Spokesman declares party working hard to avoid selection errors
By Tabora Bojang
Lamin Queen Jammeh, the spokesperson of the governing National People’s Party, has said so far, no names have been confirmed as candidates for the party in the upcoming local government elections.
With the elections only three months away, and the main opposition UDP already identified candidates, pressure is building among NPP supporters to make its selection the soonest. The Standard has learned that key players in the party are busy working on modalities of the selection process.
In the absence of an official confirmation, the rumour mills have gone into action with many speculating that the NPP intends to put up Sports Minister Bakary Badjie in KM as mayoral candidate and Buba Ayi Sanneh at West Coast as chairman. None of these men has so far said anything to that effect. Other theories said the NPP is facing a lack of sellable personalities amid internal power struggle within the decision makers.
Contacted for clarification on all these, the party’s spokesperson, Information Minister Lamin Queen Jammeh, said the NPP is a very vibrant party and it will take time to do a diligent job in selecting the best possible candidates for all elective positions in the coming polls.
“It is very fallacious for anybody to think that the NPP cannot identify or select candidates because of a lack of credible persons,” Jammeh said.
He acknowledged that NPP made some mistakes in the selection of its candidates in the National Assembly elections “but the party is working on remedying those situations to come back stronger.
“So, we want to correct those errors and sweep the local government elections from end to end. So no selection has been done yet and no one has submitted his or her name yet. Of course, we had our inaugural executive meeting yesterday Sunday and probably before a certain time, we will begin to work on those things. No names have been submitted yet,” he stressed.
