Re: High school education very basic for presidential candidate
Dear editor,
Almamy Taal’s tone, if correctly reproduced by this reporter, is rather disappointing. I expected more foresight from a spokesman of UDP and also on his own right a lawyer by profession. Good judgment is not anchored exclusively on the education level one can show on paper. The constitution should not discriminate against anyone base on school certificates just as it should not discriminate any able Gambian base on anything apart from criminal record. If we would go by the criteria as threshold of standing for president being conditional to have a college/university degree, we would be excluding half of today’s Gambians from taking part in fair democratic dispensation.
I think the choice of word, if reproduced correctly, of the newly appointed spokesman is unfortunate. If you talk about inclusion, you don’t single out 2 parties and label them as gold standards and debase the rest as “Clowns”. NRP, NCP; GMC and even GDC /APRC have decent people and educated members too.
I think broadly, the selection of candidates as UDP is doing, through primaries, is the step in the right direction. Through the rigorous selection process, combined with a fair refereeing and impartial party leadership, in general competent people will be selected to stand for political posts. I think by far, this is the only plausible way you can objectively ensure that all people take part in the democratic dispensation.
It is not perfect but the fairest among the alternatives!
I also wish to remind Mr. Taal that among the people who marched with Solo Sandeng and subsequently with Darboe on those fateful days in April 2016, at least half of them, do not own a college degree or more. Some of them may not even own a primary school certificate. Denying such people the right to stand for election and be voted for would tantamount to grave unfairness.
Our by-word should be competence and good sense of judgment. And the selection process must remain open to all to compete. The party delegates and by extension the voters have the ultimate powers to decide who get elected to political office.
Kemo Kinteh
Re: Diaspora is the 8th region of the Gambia
Dear editor,
The only differences between the Coalition and AFPRC are; 1 people are not being murdered, perhaps the main thing the Diaspora fought against. 2. There is freedom of speech and of movement. Apart from that, everything else is a copycat of Yahya Jammeh’s bad policies. Besides, why do you want to franchise the Diaspora, when you’ve excluded us completely from the process of rebuilding the country? You choose to hire people who worked with the regime, some of who were directly involved in murdering Gambians. You also recycled Fadera and sent him to US as Ambassador. Do you have any idea how many super qualified fighters in the struggle are in the US? This is where the cream of Gambian intellectuals resides. Don’t take us for fools. You think calling us out as 8th region will make us jump for joy like puppets? Common wake up from your slumber!
Mathew K Jallow
Wisconsin, USA
