The idea of Raleigh was not born out of a lofty social creed or ideology driven emotion, nor was it impelled by illusions of utopianism. After all, the nineteenth century is long gone, and with it the sacrosanctity of Karl Marx’s delusional “dialectical materialism” and Vladimir Illich Lenin’s maddening “proletariat revolution;” thus effectively ending the anarchistic revolutionary fervor of political puritanism and egalitarian fantasy of that century. Raleigh was conceived at a time Gambians were wrapped up in fierce political struggles to replicate the story of La Guinea, Ivory Coast and Mali’s democratization, or risk relapsing into the familiar carnage of the unforgetable 1981 coup attempt. For like the fearsome Libyans, Syrians, Egyptians and Tunisians, who rose to their circumstances and demanded change to the political system, Gambia is also faced with daunting challenges, which demand unleashing our nationalistic imagination, and avoid the comfort of partisanship that is cruelly untempered by the necessary experience of competence and insightful political sagacity. Raleigh was preceded by the high drama of hope, and even higher optimistic euphoria for the possibilities of coalescing around an issue so seminal in Gambia’s political discourse. But last week, the unveiling of the Raleigh Steering Committee was an anticlimactic moment; unsettling and incredulous in its daring.
Moreover, the process itself was painfully slow; challenged by its total absense of necessary definition of the broader dissident agenda in order to plot the dissident movement’s political and economic needs with the galvanizing intellectual capacity so critical to the political struggle. If the selection committee seemed unbound by the often contentious difference in political viewpoints or perhaps even dismissive of the necessity to crowd Gambians into a single unifying mindset, the Steering Committee’s unveiling more than expressed this in the lousiness and amateurism with which the soaring aspirations of Raleigh de-escalated into a crippling manifestation of dis-unity. Without equivocation or ambivalence, the formation of Raleigh’s Steering Committee screams out loud for its striking lack of even the pretense of the pursuit of intellectual transcendence. And even if a swath of the Gambian dissidence community shrouds Raleigh with uninspiring exuberance, the truth remains that its shortcomings far outweigh the possibilities provided by that historic conference. Raleigh promised novel attitudes that elevate the political discourse to new heights of universal cohesiveness, instead, it’s poignant display of barriers to its own success is evident in its exclusive paternalism and scantiness of intellectual effort in analytical decision-making.
The absence of key voices from the Raleigh Steering Committee is a-typical, equally important, the deliberate surrender to mediocrity, so painfully obvious, has stained the remarkable hope that Raleigh represented. The effort to create a unifying Gambian political force has become more challenging as obstacles to cohesiveness have been created. But the arch of history has always bent to the desire for change, and that could ensure that the promise of Raleigh is not flamed out by the unflattering failure of its first test. At this point, the reconstitution of the Raleigh Steering Committee is the sticking point that stands in the way of a unity against a brutal dictatorship. That aside, the strident dismissiveness of dissenters of the Raleigh Steering Committee manifestly lack the constituency of tolerance, but above all, it highlights the deep differences in understanding of the needs of the Gambia’s dissident movement. The withering criticism of the composition of the Raleigh Steering Committee, besides reechoing the apparent misunderstanding the movement’s needs, is an expression of tactical differences. Meanwhile, as Raleigh enters its second week, chances of reconstituting the Raleigh Steering Committee to create a united effort are challenged by the readiness to open a new front in the struggle for liberation. Until then, the unfinished business of Raleigh and its mediocrity and amateurism stands out as a relic of the incompetence that belie the historic failures our past efforts are renowned for.