By Aisha Tamba
Domestic election pollsters Centre for Policy, Research and Strategic Studies, CepRass, has again predicted that the governing National Peoples Party will win majority of seats in Saturday’s National Assembly elections.
Last year, the body forecasted a landslide for the NPP in the presidential election, which came to pass with President Barrow winning over 50 percent of the votes.
According to CepRass’ recent poll, the NPP is expected to win 30.19 percent of the 53 contested seats, followed by UDP 26.42 percent, inconclusive 18.87 percent, NRP 9.43 percent, independent 7.54 percent, PDOIS 3.77 percent, APRC 1.89 percent and PPP 1.89 percent.
CepRass disclosed that a total of 1231 households, which was increased to 1354 to account for oversampling, were sampled. The 1354 households were divided into 53 constituencies in accordance with the proportion of registered voters in the constituencies.
The survey also revealed that 66% of respondents agree that the Government is not committed to addressing corruption in The Gambia while respondents view anti-corruption legislation (78%) and constitutional amendments (64%) as the most critical issues that the sixth legislature should address.
It also said that a significant majority (85%) of the respondents across all regions believe that the government has not done enough to stabilise prices. “Moreover, 67% believe that the performance of the economy is not satisfactory while respondents in Banjul are more dissatisfied with the new government’s performance in the economy than in other regions,” the survey revealed.
According to the survey, most respondents (54%) in LRR and NBR the strongest farming communities in the country, disagreed that the new government is interested in helping farmers while 53% of respondents believe that the government’s handling of the groundnut sales is not satisfactory.
On crime, the CepRass survey revealed that domestic crime rates are increasing with76% of the respondents saying so in the KMC, CRR, and BCC areas.
The survey also revealed that dissatisfaction with the ECOMIG forces is greatest in WCR and LRR. “Nationally, 55% of respondents are not happy with their stay in the country and in the same vein, more respondents believe that the new government is now not interested in security sector reform,” the survey revealed.
“A substantial majority of respondents in the pool, 81%, disapprove of the government’s decision to grant fishing license to EU and China, while half of the respondent believes that The Gambia-Senegalo relationship is exploitation of The Gambia. Trust of the judiciary remains high as 60% of respondents reported that the Supreme Court’s ruling on election allegation was satisfactory.
A considerable proportion of respondents included in this poll 47% hold the view that government is not committed to women leadership while 35% hold a different view to the majority,” the survey concluded.
Speaking at the dissemination of the findings yesterday, the executive director of CepRass Lamin Dampha, told journalists that the new political dispensation that emerged in 2017 has led to the promotion of democratic values such as freedom of speech, and promotion of human rights, independence of the judiciary, and political pluralism.
