By Alhagie Babou Jallow
The Papa Njie Campaign in the KMC mayoral election has come to terms with the Independent Electoral Commission over the use of his campaign colour, grey.
Gibbou Saidy, head of Communications of the Independent candidate, said his office was approached by the IEC for them to drop his official colour (Grey) because it is the colour of the Coalition 2016 which is not a political party and is not backing anybody in the election.
Mr Saidy said they were confused about that order since it was the IEC themselves who gave them the colour.
The Standard contacted the Returning Officer of KMC Lamin Cham who confirmed that grey was allocated to the Njie Campaign purely because it does not belong to any political party and was only used by Coalition 2016 which has no candidate in this election. However Mr Cham further said since then, there were concerns from many quarters that the colour may lead people to believe that Mr Njie is a Coalition candidate.
“We then called a meeting with the Njie Campaign who explained that they have gone very far with their preparation materials using the grey colour and any change now will disadvantage them very seriously as it would mean that they would have to reprint and rebrand thousands of campaign materials most of which are coming from abroad,” Mr Cham said.
He said the IEC understood their plight and agreed with them that they could continue to use grey “but at no time and place must they associate themselves with Coalition 2016 or President Barrow’s photo or campaign material. And let me make it clear that there is no Coalition candidate in this election and any candidate who uses that tag will be dealt with according to law which include disqualification,” Mr Cham stressed.
