By Tabora Bojang
The leader of the People’s Reformist Organisation for Growth, Renewal, Equity, Security and Social Justice (PROGRESS), Amadou Jaiteh, has said his movement has now opted against seeking to register the movement as a party ahead of the December presidential elections due to the “delaying tactics” of the Independent Electoral Commission IEC.
He added that as a result, he is now going to run as an independent candidate and he is also very much involved in the ongoing opposition coalition talks.
A Gambian lawyer and former diplomat who resigned as legal adviser at the Permanent Mission of The Gambia at the UN, Jaiteh told West Coast radio that PROGRESS have already collected 15,000 signatures and also have the D2 million party registration fee intact.
“But when we observed a trend of delays in registration of movements into political parties by the IEC, culminating into the announcement that seven movements had their documents returned for not meeting requirements, we made our assessment and realised that we are on track and have met all the requirements,” he said.
However, he went on, we realised that it took the IEC a number of months before getting back to many applicants. “This was February and we realised that if we have to submit at that point, when will the IEC respond to us? So it does not make sense for us to pay D2 million only for the IEC to come back to us and say ABC is not done properly. So because of that we decided to hold on with our registration because to register a party, and to run as a candidate are different,” Jaiteh said.
“For now, we want to go for candidate not party registration. We will pursue registration after the election,” Jaiteh explained.
He criticised the IEC chairman’s warning for movements to stop acting as political parties saying his arguments are weak and goes contradictory to the technical requirements necessary for registration.
“When you apply to register, the form is structured in a way that you have to get structures and hold congresses to be able to fulfill some of those requirements,” he said.
On Barrow’s third term bid, Jaiteh said Gambians do not want a third term for any president. He added that all right thinking Gambians want a term limit as promised to them by the president in 2016.
“The president should respect that because he made that promise to the Gambian people,” he said. According to Jaiteh, Barrow cannot win an election that is free of “inducement.”
“If he gets a third term, he would have done so based on inducement. We know our community. People may not want something but there are ways that we can entice them to do things that are not even good for them. We all know the dynamics of how politicians go round the country with their inducements,” Jaiteh added.
According to him, building roads and inaugurating new ferries should not warrant Barrow a third term and that these projects should not induce Gambians to give him a new mandate.
“All these developments are not gifts. They are either grants, loans or tax payers’ money. The electricity is not a gift from the president or the NPP. Do not take it for granted. You must not vote for the current president for a third term. You must not vote on the lines of development because development comes as a responsibility of the government and the president. It does not mean giving them back your vote,” Jaitehadvised Gambians.
