2018: opportunities and challenges
Dear editor,
On behalf of every Gambian, I welcome the 2018 political climate!
Of course, we all have to be grateful to have seen 2018 as Gambians, and we hope that it will be prosperous and so on. That what matters is productive collective efforts and working together for our common horizon towards the most efficient political change we continue to work for. Nothing will be easy we know, and our challenges will grow stronger if we remain indifferent to our umbrella of interest that makes us a society; those things that transcend beyond individual and party goals -the general spiritual ecology embedded in our cultures and traditions as Gambianess.
Today Mr. Editor, The Gambia is known the world over and I am proud to carry its identity. From now on, The Gambian condition can be whatever we really want to make it look like, but, whatever that goal would be, nothing at all can be achieved if we remain disinterested in the politics of the common good. Many of us will endeavor to fight out the memories of Jammehism, as it disappears in our institutions for good. Gambians are today necessarily the proudest of their former identities and we can all paint that in our own ways without rubbing off the great Gambian identity of courage, ambition and the will to participate in national defense for the changes we all want.
As our Gambianess moved from the traditional bondage of closed group affiliations towards grand political ideologies that carry in them no such closed group flags but only national symbols of the common horizon of our Gambianess. Most Gambians have already begun to see that our political climate must carry AUTONOMY, EQUALITY AND RIGHTS for all without any compromise. Our god father of all beliefs -politics, must now carry the heavy straight jacket of public concerns and the practical will and effort to meet them.
Gambianess Mr. Editor, will never be in doubt again; it is a legitimate pluralism and that secular paradigm shall continue and Edward F. Small, Jawara or even Jammeh, a little nearer to our days are all part of those political shifts which make the Modern Gambianess even more beautiful and most indispensably, a conscious political brain. And let me not repeat this, Gambianess is really a proud identity and that, we can use to compete and win.
Mr. Editor, politics is my religion as I can now confess that proudly more than anytime else. But this time around, I am talking about a more out-the-box triggering and affectionate feeling we all carry, which lives in us, through our children and in the future -The Gambianess. Useless rhetoric has compromised our political productivity of Gambianess that should have not entertained any price in the world market of modern competitive politics. But, today, intellectually, Gambianess can make everything possible to challenge our most difficult problems, adopt to them and provide our autonomous solutions.
We have talents, we just have to roll our political sleeves and use them. We cannot wait any more for freedom of any type, we cannot entertain any longer those tiered voices disappearing noticeably, we all wish not to see any grave evil like those ones that hijacked Gambianess for so long. This is 2018 of hope that must translate our giant visionary goals into reality by getting back to practical work and shape that Gambianess in our politics.
Alagie Jinkang
Italy
Re: APRC condemns planned sale of Jammeh’s cattle
Dear editor,
Seedy Njie and APRC are becoming too much! Nothing belongs to Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia. Seedy Njie you are lucky you are born in the right place and in the right country hence you can defend Yahya Jammeh today and end up sleeping with your wife and family without fear. I’m right or wrong? Yes, there is true democracy today in The Gambia. If there ever was a BIG THIEF in The Gambia it was in the name of Yahya Jammeh who Seedy Njie is trying to defend. Yahya Jammeh has no legal property whatsoever in the Gambia as far as many Gambians are concerned. Seedy Njie seems to be the only one left in the Gambia who didn’t know that Yahya Jammeh came to power penniless and whatever he accumulated in wealth belongs to the Gambian people. Please, good and honest Gambians remind Seedy Njie of what Yahya Jammeh did to members of the then Jawara government and their properties in the name of transparency and accountability.
If Seedy Njie had it his way we would still be languishing under of one of Africa’s brutal and callous regimes. I for one want to ask Seedy Njie the simple question: Why didn’t you stay with your boss in Equatorial Guinea? I can tell the answer. Because Gambian people are unlike any other people on earth. We love each other that is why Seedy left his boss behind and came back to sweet Gambia.
Seedy’s comments on The Standard Newspaper are an insult to many Gambians especially those who were robbed off their properties by this BIG THIEF called Yahya Jammeh. What the present Commission of Inquiry is doing by selling those cattle is very right and I think they should be sold or given back to their rightful owners, the poor Gambian people. If Seedy Njie disagrees with that he can simply go and drink “ATAYA” without sugar. Here is a guy who sent thousands and thousands of Gambians into external and internal exile by encouraging Yahya Jammeh not to relinquish power during the impasse. In doing so we are in this state of condition we are today and Seedy Njie seems to have no remorse at all. This commission of inquiry is constituted with decent and competent Gambians whose mandated is directed by the Gambian constitution.
Alhagi Touray
Stockholm, Sweden
