By Amadou Jadama
The leader of the Gambia For All party, Bakary Bunja Dabo has called on Gambians to vote for his party come December presidential election to get rid of President Adama Barrow under whose regime “Gambians are suffering from institutional failures.”
Dabo made this call Tuesday exclusively to The Standard in Mayamba as his party begins nationwide tour.
The tour is designed to introduce the party to Gambians as well as explain to them the situation of the country in addition to sharing ideas as to how to solve it.
“Certainly, our party would like to see fundamental changes of the way of doing things. The situation is highly unsatisfactory for us and as we are moving towards the election, we still have to take formal decisions nearer to the time whether we will contest the election and in what form. But we want change as soon as possible because the present situation is not good. The current system only brought untold suffering on the people, and it has shown itself not willing and not capable of bringing about change into the right direction,” BB Dabo said.
GFA leader pointed out that the living condition of Gambians is bad in every sense, both in earning capacities and employment. “The most vibrant sector in our economy are tourism and agriculture and both are in a mess. The Gambia is today a sick old man with every part of the paining. When GFA takes over the country, certainly we will attend very quickly to reforming of the state of institutions to make them more functional because they are the pillars of the state. We will pay attention to the economy particularly the critical areas of agriculture and tourism; put them under better and efficient management,” Dabo noted.
He said GFA is very much concerned about the state of affairs of the country and that is not only confined to poor living conditions but also the direction of the leadership. “And we believe very strongly that the larger part of our problems as a country started from the very poor leadership, and we want to stand for a complete change in the way the country is run. The way the public affairs are managed, the economy and the way the politics itself is managed in the country and that is why we decided to set up our own party”, he explained.
“We have also realised that we have a very unfortunate situation in the the country with polarization on ethnic, religious and generation lines. You can now find a situation where the many young people were misled to believe that the problem is from the older generations, and many people in the older generations are also misled into believing that the problem is with the younger generations. We in the GFA believe that the state of affairs has been festered by bad leadership which discriminates against some ethnic sects and favours some sects and basically does not promote oneness,” BB Dabo lamented.
“So we decided that one of our primary objectives is to promote the oneness of the country. We believe that this country will be strong inclusively and not exclusively.”
When asked whether he has any plan to form an alliance with other parties, BB Dabo responded: “No we don’t rule out anything but it depends on our convictions and whether they tally with anybody’s idea, who may want a coalition with us. But we remain open,” Mr Dabo said.
Mr Dabo and his party were accorded a huge welcome by the people of Niumi.
The tour continues.
