By Omar Bah
The deputy presidential adviser for youths, Saikou Mballow, has predicted that any alliance between President Barrow’s National People’s Party and the APRC will certainly secure victory in the 2021 election.
“Without a doubt if there is an alliance between NPP and APRC, NPP will win the election. That will be a victory right away because there are no other parties that will form an alliance that will match NPP and APRC. I am on record. I am not saying the two will form an alliance but if that happens, NPP will emerge victorious,” Mballow told Star FM in an audio shared with The Standard.
Illustrating his points, Mballow said in “the 2016 presidential election, the Coalition secured, 227,708 – 43.28%, Gambia Democratic Congress 89,768 – 17.06% and APRC 208,487 – 39.63%; this can tell you what could happen if it was not a simple majority election”.
Mballow added that people coming from different political parties to join the NPP will without a doubt vote for President Barrow because he is giving them needed peace and development.
Asked whether there is a chance of an NPP-APRC alliance, Mballow replied: “There is nothing wrong with forming an alliance between two political parties. Do not overrule anything that could come in the future. Yes, it has not happened yet but as far as NPP is a registered political party like the APRC, it is possible. We should take lessons from Ghana on how they were able to reconcile post-Jerry John Rawlings whose party is still functioning. If Ghana and other countries reconciled, why not Gambia? We must show the world that we are tolerant. I have never heard from the TRRC that it is the APRC who committed atrocities or instructed for people to be killed. It is the junglers. Let us not confuse ourselves between the security apparatus and the APRC civilian politicians. The APRC is a legitimate political party. You have a lot of good and pious people in the APRC who love this country,” he added.
Mr Mballow added that if the likes of [Abdoulie] Suku Singhateh and Momodou Sabally, who served as SG under Jammeh, can join the UDP,nothing will stop Fabakary Tombong Jatta from forming an alliance with President Adama Barrow.
“If we want a genuine democracy, we must not be pushing and pulling one another. Who is more Gambian than Sabally? If you want to say you will not work with anyone who works with the APRC government, which party is in this country that doesn’t have members from the APRC?”, Mballow said.
However, Mballow made it emphatically clear that at the moment the Gambian leader has “no time to discuss politics as he is focusing on his government’s development agenda.”
