Muhammad Ali once said “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small people who find it easier to live in the world they have been given than to explore the power they have to change it”.
A lot of people will agree with me that this word impossible is being thrown around a lot in our discourse on Gambian politics: “it is impossible to defeat Jammeh through elections; “even if he is defeated, it is impossible for Jammeh to hand-over power peacefully”; “it is impossible for the opposition to unite”; “it is impossible for the UDP to participate in elections without Darboe and his executive”….and so on and so forth.
I refuse to accept that Gambians are small people; I am certain that we no longer find it easier or tenable to live in the world of tyranny, abuse and oppression that Jammeh has pushed us into; and I have absolutely no doubt that Gambians do have the capacity and the intelligence to explore the powers that we have to change this status quo in a peaceful and harmonious way without any more loss of lives or incarcerations.
Therefore, I hereby say once again that: “it is indeed possible to defeat Jammeh in this year’s elections; it is possible for Jammeh to hand-over power peacefully when defeated and he will hand-over power; it is possible for our opposition leaders to unite if they put the interest of Gambians above their individual power interests; and yes it is not only possible to go to the elections this year and defeat Jammeh even without Darboe, it is in fact now an obligation to go to the polls and make sure we defeat Jammeh because of the injustices he has committed against not only Darboe and the UDP, but his oppression against the entire country”.
A few moments before Darboe took to the streets, he said that he and his executive members are prepared to pay with their lives by standing up against Jammeh’s tyranny and injustices. He then said that if they should fall as casualties, then the party deputies must pick up the mantle of leadership and to continue from where they stopped with the party activities. Therefore and following the inhumane and unjust conviction of Darboe and his executive members in one the most blatant abuse of justice, violation of human freedom and total disregard to their fundamental human rights, I hereby challenge the UDP deputies to take the advice of Honourable Darboe and to embrace the wise words of Muhammad Ali.
You shall not give up. You shall not relent and you shall not lose focus or be disoriented. With only four months to the presidential election, there is no time to waste, even for pity or grief. You must go back to the drawing table and come up with a viable strategy on how to make Jammeh lose the forthcoming elections. However, you will not be able to fight this electoral battle alone so you must put aside all prejudices to meet and agree with the rest of our opposition leaders to come up with a way forward. You as our opposition political leaders must put aside your difference and unite so as to make it easier to galvanize the rest of the population in a final push to vote Jammeh out of office. Gambians do indeed have the power (their voters’ cards) to change Jammeh and we are determined to use that power on 01 Dec 2016.
I have said at the beginning of the April saga that no amount of threats, pressure or uprising will work against Jammeh for the simple reason that a leopard does not change its colours. One cannot wrestle with a pig in the mud and expect to win neither is it wise to try to put off a fire with fire/kerosene.
I have also said that Jammeh is scared of elections that is why he has passed all these controversial laws and that is why he is committing all these human right violations against his political and other opponents. In this regard, the only peaceful method that we have to effect political change in our beloved country is the elections. So let us stop under-estimate the power of our only weapon which is our voters’ cards. To boycott the election is exactly what Jammeh wants and we must no longer fall for his manipulations and his rhetoric that he cannot be removed by elections or that the jinns will for him.
To conclude, I pray that Solo Sandeng (May his soul rest in perfect peace) will be the last Gambian to die in the name of politics and that the case of Honourable Darboe and the UDP executives will be the last miscarriage of justice in our country. I also pray that next year will usher in a new political dispensation that would heal our wounds and restore are broken spirits. Ameen.
Author Gano
Posted on July 21, 2016
