Gambian leader urges peace on presidential election eve

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has appealed to his compatriots to jealously guard the culture of peace and stability which was required to hold a free and fair election and confront the challenges inherent in developing the country thereafter.

President Jammeh who has won all previous elections in 1996, 2001 and 2006 and looks set to win a fourth term is the leader of the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC).

Meanwhile the IEC’s official figures suggest that 796,929 Gambians have registered to vote in the country’s cycle of presidential and parliamentary elections.

Many observers have indicated that a major deciding factor in the outcome of the poll is the voter turnout with the percentage of voters dropping from 61.32 percent in 2001 (659,382 voters) to 50.66 percent in 2006 (775,143 voters).

Jammeh told a Bakau rally on the last day of campaign Tuesday before Thursday’s presidential poll pitting him against two other pretenders to the presidency that Gambians should go about the voting exercise peacefully in the interest of their collective well-being as a nation looking forward to progress and prosperity in the medium and long term.

Jammeh’s main challengers are Ousainou Darboe of the United Democratic Party (UDP) and independent candidate Hamat Bah of the United Front.

The APRC leader reiterated his message of peace, saying “violence is incompatible with democracy or development.”

He was at pains emphasising that long-lasting peace in The Gambia should be maintained in view of the fact that development can only be achieved in a peaceful environment.

Jammeh emphasized the importance of voting which he described as a constitutional right that all Gambians should exercise since it was an opportunity for them to decide their country’s future in the next five years.

In a speech referenced to God and the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, Jammeh urged Gambians in general to put aside their political differences and collaborate to develop the country, citing the period before his 1994 military takeover when in his opinion ‘‘tribalism was rampant under the first republic”.

He said thanks to his government’s “progressive ideas” tribalism has been banished to oblivion.

The Gambian leader advised his supporters to abide by the rule of law, remain calm under all circumstances and go to the polls without acting in ways that might stoke the embers of violence which he said was the last thing the country needed at this crucial period.

He told his supporters to aim for a landslide victory over his opponents, promising to reward the constituency (out of 48) with the biggest number of votes for him by holding his party’s victory celebration there.

Jammeh promised the people of Bakau that he will bring development to their doorsteps by introducing and upstaging social services and infrastructures which the town desperately need.

The rally attracted hundreds of APRC supporters, mostly women and young girls dressed in the party’s green colour and carrying posters bearing their candidate’s messages.

Emblazoned on some of the clothes worn by women supporters was an image of President Jammeh with messages such as “From light to darkness with President Jammeh”, “Vote for Peace and National Unity” among others.

In an interview with APA Tuesday women at the rally professed their support for Jammeh, including one Bineta Sonko, an arts and crafts dealer at the Bakau Tourist Market who said she was voting for Jammeh because he had impacted positively on the welfare of her family by granting his brother a scholarship for the furtherance of his education at The Gambia Senior Secondary School, a prestigious school in the country.

For Arette Bojang, a woman in her mid-fifties, Jammeh’s leadership had brought development to the country in terms of infrastructure, education and health compared to thirty years of Jawara’s comparatively barren era.

“I like Jammeh a lot because the country’s development has to be credited to him. We expect Bakau to benefit from what he has promised” Mrs Bojang remarked.

The ambience of the campaign was supplied by the sounds of drums and music accompanied by “Babili Mansa” chanting from supporters, a reference to President Jammeh’s supposed feats coined during the inauguration of the 121.9m-long Sankulay Kunda - Janjangbureh bridge in the Central River Region.

The area covered by the bridge was believed to have been inhabited by mean-spirited spirits who were impossible to appease let alone defeat before any development could take place.

Bakau is a tourist and fisheries town with a past reputation for being a proud opposition stronghold dating back to the 1970s. However, after earlier hiccups, in recent years the ruling APRC’s election fortunes had witnessed a remarkable turnaround, the latest highlight of which had been the much publicized defection of the UDP youth leader Ousman Jatta alias Rambo. His defection was used by the ruling party as a propaganda coup against the UDP.

In fact as an indication of how highly Rambo is regarded by the APRC, in the course of his speech Jammeh had nicknamed him Jatto, the Mandinka word for lion.

However, this was in stark contrast to his own trial and tribulation which culmination in his incarceration while he was a UDP ward Councillor for Bakau. Jatta had been arrested several times and on one occasion held in custody for the best part of 13 months.

PS: one of my stories when covering the Gambian elections. First published by www.apanews.net

Gambia’s Fatou Bensouda is next ICC boss

The Gambia-born deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bom Bensouda, emerged on Thursday as the consensus candidate to replace current ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina whose term ends next year.

Bensouda who is the African Union endorsed candidate is seen as the favourite to land the ICC top job.

Earlier in the week, the ICC announced that the four candidates who were originally short-listed had been whittled down to two. Bensouda faced a strong contender in her African counterpart Mohamed Chande Othman of Tanzania.

The other candidates were Canada’s Robert Petit and United Kingdom’s Andrew Cayley.

According to reports, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute that set up the court convened in New York on Thursday to discuss the appointment which will be made at a formal session of the 118-nation ASP in the same city on 12 December.

Bensouda, 50, is a former Gambian Justice Minister, who was named deputy prosecutor of the Hague-based ICC in 2004. She previously worked as legal adviser and trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania.

If her appointment is confirmed, she would be the first African to land the top ICC job since it was established in 2002.

The ICC and particularly its chief prosecutor Ocampo have been criticized for apparently exclusively targeting the continent. It has over the years courted controversy for apparently picking on cases mainly involving African leaders.

It issued two arrest warrants against a sitting head of state, Omar Al Bashir of Sudan for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and for genocide committed in Darfur region (west) where an estimated 300,000 people were killed and Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast for war crimes in the course of a political crisis over disputed elections. Gbagbo was on Tuesday extradited to The Hague to face war crimes charges.

Other controversial ICC cases are those involving top Kenyan officials indicted for the 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya, crimes alleged to have been committed during the uprising which toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and war crimes in DR Congo between 1998-2003.

PS: one of my stories when covering the Gambian elections. First published by www.apanews.net