Culled from the point newspaper

PDOIS's only member of the National Assembly, Sidia Jatta, member for Wuli constituency, has revealed that his party has something new on the Crude Oil issue which will be brought before the National Assembly.

MPs of the ruling APRC party recently rejected the motion, which they threw out in a majority vote during the last meeting of the Assembly in Banjul. The APRC MPs claimed that the opposition's motives were not altruisitic, and that its purpose for coming up with such a motion was to tarnish the image of the President and his government.

"Our envoy in London to investigate the Crude Oil issue met Patrick Smith of Africa Confidential and discussed with him. As a result of that something else has come. We will come up with that later. Whenever it is made available to you, I'll bring it here for us to consider it in the interest of accountability, transparency and probity," Sidia Jatta declared. 

He told MPs that "we cannot be concerned about transparency and accountability of some institutions when it is a question of ourselves being accountable…let us honestly face the facts, there is need to form a committee."

The motion was introduced by the minority leader Kemesseng Jammeh of the opposition UDP. It called on the National Assembly to set up a parliamentary committee to look into the Crude Oil issue, to determine, among other things, whether President Jammeh knew of the existence of the contracts for lifting crude oil.

 Mori

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------