According to the young politician, independence from Britain in 1965 was important in ending colonialism, but other elements of self-governemnt were missing until Jammeh assumed the presidency in 1994. In an interview with The Standard on the sidelines of the golden jubilee independence celebrations at the Stadium, he claimed:
“I don’t call Jawara father of The Gambia .The person who is the father of the country; the father of modern Gambia, a democrat, and who brought development to our country, is Sheikh Professor Dr Yahya AJJ Jammeh. If you had told people in rural Gambia in 1994 that by 2015, they would have water, electricity and good roads, they would say you are a liar and a dreamer.”
“Independence is food self-sufficiency, access to healthcare, good education, good human resource base, an independent and prosperous workforce, vibrant press and an independent electoral commission. It is President Jammeh who ensured all these and many more I have not mentioned.”
According to him, if the PPP government had done what the APRC achieved in 20 years, the country would have given stiff competition to any country in the world in terms of development.
“The first republic might have done their part, but they could have done better. If you compare what they have done to what President Jammeh did in 20 years, we would now have been competing with developed countries in the world. Even the landscape has been revolutionised by the APRC government and people are more aware now than ever before and empowered.
“It is this government that introduced democracy in this country. The president ensured separation of power, independent electoral commission and build relevant state institutions. The democratic institutions that the PPP sympathisers said were here were dysfunctional. How could you have democracy when the people were left in ignorance and information black-out? And it is the PPP government that did this and it was intentional to blind-fold the Gambian people so that they would not know what was happening in other parts of the world and won’t in effect be able to compare their development with other countries. It is only the time of the APRC that a poor farmer can own a tractor and power tiller. It is also for the first time that the entire northern part of the country has a tarred road.”
]]>
