By Omar Bah
The interim leader of the opposition Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction, Fabakary Tombong Jatta has told journalists yesterday that his party is still confident that the 2016 presidential election was rigged.
“We are still convinced beyond all reasonable doubts that those results were manipulated. So people cannot say if the former president had maintained his decision of accepting the results this and that would not have happened. You only agree when things are fair,” said FTJ.
FTJ said when the results were initially announced the former president thought the IEC was credible and God fearing people.
“But when he realised that they were not credible as he might have thought, he changed his mind. You see, no genuine person would have accepted the flimsy excuses that the Independent Electoral Commission gave,” he noted.
He continued: “When the results were announced he (Jammeh) called President Barrow and congratulated him. We are all aware. What made him change his mind was the fact that the Independent Electoral Commission changed the results to reduce the Coalition’s votes from 251, 000 to 218, 000 votes, to bring the gap up to 18, 000 between them and APRC. The IEC said they erred. In politics have you ever heard of two results being announced?”
The IEC, FTJ added, was not forced to announce the results, adding that they should have verified until they were satisfied before they announced the results.
“So when they changed the results it created doubts and therefore it resulted into the fact that we have the right to petition as provided by the constitution.”
“People will say former president Jammeh refused to accept and if he had accepted all what happened would not have happened. But even without that anybody who contested an election has the right to petition whether you have enough facts or not. It depends on the court to decide whether to accept it or not, that is a constitutional provision,” he said.
The former president, he added, was decent enough to congratulate president Barrow when the results were announced “and he stayed that way until the IEC came back to give us a different result.”
Read more on the press conference tomorrow
