Kanteh ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------