Mr. Colly, this is another appeal to you to ignore these frivolous attacks on your integrity. Few weeks ago more substantive attacks were made against you and we appealed to you to ignore those attacks and you did. Where are those attackers today? If you ignore Batch, he will get off your back too. He is trying very hard to be relevant and elevate the importance of the debate he wants to engage in. Do NOT be a party to this distraction. Let he and his friends debate among each other. If they want to form a cabal whose objective is to tear down people that were in power but are no longer in power, while we relegate the menace in our society to irrelevance, that is their prerogative. Let them pursue that agenda. If we have time in our hands to respond to some of their lies, we will do so. If we feel that their accusations are NOT substantive enough to warrant ignoring Yaya and debating with them, then let us ignore them. You are embarked on a very important program of debunking the lies told by Yaya and his cohorts about what happened on and about July 22, 1994. This shatters the whole basis of the false impression Yaya et al were giving to the Gambian public that they made sacrifices for the people. This is an important facet of the war against Yaya. Together with your activities on G_L, you are doing other very tangible things to ensure that Yaya is removed from power. One day when it is all said and done, history will recognize the important and sensitive things people like you and Chongan have contributed to this struggle and are contributing as we write/speak. No amount of provocation should make you lose your cool and say things that will jeopardize the struggle. Fair-minded people that are interested in the truth know that you are a good man; a humble man; interested in the rule of law. Anybody can stand up and say that the next person looks ‘arrogant and pompous’. These words mean nothing. You thought when you were on TV, you looked angry. Samba thinks that you looked arrogant. Let him think whatever he wants. See, the difference here is that when you said that you were angry, you backed up what you were saying by explaining why you were angry. Samba on the other hand cannot say why you looked ‘arrogant’. These are just semantics that frankly do NOT deserve your attention. To think that the man will spend his time writing a thesis on how you looked on TV speaks volumes about his intentions. Be bigger than him and ignore him. He wants to make it appear as if you were emotional in your piece and allowed the discourse to degenerate into insults. Obviously this is NOT true. Need I remind Samba that he was the first to attack you? He was the one who came here to express a subjective OPINION (as opposed to FACTS) about how you looked on TV. He craftily put that statement in a discussion we were having on torture in the country. The innuendo here was that you partook in the torture of those mercenaries. As usual when we took him to task to back up his opinion and innuendo with facts, he could NOT do so. Up to today, he dare not say that you partook in that torture. We remove the torture from the table, we are left with his subjective and erroneous OPINION that you looked pompous and the charge that you were mystifying the State House. See how empty Samba’s piece is? I will balance out his statement that you are pompous by saying that I know you and I know that you are a humble man. Now let us move to his charge that you warned people NOT to attack the State House. What did Samba expect to hear from the Commander of the Armed Forces whose men have just been senselessly slaughtered? You were saving lives. Letting it be known that it is futile for lightly armed bandits to take on the State House. What is wrong with that? Does that mean that you tortured the perpetrators? Does that mean that if today heavily armed people were going to flush Yaya out, you will stop them by ‘mystifying’ the State House and Yaya’s might? This is ridiculous. I have these many questions because frankly I CANNOT see the logic in Samba’s arguments. Why he is doing what he is doing, is totally beyond me. How does what he is doing help us in this struggle to remove Yaya? Well, some can say that he is perhaps helping to avoid us having another Yaya in place. But this is putting the cart before the horse. Before we put another Yaya in place, we have to remove Yaya first. Secondly, this premise is also a smokescreen and an erroneous premise because it assumes that you are interested in gaining power in the country after Yaya. I say that this is a false assumption because going by your writings on G_L (which is the only resource for the people accusing you), you have shown NO INTEREST in wanting to lead. You are always full of praises for our current leaders on the ground. You are interested in elections taking place and you certainly have no plans of running in those elections. So the evidence points to the exact opposite of what this argument from Samba et al is insinuating. Had you come here to propagate an agenda the net effect of which would be you being the next president, then their argument would hold some water. On the contrary, your agenda is the exact opposite. One of the points Samba is trying to use against you from your earlier writings vividly illustrates the fact of what I am talking about you promoting others to lead us rather than you being a leader like Yaya. When Samba took you to task about the issue of presidential term-limits, he did NOT even realize what you were addressing. He did NOT notice that you were giving great reviews to Ousainou Darboe. You were applauding UDP’s recent announcement that if they come to power, they will limit the amount of time politicians spend in their executive positions such as mayors and president. Now, are these the points from some one who is aspiring for the same position Darboe wants? This is just one example of how you have applauded our leaders in the past. I know you will NOT be fooled by Samba’s pronouncements about how he respected you in the past and did not want to get here with you. Clearly this is NOT true. Samba started this in the first place by trying to link you to a torture you did NOT commit; coming here saying that you are arrogant and pompous. So, it is disingenuous for him to now try to put the blame on you. I do NOT understand why he is making a big meal about you calling certain people nonentities. Does he not know what the word means? Here we go again with semantics. When I read that word from your piece, I interpreted the word to mean ‘people without influence’. The interpretation others want to give that word is their prerogative. If people want, they can interpret that to mean that you were saying that those you were referring to were not people at all. This is their subjective view you can do very little about. You know what you meant. I used the word several times. I know that when you used the word you were referring to the person that came here to say that everyone that worked for Yaya must have blood in his/her hands. You do not know that person and do not know where she came from in Gambia; hence your generalization that nonentities (people without influence in your life) wherever they might come from with their allegations, mean nothing to you. Their wild allegations would NOT stop you from contributing in the manner you have been contributing. Now, does this mean that you think that all Gambians are nonentities simply because they came from the neighborhoods you mentioned? Need I also point out that you mentioned Serrekunda where you originally come from and where members of your family and friends still reside? What is wrong in describing people that unjustifiably accuse you of being a murderer, as nonentities not worthy of your attention? Nothing if you ask me. Samba wants to now use that simple statement from you to pit you against the Gambian public and then give himself the opportunity to call you an ‘intellectual whore’. Like I said, be bigger than him and ignore this baseless character assassination. Many fine people worked for this illegal government. Does that wipe out all the good they have done in their lives before the advent of this regime? Does working for this regime in the past mean that in future you cannot help in removing this regime from office and stopping the massacre of our children? Like I said here months ago, this blanket statement about people that worked for this regime is a hypocritical statement and like all generalizations, simplifies a very complex issue. Is Samba going to tell me that all the people that once worked for this government are equally culpable for the wrongs of this government? I want him to think deeply about this question before he gives a hasty answer. We do NOT need to force some good people into Yaya’s camp. What happened to what Samba was talking about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? Why can’t we look at every case on its own merit? Let us look at what everyone that worked for the government did before we paint all of them with the same brush. How many millions did some one steal? How many people did some one torture and kill? Etc. Because Yaya is a murderer does not mean that his Agriculture or Education Minister is a murderer. Bring tangible proof before you accuse people of heinous crimes. Samba’s false allegation about you being a tribalist also does NOT deserve your attention. His smoking gun is your decision to call yourself Ebou Colly. He bunched a whole host of Gambians into a group that opposes Yaya because Yaya is a Jola. What a ridiculous accusation. Is Edward Singhateh a Jola? Is Yankuba Touray a Jola? You have been equally critical of all those people. Samba does NOT know what he is talking about. In an attempt to lynch you, he is helping propagate one of Yaya’s most vicious lies; i.e. people hate him because he is a Jola. If that is what is motivating you now, why did you work for Yaya in the first place? Was he not a Jola in 1994? Of course you do NOT hate Yaya because he is a Jola. You hate the vermin because of what he has done to The Gambia and Gambians. That has nothing to do with his tribal affiliation. So far in your narrations one of the people that came out worst is Antouman Saho. Is he a Jola too? When you explained the torture at Mile II did you bring Yaya into it because he is a Jola? The vermin did not even feature because he was not there. Again what we have from Samba is wild and ridiculous allegations that he CANNOT back up. Any fool can get up and make allegations. Backing up what you are saying is something else. Samba also make the illogical conclusion that given the chance you will go back and work for Yaya. I say it is illogical because the evidence shows the exact opposite of his conclusions. How many ex-army men have fallen out with Yaya’s government? How many of those men are writing to criticize the government the way you are doing? Are your activities those of someone that wants to win favor from Yaya? This is ludicrous. As I said before, many Gambians did NOT know Yaya before 1994. People genuinely thought that he meant well. They went to work for the government. Years down the line they discover that the vermin does NOT mean well. Now, those people want to turn their lives around and help get rid of the vermin. But no, we have some Holier than Thou people in the Opposition that want to have nothing of that. Once you worked for Yaya, ‘you have blood in your hands’ and should NOT join the fight to remove Yaya without being castigated (most of the time for crimes you did NOT commit). Colly, I hope you realize that you are NOT in this for these Holier than Thou people. I also hope others that made a MISTAKE and worked for Yaya in the past are NOT discouraged from participating in this struggle on the side of the good people. Many in the struggle do NOT just judge people and banish them into categories they do NOT belong in. We look at everyone’s case in its own merit. While we will NOT welcome murderers and torturers, we have no problems with Education, Agriculture Ministers that did NOTHING to assist in Yaya’s corruption and thuggery. We are NOT interested in a witch-hunt where everyone that worked for Yaya is a prey. Unless Samba comes up with tangible evidence against you showing that you brutalized Gambians, rest assured that no fair-minded person would take him seriously. Most Gambians will just see him as doing the dirty job of the APRC for them. Find solace in the fact that so far no one has contradicted your facts with tangible facts of his/her own. On the contrary, we had Chongan corroborate your FACTS. We are NOT interested in OPINIONS about how one looks. We want to hear FACTS. How many Gambians have you killed? How many millions have you stolen? Some one looks and sounds arrogant. How laughable? 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