Haruna, I total concur with your observations regading Hamjatta's postings. Candidly speaking, at the beginning of his polemics with Halifa and PDOIS, I was of the belief and opinion that Hamjatta was a genuine, sincere and objective critic, who wanted to take all politicians to task so that the opportunity will be created for them to explain their policies and programmes as to how they intend to run our country when they are trusted with that responsibility. But as the debate continued, I began to sense a serious degeneration in his criticisms. Instead of dealing with pertinent issues, Hamjatta tended to resort into a personal struggle Halifa Sallah. I began to read in Hamjatta's writings a hatred for not only Halifa and PDOIS but anyone who dares to be objective with PDOIS' position, which I believe reflects a penchant for pettiness, and a desire to show off. This attitude of Hamjatta is not serving us any good. If anything it only takes us back. We are not engaged in any intellectual show. And if at this critical election year of our country, we are still not prepared to use our senses rightly and direct all our thoughts and energies towards coming up with the correct tactics and strategies to remove the Jammeh dictatorship, then let us all be reminded that history shall indict us all. The problem I have with Hamjatta is that he is unreasonably opposed to anything from PDOIS. I am now of the conviction that even if PDOIS were to indicate that one plus one is two, Hamjatta will come up with a different theory to justify that PDOIS is wrong. Secondly, a day hardly passes by without Yahya Jammeh being condemned for what he is - the big tyrant and dictator of the Gambia. But we do not take time to sit down and reflect on our own personal tendencies and honestly ask whether those tendencies are more alligned to dictatorial or democratic ones. Some of us have, willy-nilly, become the tyrants of the L, and will not hesitate to incarcerate anyone with a dissenting and objective voice to the dungeons of cyberspace. Hamjatta will not hesitate to condemn them as "programmed fanatics". I definitely do not see any sincerity in Hamjatta. What I clearly see in him is a desire to be seen as a giant intellectual. We need to be sincere with each other. That is the only way that we can make giant strides ahead. The world has moved far ahead of us. What we are interested at this critical juncture of our history are policies and programmes that are WORKABLE not mere rhetorics. The time has passed when the world was divided into lefts and rights; communists, capitalists and liberals. The old frail voter in Nawdeh is not interested in who is a communist, capitalist or liberal. What he is interested is what can save him from a life of povery, misery and disease. What we should strive to search for, with all sincerity, is what can work, full stop. Knowledge is not the monopoly of any one person, race or region. It belongs to humanity. The problem, I must say, with some of us is that we tend to talk too much and do very little. Let us pool our resources together and support the parties of our choice, financially and morally. Those ones at home, at the forefront, have sacrificed everything they have; everything they could have been; now it's our turn to show seriousness in what we say. No offence. Batch. >From: Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]> >Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list ><[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: Response to Halifa: The Liberal Alternative and Agenda Part > [ii] >Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 00:34:37 -0000 > _________________________________________________________________________ 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------