The President-elect of Gambia, Adama Barrow has said tomorrow will be a great one as he prepares to be sworn in.
President-elect, Adama Barrow
The Gambia’s President elect Adama Barrow has said his countrymen
are at the brink of making another world history tomorrow, after
defeating Yahya Jammeh in the 1 December election.
”We made history on the first day of December. Our future starts tomorrow”, he said in a tweet this morning.
Although he is now sequestered in Dakar, Senegal, leaders of the
regional bloc ECOWAS have said he would be sworn in tomorrow on the
Gambian soil, meaning they would drive away President Yahya Jammeh whose
tenure expires midnight today.
The ECOWAS leaders, in a mediatory efforts led by Nigeria’s
President Muhammadu Buhari failed to convince Jammeh to voluntarily
leave office after losing the 1 December election to Barrow, a real
estate businessman.
Jammeh instead embarked on a time-wasting effort to get the court
to order a new election and stop Barrow’s inauguration. He failed on the
two efforts as the Supreme Court could not form a quorum to decide his
cases.
In a last gambit on Tuesday, after shutting down four private radio
stations, he declared a three-month state of emergency, starting from
Tuesday.
In a televised address on state TV on Tuesday evening, Jammeh
announced that the 90 days state of emergency started from January 17
and will end April 17, 2017.
“Under this state of public emergency, civil liberties are to
be fully respected while all citizens and residents in The Gambia are
banned from any acts of disobedience to the laws of The Gambia,
incitement to violence and acts intended to disturb public order and
peace,” he said.
Jammeh gave reasons for the state of emergency including “the
need to prevent a constitutional crisis and power vacuum pending the
determination of the petitions at the Supreme Court and the application
for an injunction against swearing in Mr. Adama Barrow,until the Supreme
Court decides on the 1st December 2016 Presidential Election results”.
He also ordered the security forces, who pledged allegiance to him, to maintain law and order in the country during the period.
The resolution was passed by the country’s National Assembly after a
motion was tabled by Majority Leader Fabakary Jatta on Tuesday morning
as indicated by the order paper made available to the media.
-NAN
No comments:
Post a Comment