The leader of the United Democratic Party, lawyer Ousainu Darboe, has accused some quarters of the Coalition 2016 of distorting the position of his party on the type of alliance proposed for the coalition in the last national assembly election.
Addressing a UDP rally organized by the party’s women’s wing in Brikama Saturday, Mr Darboe said a section of the Coalition had proposed for all Coalition candidates to be independent candidates without any party tags.
“But we objected to this and we argued that political parties are the vanguard to mobilise people to a set national objective and each party should put up its own candidates. And we went further to propose a type of alliance whereby none of the coalition parties will put up a candidate where its fellow coalition party has more chances to win. This was our position,” Darboe said.
He further alleged this position of the UDP was deliberately distorted by some who went about tarnishing the image of the party by accusing it of destroying the coalition.
“That is not true. They should have told the Gambian people our proposal which in fact made a lot of sense because if that had been adopted, a number of parties in the coalition which ended up without a single seat such as GPDP or GMC would have won a seat or seats because they would not have faced any fellow coalition member which would have increased their chances,” Darboe said.
The UDP leader said his party had gone ahead to apply that principle and did not contest against fellow coalition party candidates in several constituencies.
Darboe said some Coalition members objected to this proposal because they believed the UDP will get more seats.
“But our proposal would have been the best but they distorted all information about it to gain cheap popularity.”
Turning to the women, Mr Darboe paid tribute to gallant sacrifices made by Gambian women in the UDP, describing them as the face of the revolution that led to the ousting of Jammeh. He urged the women to stand up and demonstrate their readiness to be leaders themselves and not just king makers.
