I am a habitual listener to these Gambian online media to know what is going on in my country and the surrounding. At times the debate goes very high and at times lowered. I do listen to very brilliant ideas coming in but at times negative arguments, but that is life and its beauty of a free and democratic state. I have never made any comment against neither a face book commentators, nor in these whatsapp groups, because I never want to offend anyone as everyone has rights to express your opinion as long as it does not go against the laws of natural justice.
My favourite medium that I do listen to are the Freedomnews paper, Kibaaro, Gainako, and Hello Gambia, but frankly speaking freedom news paper is where I get more and most current information about the Gambia, this is followed by the Kibaroo news paper and others. I would like to salute the staff of the FREEDOMNEWSPAPER and KIBAROO NEWS PAPER, for their roles to remove the Dictatorship from the Gambia.
Now that every Gambian is a journalist, but journalism goes with responsibility, better self comportment and respect to individual opinions. We have all being following the political trend in the Gambia where no one can ever produce any video where Lawyer Ousainou Darboe is insulting any of his political opponents, and so thus none of them have ever produced any bad audio against Darboe. I now wonder why their followers are more especially the members of the Main opposition party where most of the said supporters are always in the habits of insulting the opposition members, leaders and the media fraternity. This led to the U.D.P leader for the second time addressing his party supporters which is very unusual.
I think the supports of U.D.P as the main opposition party in the Gambia should learn to be more tolerant than anyone else, this is not happening in the other parties but U.D.P. The U.D.P can sweep the politicl pools only if its membership honour their leadership. Personally, I think something is lacking in the Gambian politics ( political education and tolerance). Fatou Camara yes she has worked with the defunct APRC that has ruled the Gambia with an iron hand for 22/23 years, and yes she knows a lot about the good and bad dealings of YAYA JAMMEH and not only the ex-president but even the top echelon of the then government of YAYA JAMMEH. We have all seen Fatou Camara in pictures with the leader of the Coalition government President ADAMA BARROW and Hon. Ousainou Darboe, it was a moment of joy and happiness, so if Fatou turns to oppose the same leadership, I think that is the beauty of democracy and failure in expectations. Perhaps, Fatou Camara thought she was going to be accorded with a tumultuous welcome like IMAM BABA LEIGH who lives all his life teaching the good morals and lessons to humanity. Therefore, calling Inspector General of Police and Public Relations officer ( P.R.O) police was going to sarve as her sanctuary and body armour because she expected high turnout in welcoming he to the cradle of democracy. This was the first point of her disappointment and possibly she also thought she was going to be giving a ministerial or a directorate responsibility or even approves her request to open a T.V station in the Gambia without undue delay, which all does not go like she thought.
The other aspect is the image of the party U.D.P, which should be jealously, guided against any intruder, by other party members, the case of A.P.R.C to be band shall be a big political blow to the main opposition party U.D.P, let all the parties strive under the sun and galvanize support for themselves. If the government makes any slight mistake in banning APRC, then there will be a possible coalition or political merger of other opposition parties against the Main party which is U.D.P. It will also be advisable for the parties leadership to advice their supporters to be Law abiding and tolerant, because of the supporters of the Main opposition party U.D.P said has a pistol ( firearm) and a sniffing tear gas which is a very sad yet bad signal to the party. The man call himself one NJIE MANNEH said in a public Audio that he shot an enemy in one of the Gambians most busy buffer zones in the Gambia. This does not tell well about the party and there were about four different Audios condemning the action which I believe the authorities know about but yet still the state authority is silence over the issue. The general public and the international media is aware of the Audios but nothing yet is said to have come from the Gambia government.
The worst part of it is that, if this was the other party militants what would have happened to the chap. A mere street protest happened in the home of the EX-president and the security personals shot and kill one and left many injured while others were arrested. Imagine one of those demonstrators was caught with a rifle, pistol or sniffing tear gas? No one can deny that allegation that the Audio was Audio Net and the world has it. There have been many circumstantial situations which could be averted but due to the abuse of this WhatSApp groups now a days, both responsible and irresponsible people are mixed together in the usage of the net. The international world is monitoring the situations in the Gambia because a lot of aid and international participation has been done to send the then dictator to an exile, so no one party should be held responsible for spoiling that chance, because opportunity comes but once, in Swedish we say “möjlighet kommer men en gång”.
Coming to the issue of the current leaders of the opposition APRC as a party, FABAKARY TOMBONG JATTA and RAMBO JATTA, the U.D.P membership should try to ignore most of their actions because they are thought and action provokers which can lead to any skirmish or a political anarchy. Their is a standard police force and joint security mechanism which should control the circumstantial occurrences, but if the U.D.P should act other wise it will taint the name of the party . Today many are not seeing president ADAMA BARROW as president of the coalition but president of the United Democratic party, so any slight error of the government, the blame will be anchored on U,D,P leadership which will not be fair. The whatsAPP and facebook showers please be more reasonable and defend the name of the party, because the party secretary general is a very sober and level headed minister together with the ” DINDINGMANSOO” and so on and so forth.
It goes to a point that many are trying to associate themselves to the party leaderships and even calling them their fathers,grandfathers, uncles and ghetto boys, but that should not make any one to use that opportunity to slam insults on others parents and go scot free. I do not think that Mr. .Ousainou Darboe will ever think of expelling any one from the party or if he even has the right to do so, because when the U.D.P was former he was invited to lead base on his potentials so say I or the party will expel individuals should not be an anchor stick for any party, One plus one is two, but also one minus two is one, so where is your multitudinal figure you are talking about if you expel others and they move with their supporters, insult others they catch their monies, frown others and they take a back bench like jurors where is your strength ? I think U,D,P members should try to exercise maximum restrain and patience.
By Lamin Jaffa sweeden ( swancy molmore)