By Omar Bah
Former KMC mayor and mobiliser general of the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) Yankuba Colley has said President Barrow would have found it nearly impossible to be reelected without the backing of the APRC.
“We have since made this clear that whoever is lucky to have APRC’s backing will win the election and it has happened. Without the APRC, Barrow might not have won the election, so we are vindicated,” Yankuba Colley said in a Star FM interview shared with The Standard to be aired next week Monday.
Mr Colley continued to say that they knew that Barrow was going to win because they were confident of the effective and rigorous campaign they did on the ground. “We were all busy going up and down, meeting our people in their houses to get them to vote for Barrow,” he said.
He said the APRC’s experience and strategy played a big part in the outcome of the election.
Mayor Colley said going forward, the APRC will continue working with NPP and that his party has already started work ahead of the National Assembly and mayoral elections.
“As you know from the results, we have now taken over our municipality (KMC) from the UDP and it is going to stay like that,” he said.
Commenting on the margin between the UDP and NPP, Colley said: “It is the Gambian people who fought against the UDP, and that is why you have 95 percent of the registered voters coming out to vote. It was a vote against the UDP. The results reflected how the majority of Gambians feel about the UDP. The Gambian people came together and voted for Barrow in protest against the UDP,” he said.
He said the UDP leader Ousainu Darboe has exhausted his time in politics and should retire and allow the young ones to take over the party.
“Darboe shouldn’t have even contested this election because there are a lot of intelligent young people in the UDP who can lead the party. This is why he was humiliated,” Colley said.
He said the Barrow campaign had always known that the UDP was followed by a moving crowd.
“This is why we never panic,” he said.
Colley said the opposition also took Barrow for granted by underrating him.
Commenting on the splinter group of the APRC loyal to former president Jammeh, Colley said it is now left to the group to decide whether to return to the bigger APRC family or continue with their rebellion..
“As far as we are concerned they are not significant and we don’t care about them. If they like they can stay where they are but for us we trust Adama Barrow and we are confident that he will not betray us. We are happy with the way he is treating us so far,” he added.
Jammeh
Asked about the fate of former president Jammeh, Colley said: “I have nothing to say about President Jammeh. We have always stood for him and he is the one who asked us to work with the NPP and later changed his mind but he doesn’t own the party and I am sure he was misled because even the people he selected, nobody knows them and they cannot convince anybody.”
Colley admitted though that Jammeh is still the Supreme leader of the APRC but the position “is honorary”.
