Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
You cannot know
In this mass of faces
Who are your friends
Who are your enemies.
Why are they here ?
Is it to tarnish the RDA ?
Surely this they cannot do.
For God is here.
Is it to perfect the RDA ?
Then they have two helpers
Human help
Divine Help.
You are human.
You cannot tell tho differences
Between your true friend
And your betrayer.
The PDG leaders expected, as in Ivory Coast, the use of bribery and corruption; they provided a simple answer.
'If they offer you money, take it and give it to the party. If they offer you transport to the polls take it and vote for the PDG. Is it not true, il you hear that they beat a man for the dream he had, it is because he explained his dream ? The money they give you cannot buy you. Money can buy cloth, sandals, the work of a man. lt cannot buy a man; it cannot buy his thoughts; it cannot buy his faith. The money was stolen from you. Take it, it is yours. Use it not for yourself but for your brothers, for the PDG' 1.
The PDG leaders remained skeptical about Buron's assurances that the January 1956 elections would be honestly administered; they set up an elaborate party procedure for the watching of the polls. The PDG bureau politique instructed its poll-watchers to show up in good time; to verify that ballot envelopes were empty and corresponded exactly with the number of electors; to see before voting began that the urn was empty, had no false bottom, was fastened by two dissimilar locks, that the keys were held respectively by the president of the electoral commission and the oldest assessor, and signed inside and out; to oppose the presence near the polls of any unauthorized persons, including guards or chiefs, who might unduly influence the voters; to denounce people who voted under assumed names or in the name of people dead or absent; to watch over the voting, the opening of the ballot envelopes and the counting and to require a record of all observations and protests; never to leave the polls without leaving a proxy, so as to prevent the substitution of a fraudulent urn; to avoid replying to provocations since incidents make such a substitution easy; in case of doubt to check that the urn was the originally signed one; to take immediate steps in case of fraud; to telegraph observations and results to the POG bureau politique in Conakry; even to carry a torch in case the lights go out 2.
1. Citation based on interviews
2. From the mimeographed party instructions, Conakry,
20 December 1955. They were signed by Couyate Diely Bacar, permanent employee
of the party, and Keita Nfamara, then 2nd secretary. Nfamara, a primary school
graduate, worked as a clerk in the judiciary, and drafted the instructions. A Malinke
from Kindia, he held a variety of ministerial portfolios in PDG governments.
