Disclaimer: This is written in “Ginny Speak”, meaning that this is written in my own words, in a “stream of consciousness” kinda way. I’m still trying to make sense of my thoughts on this anyway, so, if this doesn’t make much sense, that is why.
Assalamu alaikum / greetings, I have a tendency to “beat a dead horse”, as it were, with issues I don’t understand, or a problem that has me perplexed that I can’t find a solution to.
And so it goes with NADD, or what’s left of it, now that UDP and NRP have split off and formed their own alliance.
No matter which side you’re on, no matter if you agree with Ousainou Darbo’s decision to resign from NADD, the recent splintering of the opposition can’t be a good thing for their chances in 2006 against the ruling APRC party, as the opposition could split the vote three ways, between APRC, NADD, and the NRP / UDP alliance.
The thing is, ever since Darbo’s resignation, there has been much outrage and anger and frustration expressed from many quarters. Some have said that this exemplifies Darbo’s “power hungriness”. Or, that it exemplifies his tribalism. Or that he’s just selfish, and wants to be President so badly, or, wants to be flag-bearer so badly, that since it looked as though he wasn’t going to be flag-bearer, that he just resigned from the whole process altogether.
The thing is, it seems that all of the blame for the failure of NADD is being put on the UDP, because, essentially, “they want all the marbles, and look how much the other parties have acquiesced, or are willing to acquiesce to UDP / Darbo’s demands? Hey, they are even willing to let Darbo be the flag-bearer, yet he left anyway.”
If the Gambia-l and Gambia Post are anything to go by, Darbo is just a Jammeh-in-waiting, and when he gets a chance, he’ll either turn into a power-hungry tribalistic monster, or, he’ll be so weak and spineless that the military will be able to overthrow him at the drop of a hat.
The thing is, I’ve not gotten any clear-cut reasons as to why Darbo resigned, other than the “I can’t trust the other members” mantra, or the “we are not really allied, there is rancor between us, and there’s no reason to continue with this”.
The thing is, I can go back and read the Memorandum of Understanding, I can go back and read Darbo’s press release, I can go and read the NADD press release that just came out. But you know what? I’m too exhausted to do so, and I just don’t feel like doing it? Is that laziness, maybe so.
But to be honest, speaking for myself, if I were a Gambian voter, I sure wouldn’t know who to support! What I see is almost everyone online labelling Darbo as an evil power-hungry tribalist, and either the Darbo supporters won’t defend him because they know or think that the “Darbo-haters” are right, or they won’t defend him or the UDP / NRP’s decision to resign from NADD, because they don’t see the point in it? Or, they don’t want to get attacked themselves?
And then you have the NADD supporters on the other side, not only accusing Darbo of just about everything under the sun, but then, you have some saying that “if you support NADD, you’re for The Gambia, but if you support UDP / NRP / anyone else, you’re a selfish, self-interested tribalist”. And I don’t like this line either. I find that line of thinking, in itself, leaning toward dictatorial myself. Let’s just say I agreed with Darbo’s decision to resign, which I’m not sure I do, and let’s just say that I agree with it because I felt like it was the right thing to do. So, in thinking this, would that make me a tribalist? Would that somehow suggest that I’m not interested in The Gambia, and only interested in myself?
I just don’t like this “us against them” mentality, and I don’t like this blanket idea that if you somehow supported Darbo’s decision to withdraw from NADD, that you somehow are a terrible person for doing so! You can’t say you value democracy and free speech and freedom of expression and freedom of political associaition, and all that good stuff that everyone likes to talk about and yell and scream that they so vehemently support, yet, if someone doesn’t support them or their particular political organization / party, then said people will be called tribalist, self-centered, selfish, and “not for The Gambia and Gambians”!
It’s one thing to disagree with Darbo’s decision to resign from NADD, and it’s one thing to express that disagreement. It’s completely another thing to then go and try to tear the man down, simply because you’re mad at him for resigning, or maybe you just don’t like him ’cause he’s Mandinka and well, you’re not, or maybe because he doesn’t have the same political ideology as you, or maybe, well, just because you don’t like him personally.
I think what’s happened is that people are mad at Darbo for resigning, because they had pinned all of their hopes on NADD. So when Darbo resigned, they saw it not only as him letting NADD / the coalition / The Gambia down, but also, them down personally as well. It doesn’t matter why he resigned, because no good answer is going to satisfy them, especially if said people already thought Darbo was a tribalistic power-hungry egomaniac to begin with.
It seems like there were problems with NADD for a long time, as evidenced by the fact that they couldn’t even agree on whether they were an alliance or new political party, and they couldn’t even agree on a flag-bearer. Yet some wanted to pretend that everything was OK, when clearly, at least to me anyway, it was not.
And you know, I don’t know if Darbo’s completely to blame, or the other NADD members. I don’t know who is more or less power-hungry or tribalistic or anything else, than anyone else. All I know is that if the NADD supporters and the Darbo / NRP / UDP supporters are anything to go by, then everyone’s lost site of what the original goal was supposed to be, and that was, I thought, getting rid of Jammeh and restoring democracy to The Gambia.
However, what it’s been reduced to is Darbo / NRP/ UDP not trusting the other NADD members enough to continue the alliance with them, (and why is that?) And the NADD supporters yelling and screaming about how much of a coward Darbo is, and how if you don’t support NADD you’re not for the Gambia, and how much NADD is here to stay and how much the Gambian people have spoken and they support NADD!
Now, what evidence does anyone have to back any of this up? If Gambians truly support NADD, what is the tangible evidence to back this up!? If Darbo is a tribalist, how is this? If he’s power-hungry, how is this? If he couldn’t trust the other members of NADD, why is this?
How representative of the “Gambian on the ground / street” is the opinions of those which are expressed online? Because I’m wondering if the opinion of the Gambian on the ground differs in any way from those who are posting messages online.
The thing is, I think there are a lot of people with a lot of differing agendas, and NADD is no exception. Darbo may have been wrong, Darbo may have made mistakes, but what about NADD? Everyone wants to talk about how UDP is full of ex-PPP members, yet they forget about Omar Jallow? Wasn’t he PPP? But I guess since he’s in NADD, no one wants to talk about that. They want to accuse Darbo of being tribalist, but, his wives are not Mandinka, are they? They want to say Darbo is a coward and how he said and did nothing while other NADD members were being detained, yet, did he not defend some of them in court, and get them released? I guess people just want to gloss over that too.
The thing is, if Darbo never resigned from NADD, no one would even be discussing all of this! You wouldn’t be hearing how Darbo and Hamat Bah are power hungry tribalist cowards. But the only reason you’re hearing about this now is because everyone’s mad because he resigned from NADD! But my sense is, some people have disliked or been angry with Darbo for a long time. And now, it’s all just coming out.
Does Darbo / UDP / NRP have an agenda, yeah, maybe. They might be power-hungry tribalists who just want the Mandinkas and Fulas to be back in control again. But to me, that’s not been clearly demonstrated. And I think that there are others who are still members of NADD who have their own agendas, we just don’t know what they are yet.
What I do know for sure is, that I really don’t know! And if I were a Gambian voter, I wouldn’t know who to support yet. I’d have to wait and see what these people do, although I know for sure I wouldn’t be supporting APRC. So then, I’d have to decide between NADD and the Darbo / Bah alliance, and the thing is, I wouldn’t want to vote for NADD, just so when they do win the election, they don’t start arresting / intimidating those who didn’t vote for them for being “unpatriotic, nonfreedom-loving Gambians”. the sense I get from the NADD supporters now is, if you support anyone else except us, you’re crazy, and you don’t love The Gambia, and your opinions don’t matter. And these are from some of the same people who say they want freedom and democracy back in The Gambia. But I thought that freedom and democracy applied to all, not just NADD supporters.
So while I may not be comfortable with the UDP / NRP alliance yet, I’m also not comfortable with some of the statements coming from the NADD supporters either! And not only this, many times when I ask questions or express my opinions, some of my answers either get ignored or glossed over!
Take my recent questions, which I asked of the Darbo supporters. The only ones who responded were the “anti-Darbo” crowd, and they just rehashed the “Darbo is awful, we don’t like him” rhetoric. And that’s not what I was even asking. So I guess that the Darbo supporters don’t exist, or they just don’t want to speak up for reasons best known to them.
So, hmm, who would I support if I could vote? I wouldn’t want to support APRC, we all know their track record. I wouldn’t want to support UDP / NRP for the fear that they might turn out to be power-hungry tribalists, and I wouldn’t want to support NADD, ’cause they might be power-hungry too, and what if they came after me, if they got into a position of power, ’cause they deemed me to be a “selfish Gambian” or a “unpatriotic Gambian” because I didn’t support them? I mean, if the rhetoric of “you’re not for The Gambia if you support anyone else but NADD” is being put out there now, how will this statement be backed up or “enforced” if NADD and their supporters do get any kind of power? I mean, say what you want about Darbo, but I don’t see him or his supporters talking stuff about “if you’re not for us, you’re only for yourslef”. So I just have to ask, who is the power hungry one here? Darbo’s not the one running around yelling about how much supporter he has, nor telling anyone who doesn’t support him that they are tribalists or selfish, or saying how “if you don’t support me, then you don’t love The Gambia”, or “if you support me or my party, than you support The Gambia”.
Maybe I just wouldn’t vote at all. Or maybe I’d vote for APRC, because sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.
Just my thoughts! I’m sure some are just hoping I’d just stop beating the dead horse already, and that I’d just shut up, and go off into my own little corner of the Net. The thing is, I wanted clear cut answers. I want to know why is NADD better than APRC or now, UDP / NRP? Or, why should I support Darbo? What was so bad about NADD that he couldn’t work things out? I didn’t get satisfying answers when I saw Darbo speak in Chicago, and this was when he was still with NADD, and I didn’t get clear-cut answers now. All I got were a bunch of vagueries about “we’ll think of this once we get elected”, or “you gotta support NADD because the other guys are only for themselves and don’t care about you”.
The thing is, what I wanted to know was, if you get elected, whether you’re NADD or UDP / NRP or APRC, how are you going to be better than your opponent, how are you going to make life better for the average Gambian. What plans do you have * now! * to carry out your vision of a better Gambia for * all! *, not just your supporters… But I’ve not gotten that, at least from what I saw of NADD, pre-resignation of Darbo. What I got was, “Well, we don’t know now, but when we get elected, we’re going to bring people in to give us ideas!” What? So you don’t know what you’e going to do? Sure doesn’t make me feel good!
Now, if NADD comes out with a clear-cut plan for how they’re going to better The Gambia once they get elected, then that would be nice. But we shall see. We shall see about a lot of things.
But as for me, I give up. I’m not going to get the answers I want, because either people don’t want to give them, people don’t know, or they know but don’t want to say, or they don’t think that answering my questions is worth their time. All I got in answer to my questions was the now-tiring “Darbo is tribalist and a coward” reframe. Of course, I’ve not seen anyone site many examples of the evils of Darbo.
But anyway, as I said, whatever “answers” I got I wasn’t satisfied with. And I see no need to continue asking any questions regarding this issue. I will just watch and wait and see what happens.
