By Omar Bah
The Minister for Environment, Climate Change, and Natural Resources has said that President Adama Barrow’s tolerance is knitting The Gambia together.
She said the only person who can unite the country and not rule with an iron fist is President Barrow.
Speaking in a Star FM exclusive to be aired Friday, Rohey John-Manjang said:
“The democracy we are talking about is very young and needs to be nurtured and protected, or else it will fade away. It is important that we allow him to do that. I can tell you there are people around him who are telling him to bite because they still have Jammeh’s style of governance. They are telling him if this were former president Jammeh, he would have done this and that, but he insists on doing what is right in the interest of nurturing our young democracy, so his tolerance is keeping this country united,” she said.
For President Barrow, she added, beating and insulting are not the solutions.
“He believes in forgiveness and tolerance when dealing with people, and that is what gives his critics the audacity to tell him whatever they want,” she stated.
She said Barrow’s chances of being re-elected cannot be measured based on his government’s inability to control prices because the issue of rising prices is a global problem.
“If we are talking about not re-electing Barrow because of high prices, then the Americans and the British should remove their leaders. The issue of prices is affecting the whole world, so if that is the only problem, then Barrow should be re-elected because you cannot compare our prices with the subregion,” she said.
Minister John-Manjang called for attitudinal change, arguing that the government, through a directive from the president, had to purchase tonnes of rice to help stabilise the price, but the few businesses that bought that rice at D1475 ended up selling it for D2000.
“Yes, people want the government to do something about it, but our hands are tied because we have a liberal market,” she said.
She also blasted some critics of the president for not being considerate.
