By Kabba Ansu Manneh, Soma in Lower River Region
The Secretary General and leader of the National Reconciliation Party (NRP) Hamat N.K. Bah, who also doubles as the Minister of Tourism and Culture in the Coalition Government of President Adama Barrow, has declared a revival of his party and a new political evolution for the nation as a whole. Furthermore, Mr. Bah also pledged his party’s unreserved political support and loyalty to the Barrow Government. The NRP leader made the declaration on Saturday, 29 December 2018, amidst fanfare and jubilations at the party national congress at Soma in the Lower River Region of The Gambia. The NRP is holding its national convention this weekend in compliance with the Election Act of 2015 that requires political parties to hold national congresses at least biannually.
“It’s interesting and a new era in the political evolution for our party as well as the nation as a whole. It’s an era that for the first time we have had a convention and invited the IEC and they came; and of course, to be present and see what we are doing. We invited them in our last convention, but they did not come but today I saw Sambujang, the Director of Operations. And again, I say a big welcome to him and our staunch supporters who have been with us since 1996 to date. They are unshakeable and ever ready to stand for the party at all times,” Mr. Bah said as he spoke of the dawning of new era for the NRP that is witnessed by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) for the first time as an observer since the founding of the party in 1996.
Addressing thousands of party supporters, sympathizers and well-wishers, the NRP leader paid tribute to the fallen heroes of the party who, he said, sacrificed everything in the struggle towards ending dictatorship and tyranny in The Gambia. Among the guests who attended the event was, Ms. Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang, the former Vice President; and Dembo Bojang, the Co-chair of the Coalition Executive Council and now Adviser on Religious Affairs to President Barrow.
Paying tribute to the demise members of his party, Bah said, “it’s difficult when you start a journey with people and see them gone before the end of the journey, especially that if they made great sacrifices for the party. Mr. Dullo Bah, Mr. Abdou Jadama, Mrs. Amie Sabally, Mr. Sajarr Saine, I can’t name them all, but these are all great people who had sacrificed everything for this party and they are gone, and we pray for them.”
Dilating on the success stories of the party since its establishment on 9 September 1996, Mr. Bah gave the genealogy of the NRP as a political party founded by a group of ex-students of The Gambia College who were expelled in 1979 advocating for improved welfare of the students at the college. The party, he said, was established to challenge the military-turned-civilian regime of the APRC. The NRP contested that election and subsequent presidential and national assembly elections alongside the long-time opposition PDOIS party, and the UDP also founded in the same year as his party.
“In 2006 we went into a coalition with the UDP, we supported them with everything including our resources to end dictatorship in the country, and if that election was free and fair we would have won that election” Mr. Bah disclosed.
According to him in 2011 there was a discussion to form a coalition of political parties that comprised of the NRP,PDOIS, GPDP and NADD. The alliance selected him to lead them in the presidential election but that the alliance did not last because of disagreement between the political parties. As the parties moved to legislative elections in that year, he said, discussions were also held with the Independent Electoral Commission that agreed to almost all the demands and conditions of the oppositions except on the demand to reschedule the election date. The IEC claimed, according to Mr. Bah, that it had then already set the election date and had published in the Gazette. His colleagues in the opposition, he said, use the IEC inflexibility to postpone the election to be held on a later date as a pretext to boycott the National Assembly elections in that year.
The NRP leader continued to reveal that one of the most important achievements his party is the ‘spot counting’ introduced by the IEC in Gambian elections. Mr. Bah said ‘on the spot counting’ of ballots finally saw the defeat of Yahya Jammeh. He took credit for the methodology of on the spot counting of ballot disclosing that NRP made it the as a precondition for its participation in any election. He added that he had studied that only spot counting could end the reign of dictators overstaying in power, citing as illustration the case of Senegalese Abdoulie Wade among others.
“We studied what Abdoulie Wade did in Senegal and many other opposition leaders across the world and we knew that it is only ‘spot counting’ that we can eventually get rid of Yahya Jammeh. The IEC generously agreed to go for spot counting, yet we were mercilessly defeated because everybody went against us including the APRC. But we never relented because we felt that we have to honor our principles as a party and we believed that democracy is not an event, but a process and that process is what this party believes in,” Mr. Bah revealed.
He said NRP will continue to promote democracy in The Gambia and will endeavor to nurture it, disclosing the party has insisted that the issue of spot counting should never be a discussion as far as the amendment of the Election Act of 2015 is concerned. He threatened that if any attempt is made to eliminate on the spot counting of ballots, the NRP will not take part in that political process.
According to him, Gambian people must be thankful to the former IEC Chairman, Mustapha Carayol, for putting ‘on the spot counting of ballots’ in the Election Act of 2015. Mr. Bah argued that the first success of this new trek against Jammeh was witnessed in Kaur when, in 2015, NRP went into bye-election with the APRC that his party defeated to end the ruling party’s electoral dominance in Saloum.
“After our win in the Lower Saloum bye election, I received calls from my colleagues— the opposition leaders. I told them that NRP is sending a message for us to come together and dislodge Jammeh from power. And they agreed which we eventually succeeded in the 2016 presidential election,” Mr. Bah told the audience.
Mr. Bah disclosed that his party will continue to promote the agenda of youths and women as the government thrives to revitalize the economy of the country. He added that the opening of the Senegambia Bridge will go a long way in creating more economic and employment opportunities for the youths of this country, especially those of the rural Gambia. He said the NRP will endeavor to reach out to communities in the quest to expanding its support across the length and breadth of the country.
The NRP leader concluded by using the occasion to welcome all those who abandoned the party but want to rejoin, especially those that joined the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC). He assured them no condition shall be attached to their return. He, however, warned that members who are thinking that when the rejoin the party they will be provided with jobs to stay away because NRP is not the government and that it doesn’t have employment for them.