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You Hypocrites: CCG Is Not Subversive and Not Clandestine. Stupid!
Thursday, 16 June 2011 19:45
By Prince Bubacarr Sankanu, Cologne, Germany O yeah, o yeah! Here we go again. Some of our compatriots are being denied their Civil Rights to enjoy their freedoms of association and expression. If we are to accept the bitter truth, My Mad Brother President Yahya Jammeh is not the one who is necessarily afraid of The Coalition For Change - The Gambia (CCG). It is some of the lousiest anti-Jammeh fanatics and pro-Jammeh sycophants who are afraid of CCG's fresh winning formula for democratic sanity in The Gambia.
The gossips over clandestine or subversive grouping are malicious rants of some slippery fellows who are jealous of GGC and would wish to see its members suffocated. The first noise-maker who publicly lied that CCG is a clandestine organization is sick and should see a mental doctor or else he or she will lose whatever is left of his or her dented credibility. If I were part of CCG's Think-Thank, I will drag that person to court for defamation.
Freedom of commentary does not give any dog the barking right to sow the seeds of discord and expect to go
unpunished. Gambians being the cowards and rumour consumers, they are afraid to tell the noise-makers the truth due to the petty threats of exposures of their whatever private or public secrets. To hell with the blackmails. Who does not have a skeleton inside his or her closet? Someone must have the balls or the oestrogen to cut the idle conspirators to size without fear or ill-will. If you are not ready to accept the truth am saying then go ahead and expose whatever imaginary crime you believe I Prince Sankanu committed but that will NEVER scare me away from daring the mob when necessary. Nonsense! I am not a Saint and I am not interested in becoming one.
No mentally correct person can deliver a serious final verdict on a 3-month old democratic civil society organization like CCG that is busy fine-tuning its strategy, organizational structures and membership administration. CCG as a legitimate group deserves the time and chance like any other new non-state actor of national advancement to perform. Please you hypocrites, be honest for a minute.
The members of CCG have every right to enjoy their freedom of assembly/association. They have the right to enjoy their freedom expression through their own websites, radio stations, press releases, printed T-shirts and other publicity give-aways, rallies, meetings, protests, conferences, debates, retreats, leisure, picnics, contests, concerts, sales, you name any other civilised method. They have NOT committed any crime. They are not even guilty of a common traffic offence let alone major criminal act. They did not call for the overthrow of the government of the day. They did not disturb public peace and did not do anything seditious or treasonable. They cannot be accused of unlawful assembly or operating an unregistered organization. Then one does not need to register even a Bantaba or village square political discourse. We have thousands of informal traditional Kafos operating peacefully between Kartong and Koina without any formal registration. The registration will constitute an unnecessary burden that will rob them off their communal flexibility and spontaneity. Our thousand-year old blanket Customary Law that covers them within our Constitutional framework is enough. If the CCG members decide to operate like an informal customary Kafo, they have the right to sue anyone who call them illegal.
On does not need prior government approval to participate in a video club screening of a football match or Nigerian movie or join an “attaya” brewing corner. The ladies do not even need to think of registration before assembling for their usual gossip sessions. Sorry ladies. I smooch you for this: mwah, mwah, mwah!
There is nothing in our Gambian Criminal Code a competent prosecutor can use against Dr. Janneh or the CCG in this regard. Except flimsy charges that only Kangaroo courts of a pseudo-democratic state can even waste tax-payersresources to hear.
In fact Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh, Jabiyong Ndey Tapha Sosseh, Mawdo Mathew K. Jallow and their associates have the right like any other Gambian to form or join say, the “association of flies and mosquitoes.” If they instead join the “Samba Kuka Yiriwa Kafo”, it is no one's business.
My Brother President Jammeh do you want to enjoy a peaceful election period 2010-2013? Remember this is not year 2000 when students could be gunned down, people can be detained without trial or made to disappear. The Gambia being irrelevant on the global geopolitical agenda and Gambians being gullible do not mean you can now trample on the rights of your fellow citizens. The events in North Africa have placed you and other self-styled dictators on the 24/7 watch-list of the global community. Free Dr. Janneh and his detained associates without flimsy charges. Let CCG contribute its quota towards the advancement of our beloved Motherland Republic of The Gambia.
I endorsed CCG yesterday, I endorse CCG today and I will continue to endorse CCG as long as it maintains a progressive development strategy for The Gambia. For Jabiyong Ndey Tapha Sosseh I Vouch I vowed to defend all the ladies who made it through my rigorous quality filter or meet my general Princely Taste regardless of their political, religious, economic or other world-views and statuses. Jabiyong Ndey Tapha Sosseh made it to the top side and as such I will always come to her aid and vouch for her especially in her times of distress.
Thanks Jabiyong for ignoring the attempts to taint you. Whether done in good faith of free speech or bad faith of personal pettiness, the attempts to stain you have failed. Your records speak for themselves and the people who know you will never judge you according to gossips posted against you in the name of public scrutiny, examinations or whatever nebulous agenda. Only the tree with fruits gets the stone hits. If at all you are a useless woman, no derailed characters will throw mud at you.
I am proud that you ignored the bad press on your private personality in a manner befitting your elite stature as a Princely Sankanu Quality Lady (PSQL). Let them explode in anger and jealousy. You are blessed.
Double Standard: Freedom of Speech, Yes. Freedom of Association, No?
It is very funny. When alternative communications platforms were proliferating especially online, people welcomed them as milestones towards the consolidation of pluralism in The Gambia. Though I for one decried the fact that many Gambians who actually have the power to change things on the ground do not understand the English language used by the alternative platforms and that only few Gambians have the money and time to consume online content for informed decisions, I wholeheartedly stood and continue to stand by them.
The limited impacts of some of the noisy online platforms can be verified by the fact that despite the sustained exposures of Jammeh's crimes, the man is still digging his tentacles deep into the flesh of Gambians. Whenever one reads a breaking news on “Jammeh this, Jammeh that”, one gets the feeling that Jammeh's government will collapse the next day. But some five or six years into the internet exposure jamboree Jammeh is going no where.
Many conscious readers and concerned citizens discovered that the strategy of online gossips is not productive and sustainable. New alternatives were long overdue. Now that civil society organizations are proliferating as alternative development groups, some people are getting nervous. Either they are afraid of competition as they realised that these alternative organizations will not follow their failed strategies or they are just being the petty idiots of the nation. For them it is fine to have online blogs and other portals but its not right for others to set up concrete civil society groups.
This is double standard.
The online anonymity has also given people the space to hide behind dubious identities and pour their venoms in the name of free speech. These are however aberrations that should not distract our attention from urgent national issues.
We live in a free world with a multitude of alternatives. If one medium refuses to carry your message, another one will do it. Today the last thing one should worry about is how to get one's message delivered to the right target groups without wastage.
The reality is that some of the people who have authentic access to useful information that can send President Jammeh packing are keeping quite and taking their time. They are refusing to talk online and offline as they know it will not just endanger the lives of their families but it will reduce the value of their information. It will help Jammeh plan a survival strategy that will beat the evidence they gossip about irresponsibly. Feel free to enjoy your freedom of expression be it online and offline but never claim to be fighting to free Gambians from dictatorship as the Gambians who matter do not base their decisions on the harangue. If Gambians want change they will get up from the norm and away from their keyboards to form associations like CCG, you name it.
Pecunia Non Olet. Insulting The Intelligence of Donors
Another wicked habit of Gambians is to call anyone who forms an organization a greedy person who is out to just take money from donors. This is pure jealousy. Perhaps some of those accusers were doing just that and have been blacklisted by donors. They therefore feel guilty when they see others succeed in winning the confidence of donors with deep pockets. They would spread lies just to create suspicion in the minds of donors. This is malicious. When the Gambia Government gets funding from foreign donors, they call it development cooperation. Religious groups can get funding from Middle East to build religious schools and no one accuses them of corrupting the Secular fabric of The Gambia. There are Gambian civil society groups benefitting from direct financial support of say the U.S. Embassy. No one is accusing them of being puppets of the U.S. Government but any other liberal organization that sources funding from foreign partners is accused of either being fraudulent, shadowy or foreign puppet. What these leeches fails to understand is that donors are not stupid. They are insulting the intelligence of donors who perform their respective due diligence and have their own criteria for funding.
It is well known that Gambians are not good at fulfilling their pledges for common causes. They will prefer to spray money on praise singers for immediate gratification than invest in a cause with delayed gratifications. Therefore liberal civil society groups that intend to finance their activities have to look elsewhere for alternatives to pay for their field programmes whether the critics like it or not.
Fund raising is not a crime. President Obama raised funds and continues to raise more for his Presidential campaigns.
In fact the amount he spent on his last campaign was less than the total amount he collected. To date I am yet to hear anyone in America accuse him of defrauding donors. No one is asking him to return the surplus to the donors. If it were in The Gambia the so called “credible” rumour-mongers will circulate stories just to tarnish the man's image. They will not care to find out whether he saved the surplus to use for his re-election budget or invested it on worthy causes. They would just lie that he used the money to enrich himself.
Gambian civil society groups regardless of their objectives have the right to raise funds. To any other Gambian who wants to form an organization I encourage you to go ahead. Do not mind the people who will accuse you of being just interested in donour money. They are not going to pay your bills so let them talk. Tell them to kiss the asses of the ugliest members of your group. Pecunia non olet. Money does not smell. You are free to raise funds from any source you deem appropriate.
CCG Is Transparent
I do not have the details of CCG's modus operandi but from what I analysed within its first three months of existence, the organization has paid its dues by being transparent. During the first month of its operation, it issued a clearly worded press release that even the bloody fool can understand. In the second month of its existence, CCG launched its website for the whole world to follow its progress. Coming into the third month, CCG started working on the ground launch of its activities in The Gambia. The printing of T-shirts and other visibility materials as part of the local launch programme exonerates it. Now you still want to gossip that CCG is clandestine and subversive? Go to hell!
As for the complete names of its executives, I do not see what gain the people asking will derive from it. Are they going to give CCG millions of dollars or are they going to dedicate newspaper spaces and radio air time for CCG free of charge? Have Gambian tax-payers given them the power of attorney to pick on GGC as if it depends on tax-payer subventions?
Stop the hypocrisy. How many organizations and portals disturbing our peace over “Jammeh this, or Jammeh that” have published the full lists of their executives and membership for public scrutiny? How many of them are actually registered within even the most irrelevant jurisdiction under the sun? Some of them are nothing but one-man laptop groups with some charlatans as their alibi faces and voices. I believe we have critical readers out there. Please start checking the various entities at home and in the Diaspora to know how many of them are as transparent as they claim.
Survive The Baptism of Fire Like Mai Fatty and GMC.
My Dear Jabiyong Ndey Tapha Sosseh consider your current tribulations as blessings in disguise. Do not allow the people who called you names and the CCG clandestine, to win. Do not change your master strategy just to appease them. The Gambian tax-payers did not give them the mandate to scrutinise you and CCG even if they claim to be pouncing on you in public interest. They are just usurping.
Jabiyong Ndey, the title of “Jabiyong” for warrior or champion is not a useless one. Now is the time for you to prove before God and man that you deserve it. I am confident you will not disappoint me, Your Serene Highness.
When my Brother Mai Fatty introduced his Gambia Moral Congress (GMC), before he could even explain his alternative plans for The Gambia he was accused of operating an illegal political party and perambulating the globe to raise funds in the the name of Gambians. But my Brother Mai Fatty made me proud by surviving the baptism of fire like a real man.
Today his lousy critics both in the pro and anti Jammeh camps are keeping their mouths shut. If I should be active in party politics, I would join Mai Fatty's GMC. I am however facing a moral dilemma because politics is very dirty. The brotherly respect and trust that exist between Mai Fatty and I are so precious that I would not like politics to stain them beyond repair. I know we are both rational intellectuals and we will reconcile after fighting over certain concerned political issues. Notwithstanding, I am still shy. I therefore remain a sincere sympathiser of GMC until further notice.
Jabiyong Ndey, CCG is out to break the vicious cycle of fear. If you all survive this current baptism of fire you will win the coveted street credibility on the ground in The Gambia. The internet is for example a fluid medium that many Gambians at home cannot hold on to firmly. CCG's alternative strategy will provide Gambians, the needed light towers for orientation. Please survive like Mai Fatty and GMC. Do not quench or budge. Go CCG go. You have my Princely Blessing and this is what counts the most. May your enemies live long to see how successful you will be in due course.
In conclusion, I re-empathise what I wrote above that I endorse CCG yesterday, I endorse CCG today and I will continue to endorse CCG as long it maintains a progressive development strategy for The Gambia.
Prince Bubacarr Sankanu
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Cologne, Germany
Courtesy of Maafanta
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Comments
The warm winds of Barack Obama's
"Change Reaction" sweeps south from the tepid shores of the Arabian Kingdoms.
Yahya Jammeh's 17 year "spring" turns towards a coming Winter of discontent.
Like the tall tree it must bend with the winds of change ...or break.
The irony, is that only the weakness of the "Old Guard" opposition... keeps Jammeh afloat.
If Jammeh wins the election he will surely lose?
Sankanu Represents the new order of a rising, upcomming dynamic generation of African political and social liberationists.
This poor treatment and quixotic handling of the Dr.Janneh afair, is a "Bridge Too Far" for the preservation of the APRC.
Dr Janneh is not a new phenonomen for the Jammeh government. He is a smouldering fire and has been for many years.
Beware !!!
Suddenly !!! It will be so quick.
His Highness Hail Haile Halake
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