The Gambian government is a coalition of parties that came together to field one candidate to contest against the former president Yayah Jammeh in 2016. Among the major parties that formed the coalition were the United Democratic Party (UDP) and the People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS). The coalition won the election through the candidacy of the current president Adama Barrow, a previously little known real estate dealer. The coalition however fell apart shortly after the election even though the government remains as constituted with the appointed from the all the seven member parties of the coalition. The president ditched his sponsoring party UDP (the largest party in the coalition and country) and formed his own party, the National People’s Party (NPP). Since then, there has been bickering between the ruling coalition members especially because the president had promised to rule for only three years as a transition president then oversee democratic elections (in which he would not participate) that would allow Gambians to choose a leader of their choice. The president has since reneged on the promise and is set to vie for elections at the end of 2021. Yunus Hydara is a civic activist based in the UK and one of the UDP’s most vocal advocates. Recently, he criticized Halifa Sallah (PDOIS) and Sidia Jatta (PDOIS), the chairperson of the Public Enterprises Committee and vice-chairperson of the Finance and Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly respectively of enabling corruption through their failure to move bills in parliament to enact anticorruption laws (Editorial 2021). Specifically, he accused the Public Enterprise Committee of Halifa Sallah of refusing to present the report of the Auditor General and a private auditing firm to parliament for ratification to pave way for action against the misappropriation of public funds. This paper is a critique of the rebuttal of Hydara’s accusations by Sallah, noting that the rebuttal was full of logical fallacies.
First, the repudiation of Hydara’s claims by Halifa Sallah deserves commendation for its restraint from insulting Hydara despite the disagreement therein. It is noteworthy that political exchanges, especially in Africa dwell on insults that do not differentiate between the personal lives of the adversaries and their public roles. According to Lajul (2020), political discourse in the continent usually relies on ridiculing opponents using the most barbaric and humiliating insults that have no relation with the public role of the opponent or their stated position. Typically, political players exploit the low levels of education, little exposure to modern political leadership and allegiance to ethnic origins among the citizenry to defer any meaningful discourse when they face accusations. Halifa Sallah was able to stay above that temptation and instead focused on showing why he thought Hydara was wrong strictly by tackling the accusations. The restraint was a demonstration of maturity and political sobriety from a senior government official responding to a junior critic out of the government. Sallah however watered down his restraint when he stated that he needed to behave in that manner because he was offering himself as a presidential candidate in the 2021 elections. The revelation that his candidacy was the foundation of the restraint leaves the readers thinking that he would have wished to tackle the matter differently if it were not for his candidacy and his desire to appear tolerant to win the elections. Nevertheless, that kind of restraint and restriction to the accusations leveled at him remains admirable and should set the tone for the political engagement in the face of the impending elections of December 2021.
Second, Halifa Sallah demonstrated systematic organization and structure in his rebuttal of Hydara’s accusations. The structured arrangement of his rebuttal is visible in his tracing of the case from the beginning to the end. First, Sallah introduced Hydara to the reader in his reference to him as a descendant of decency. The rebuttal then gave a background to itself by specifyin ghte accusations that Hydara had laid against him and Sidia Jatta. The reader or audience of the rebuttal would therefore be easily able to follow the matter at hand. He then delved into the accusations in detail to keep the audience at the same level of understanding with him. Thereafter, Sallah gave his reasons why the accusations were false. According to Lubis (2019), a structured communication makes it easy for the audience to follow it and to understand the subject matter. Structuring communication explains the subject to the audience from the known facts to the unknown, promoting understanding. Readers or listeners are therefore able to follow the speaker from the beginning to the end. Conversely, poor or lack of structure confuses the audience and leads to loss of interest in the communication. Sallah followed a systematic structure in his rebuttal.
On the downside, Sallah committed many logical fallacies in his rebuttal that would make any keen reader dismiss them. First, Sallah began his rebuttal by direct reference to the person of Yunus Hydara instead of focusing on the issues he had raised. Sallah began by stating that Hydara’s name was associated with “…decency and moral integrity…” and that he would spare him any harsh response because he (sallah) had “…respect [for] those who gave birth to him…” (Editorial 2021). The referral to the personal circumstances of Hydara is the ad hominem fallacy where the speaker points the audience to the individuality of the other party to divert attention from the central issue. Although Sallah did not insult Hydara and appeared to express ‘admiration’ and ‘respect’ for the man and his family, his choice of illuminating those facts was a misplaced appeal to the ethos and pathos of the audience. Sallah was setting the context for the audience to influence their assessment of his arguments by exploiting the respect for families and parents that most African societies value. In reality, there was no need for any such expression of respect for Hydara’s family and origins in the rebuttal.
In addition, Sallah’s rebuttal was full of evasion, failing to address the matters raised by Hydara directly. In response to the accusation by Hydara that the Public Enterprise Committee was “…sitting on the report of a British Audit Firm that verified potential corrupt practice…”, Sallah chose to respond by claining that his committee was not “…in charge of such a report…” The response was evasive because Hydara did not claim that they were in charge of the report but only pointed out that the committee had failed to present the report to the National Assembly for discussion. The direct approach would have been to explain the state of the report and to confirm whether or not the report had been presented to his committee and what action his committee had taken about the report. Those questions remained unanswered yet they were the essence of the accusations (Warman & Hazmah 2019) by Hydara. Halifa Sallah’s response did not therefore serve to settle the matters raised by Hydara regarding his and his committee’s role in subjugating justice and abetting corruption.
The remainder of the rebuttal by Sallah is a red herring that he used extensively and unsuccessfully to distract attention from the role of the Public Enterprises Committee. The communication diverted attention to the roles and functions of the auditor general, in complete disregard to the role of the PEC. Sallah cited Section160 Subsections 1 and 2 of the constitution to elaborate the functions of the auditor general (Editorial 2021). In none of the citations did Sallah refer to the role of the PEC in helping the auditor general achieve his goals in his role. In other words, he deflected the blame for the failure of the PEC to the office of the auditor general. Furthermore, Sallah continued with the red herring when he focused on the small issue of Jatta having been referred to as the chairperson of the FPAC instead of the vice-chairperson. He concluded his red herring by citing the party rivalry as the reason for the allegations laid against him by Hydara Yunus. In short, Sallah went off tangent completely and intentionally to prevent any real discussion on the failure of the PEC to present the report of the auditor general to the National Assembly.
In conclusion, the rebuttal by Halifa Sallah followed the normal structure of a communication, beginning with the introduction, followed by the detailed subject mater and ending with a conclusion. Unfortunately, the rebuttal failed to address the actual issues raised by Hydara’s accusations. Instead, Sallah first misused the appeals of ethos and pathos by beginning his rebuttal with direct and unrelated reference to Hydara’s background. He then continued the remainder of his rebuttal with a red herring addressing the nominally unrelated issue of the roles of the auditor general as stipulated in the constitution. At the end, the communication was an unnecessary exposition of the roles of the auditor general.
By: Musa Val Banja
USA
