By Alagie Manneh
Chairman Yankuba Darboe has hinted that he remains wary of the future conducts and actions of Councilor Ramou Sabally, who dumped the UDP last week and rejoined the NPP.
Ms Sabally, a grassroots vocal politician, was nominated as a women’s rep councilor in August by the UDP-led BAC.
Chairman Darboe, who approved her nomination back then, said that the Council has “no issues” to continue working with her, and added that her defection will have no legal bearing on her role there.
But he noted they remain quite wary of her future conducts.
“It’s not the defection that we have issues with, it’s how she will conduct herself thereafter. That is the question mark,” Chairman Darboe told The Standard yesterday.
He said the Council has been working with two other NPP councilors who continue to conduct themselves in a manner befitting of a councilor.
“We have a very united Council. If she switches to NPP and comports herself like those that are elected under NPP, we have no issues with her. But if she conducts herself otherwise then she wouldn’t have a problem with only the chairman, but the entire council,” the chairman said, citing reports that Ms Sabally may have already made some “unfortunate pronouncements”.
“We don’t know where she is getting those [comments] from. Like for example, when she went to Barrow and said ‘markets belong to Barrow’. That is just nonsense, and we don’t accept that. Markets do not belong to Barrow. This Brikama market has been here well before Barrow was even born,” he stated.
He acknowledged that Ms Sabally is serving an interest group and that as long as she does that within her remits, there will be no issues.
Turning to her decamping, Chairman Darboe admitted that it was ‘disappointing’.
“We are UDP and we don’t want anyone to defect from our party,” he said. “We are not happy about it. Apart from that, it is her constitutional right to freedom of association, to associate with whoever she wants to associate with.”
