From: suntou toura

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To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list 


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Sent: Thu, Aug 11, 2011 4:57 am


Subject: [>-<] Mathew K on Coalition and the Point Newspaper





www,senegambianews.com


Excellently written and well argued. The UDP have to up the anti, the 


base is there and the youth connection, the brave Gambian women wing is 


prime and ready. Let us give peace a chance by politically standing our 


grounds. Let the Leadership continue to appreciate the urgency of NOW. 


We can do it.


Thanks MKJ.


Suntou


Mathew backs UDP-led coalition, lambasts PDOIS leadership, The Point 


newspaper


Published 08/10/2011 - 9:27 p.m. GMT





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Credit - ousainou


Ousainou Darboe, UDP leader speaking at a political rally


Slide Show








Of phantom heroes and degenerate journalists


 


By Mathew K Jallow





In today’s Gambia, the Orwellian dystopia is no longer that vision of 


impending doom. It is real and it is here; surreal and mind-numbing, 


not just because we let it to fester, but also because a whole nation 


has allowed its dignity and pride to be subservient to Yahya Jammeh’s 


unforgiving Machiavellian small-mindedness. Any effort at qualifying 


The Gambia’s level of despondence under Yahya Jammeh will be an 


understatement.


But now, as another election season dawns on us and the political echo 


chambers churn out a false sense of outrage and fake fury, the 


political debate is being framed for failure, and no one is impressed. 


It is painfully obvious that the Peoples Democratic Organization for 


Independence and Socialism has still not learnt from simple arithmetic 


that under Yahya Jammeh’s monarchy, its fate is inextricably tied to 


the success or failure of the United Democratic Party; and not the 


other way around. The past three election cycles saw an alliance of 


political parties marketed as the panacea for the opposition’s woes; 


the terminal solution, if you will, that will write the last chapter of 


Yahya Jammeh’s inglorious reign and his Armed Forces Provisional Ruling 


Council party’s post-mortem and epitaph. But I beg to differ; even 


though I have oscillated from a coalition advocate, to my impersonal 


but scurrilous criticisms of UDP’s leader Ousainou Darboe’s failure to 


recognize, not only the existential threat UDP poses to the reign of 


Yahya Jammeh’s military regime, but also to his party’s seeming 


inability to leverage the obvious threat of UDP’s power and prestige to 


Yahya Jammeh menace, in order to turn that political advantage into 


electoral success.








The absence of coalition notwithstanding, Ousainou Darboe’s UDP has the 


potential to grow into a formidable political war machine that can 


overcome any barrier created by Yahya Jammeh’s infinite state power and 


resources. But even this close to the elections, the UDP’s ground-game 


appears to lack the sense of urgency Gambians attach to ending the 


political tyranny and economic nightmare that have turned our country 


into an Orwellian oasis in the middle of our part of Africa. 


Consequently, this make or break election season has yet to assume any 


broad significance to the general Gambian electorate, not necessarily 


out of political apathy, but in my view, out of the opposition’s faulty 


messaging and irrelevant message. This reality was encapsulated in two 


recent editorials primed on the pages of both The Point and Foroyaa 


newspapers. Once again, impelled by dogma and fixated on scoring cheap 


political points, PDOIS set the blogosphere ablaze with its moral 


grandiosity and delusional political brinkmanship; all to no effect. 


But what drives PDOIS’s veneer of messianic sanctimony and its sense of 


its mythical aura, also drives its inflated sense of its political 


statute and clouds its sense of objective judgment.


By its imperial pontification, PDOIS has seized the opportunity to 


gleefully; if not maliciously frame the debate entirely around painting 


the UDP leadership as godless political straightjackets. But the 


reverse is the reality. My point is this, PDOIS’s demagoguery and 


holier-than-thou approach to the formation of a coalition has a 


disingenuous quality to it that is textbook Darwinian. But the sooner 


PDOIS recognizes that in spite of the make-believe image it tries to 


project of itself for public consumption, it is UDP that drives the 


opposition agenda; not PDOIS. In my singular opinion, PDOIS owes it 


highest loyalty to itself, and its storybook in The Gambia’s political 


landscape has been solely a marketing strategy whose aim is to 


articulate by word and actions, the brilliance of the ideal; its own 


ideal, with the hope of attaining political power by whatever means 


through a highly suspect and superficial political brinkmanship.


PDOIS’s trite approach to the formation of a coalition is predicated on 


its nebulous, if not Ad Nauseum subliminal references to the leadership 


of the United Democratic Party. But the UDP does not answer to PDOIS’s 


agenda nor is it obliged to fulfill what the PDOIS leadership seems to 


characterize as the precondition to a coalition formation. For a 


coalition to come into fruition, PDOIS must subordinate its authority 


to UDP without attempting to dictate the agenda, for only then will its 


hope for an eventual elevation to national and international prominence 


ever come close to becoming reality.








In the same vein, The Point newspaper’s attempt at sanctifying Yahya 


Jammeh’s image and that of his AFPRC party, whether done deliberately 


or inadvertently, underscores the paper’s lost glory and its lack of 


purpose and direction.


In its editorial, the paper admonished politicians to hone in on issues 


relating to agriculture, education and health, but failed to make any 


reference to the corruption and gross human rights violations that 


include murders and extrajudicial killings, which are uppermost in the 


minds of Gambians. The Point newspaper’s effort at defining the 


political talking points for the opposition is not only mischievous but 


appears to be self-serving, and goes beyond mere self-censorship to 


currying favors with the regime.


The Point newspaper’s visionary, the late Deida


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www.suntoumana.blogspot.com