DARBO HEADS THE NEW UDP-NRP COALITION
      By The Gambia Journal
      Feb 13, 2006, 15:33

      

The United Democratic Party (UDP) and the National Reconciliation Party (NRP) on Saturday 11th January 2006 held a mass rally at Brikama 40 kilometers outside Banjul. The rally came in the aftermath of the resignation of UDP leader Ousainou Darbo from the opposition alliance NADD(National Alliance for Democracy and Development). The well attended meeting had about ten thousand people listening to Mr. Darbo and NRP leader Hamat Bah explain the way forward for the two opposition politicians. Amidst the din of drums and songs jubilant supporters draped in the blue and yellow colors of the two parties danced round the jam packed square to hear speeches from about a score speakers from the two parties. Though the rally was announced to start at 15.00 hrs, the meeting proper did not begin before 17.00 hrs. The 3800 chairs said to have been hired by the organizers were occupied well before the meeting began. Many more people sat inside the ring while thousands more stood around. 
   
Before the two party leaders took the podium at around 20.30 hr, party chairmen from the Kombos addressed the rally blaming government for rising cost of living and corruption. Dembo Jatta of Brikama opened the meeting reasserting the people of Brikama's support for the opposition and calling Gambians everywhere to rally behind the new coalition being forged. Mr. Shyngle Nyassi acted as chair for the rally while Bakau's Dembo Bojang acted as master of ceremony. Though the meeting was well organized, with a fairly good public address system and widescreen pictorial display that held throughout, organizers had a difficult time controlling rapturous crowds that spontaneously invaded the ring that surround the podium. Among the speakers from NRP were Mbanyick Njie who moaned over galloping price rises and what he called poor governance. Also from the NRP was Amie Sabally from Bundung Borehole who swore allegiance to a planned Darbo ticket for the October presidential elections and stressed the importance of a Bah-Darbo. Among the speakers was also former Finance minister of the deposed Jawara regime, Mr. M. C. Cham. Mr. Cham castigated other members of the NADD leadership for having dragged their foot for too long in what he called fruitless discussions. He stressed that politics is what is workable and that he had long held the view that NADD was unworkable. This he said was because some members of the alliance had hidden agenda and personal ambitions. He urged the two parties to go ahead to the October elections and not backwards to the failed attempt at a coalition. Former Brufut Alkalo, Bai Bojang also addressed the rally calling on citizens of the Kombos to unite in order to stop what he castigated as state land grabbing. Mr. Bojang cited the example of Brufut, a town 25 kilometers from Banjul, where government seized both residential and agricultural lands to give to estate developers to build houses that the people of Brufut cannot afford. Three men were
introduced to the crowds as villagers from Janbanjelly who were former ruling party APRC members but who are now said to have defected to the opposition.
   
  When it came to the turn of Mr. Hamat Bah to address the rally, the crowd exploded into an unruly jubilation that took several minutes to control. Mr. Bah announced that the NRP will be joining the UDP into a coalition to contest the coming presidential elections. He said that his party has also decided to have UDP leader as their presidential candidate. 
   
  Mr. Bah said that politics was about numbers and that in both the 1996 and 2001 elections Mr. Darbo's votes was far more than any other one from the opposition. "What the Gambia needs now most of all," he continued, "is the exit of President Jammeh from power. The whole nation is aware of this. In the past two elections, APRC came out first, UDP second and NRP third as far as votes were concerned. What then should the problem be?" Mr. Bah added rhetorically. He continued that a Darbo ticket is the most feasible and this was one reason that he urged his party to fall behind his candidacy. Another reason Mr. Bah posited was that throughout their two year period together working in the NADD alliance he had been watching Darbo very closely and found him to be always truthful, honest and with untainted integrity. "Some say Darbo has been tried in two elections and that this shows he was not electable. I say look at President Wade of Senegal. He tried in 1978, 1983, 1988 and only won when he stood in 2000." He said because the man had both the character and the numbers behind him, he and his party are now unwaveringly behind a Darbo candidacy. "Some say I am selling the country to the Mandinkas. I dismiss that as plain and simple tribalism. Something we must eradicate from this country. President Jawara who is a Mandinka ruled this country for thirty years but the Fulas and Wollofs benefited more from that regime than Mandinkas did. Tribalists are either egoists or destroyers, do not listen to them." On the Memorandum of Understanding sponsored by Nigeria and the Commonwealth, Mr. Bah, said in the reconciliation spirit of that document, he was asking President Jammeh to pardon all political prisoners including Baba Jobe and Musa Suso and all political exiles; and to reinstall the removed mayors of Banjul and the Kanifing Municipality, Pa Sallah Jeng and Abdoulie Conteh. When concluding, Mr. Bah called on the youth to rise up to the challenges of the time, stop wasting time on the practice of tea-drinking and employ themselves.
   
  The last to take the podium was UDP party leader Ousainou Darbo. Mr. Darbo talked at length on his resignation from the NADD alliance. He said that he and his party have decided to pull out of NADD due to several reasons. There was too much bad blood among NADD leaders he could not see how they could work together to win an election and form a workable government. The alliance was not supposed to be registered as a political party but to stay as a coalition. Against his advice and his consent, people went to register the party which led to the debacle of people loosing their seats in parliament. There is no where in the memorandum of understanding signed by the member parties that NADD was meant to be a party. He claimed NADD has spent twenty-four months talking but was able to achieve little. Apart from the MOU that five constituting parties signed not much was achieved.  "We have wasted two years in fruitless talks. While we are closed indoors talking to each other without any conclusion, Jammeh and his people are busy on their electoral campaign. All activities of our parties were frozen. We were not allowed to hold rallies. This embargo continued while the ruling party is given a free hand and field to carry on its propaganda. We felt this was unacceptable." He dismissed suggestions that he was power hungry. He claimed he had been called in by President Jawara in the former regime but he decline. Sheriff Dibba of the NCP had invited him to join his party, which he also refused. He was not interested in power, it was when the going was tough and there was the need for some one to stand up against the military dictatorship that he volunteered for Gambia, not himself. Mr. Darbo claims that he resigned from the NADD party but not the NADD coalition. The meeting ended late on Sunday night. 



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