A weekend meeting attended by former National Assembly members in the company of a bevy of beauty queens has sparked a hot political debate on social media.
A number of videos and audios from the meeting contrasted with the agenda of the meeting. While many perceived it to be a declaration by the former MPs to support President Barrow’s political agenda (as alluded to by one of the speakers and echoed on the Barrow Media Empowerment), Mr. Suso and former Foni MP Musa Badjie said the meeting was not political.
”It was the maiden meeting of the association of former parliamentarians, a newly-formed group of ex-law makers,” Badjie noted in audio he said is designed to clarify matters. He said the idea of forming such a group has been conceived and the Sukuta meeting was to be the launch of the association. Badjie said it was very clear that the objective was to form an association of ex- MPs and they even had to go into a closed-door meeting demonstrating what their focus was at the meeting.
The host of the meeting, Musa Suso himself a former MP, corroborated Badjie’s position.
”I think the composition of the attendees can tell you that there in fact were two different functions. One was a general social meeting attended by friends and well-wishers including the beauty queens who came for a social lunch gathering while the other was a meeting of the ex-MPs association. Those who are not ex-MPs in fact left before the association started its closed–door meeting. I understand some women stayed but there was no intention to make them attend any political meeting or parade them as attendees of a political meeting it is been wrongly suggested,” Mr. Suso said.
However, one beauty queen said in an audio that they were told Musa Suso invited them to a lunch who often sponsors their activities. ”So we thought it was just a lunch to congratulate us because we had a contest just last week. But when we arrived in the house, we were asked to join a meeting outside of former parliamentarians who were talking about politics while some people started recording video of us in the company of the ex-MPs giving the impression that we are NPP supporters. We are very disappointed that we were unlawfully filmed and portrayed to be NPP supporters. As beauty queens, we don’t make a public declaration on political allegiance. And in any case, we are not NPP,” she added.
