By Tabora Bojang
The opposition Gambia Democratic Congress has rubbished the latest opinion poll of the Centre for Policy, Research, and Strategic Studies, CepRass, calling it ‘misleading’ and ‘does not reflect facts on the ground’.
The CepRass survey released on Wednesday predicted the National Peoples Party of President Adama Barrow would win the majority of seats in Saturday’s parliamentary polls with 30.19 percent while its opponents, including the UDP and GDC would share the remaining. The poll indicates the ruling NPP remains strong on the back of its victory in the presidential election while the opposition stands to lose grip of some of its strongholds.
However, in a write-up shared with The Standard, GDC national youth president Mc Cham Jr, called on Gambians to ignore the report, saying it doesn’t represent the current political realities on the ground.
Cham is contesting the Jeshwang seat on the GDC ticket and argued that the outcome of these National Assembly elections cannot be predicted using the presidential election. He called it a strategy to fool the masses into falling for the Barrow-led party.
“But it would not happen. We have seen members of political parties shifting their support to candidates of other parties and independents based on individual competency. The general belief in this election is about the competency of an individual and one who can hold the government accountable to encourage the spirit of checks and balances. CEPRASS election polls have never been close to the outcome of any election result as in the last mayoral elections, their prediction was the opposite of the final. The targeted respondents from whom the report was generated are less than 1% of the electorate in a constituency, so on that background, it is baseless to come up with a poll that no one can justify or see it happening,” Mr Cham said.
He argued that many electorate in his constituency are unaware of the survey.
“In my house-to-house campaign, I have visited almost all the compounds in Jeshwang Constituency and no one knows the existence of such polls, so this begs the question how did they arrive at such a false conclusion? I urge the opposition to remain firm and know that this poll wouldn’t influence the outcome of the National Assembly elections. We are the ones who have direct contact with almost all the electorate,” Cham said.
