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Sheriff Saidykhan In a press conference yesterday, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay, party leader and flagbearer of the Citizens’ Alliance (CA) confirmed that lawyers for his party have “already issued proceedings against the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC)”. Speaking to journalists from the party’s headquarters in Kanifing Estate, a calm and collected Dr Ceesay details that the lawsuit against the IEC is “scheduled to be heard on Tuesday 16th November 2021 at the High Court in Banjul”. The CA leader did not offer any in-depth details about the case but highly placed sources have informed this medium that the Chief Justice, Hassan  Jallow “has reserved the case to himself” which makes this high profile and unprecedented suit all the more interesting.  It could be recalled that on Saturday 7th November 2021, Dr. Ceesay was among one of over a dozen Presidential aspirants who had their nominations for the presidential elections scheduled for 4th December 2021 rejected. A number of these, includ

By Alimatou S  Bajinka   P eace Ambassadors the Gambia (PAG) in partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI)  has recently completed an overall report on their findings and observations of the nomination process of candidates, ahead of the December 4th Presidential election at a presser briefing held at its main Office in Kanifing.     Bubacarr Sambou, President Peace Ambassadors The Gambia said Peace Ambassadors deployed an observer to observe the political candidates during nomination process and public scrutiny during the 8 days period, from the 30th October to November 6th at the IEC headquarters in kanifing.    “Our observer was permitted by the IEC to observe the submission of nomination papers by aspirants, he was only given 5 minutes to go through all the files of over 20 aspirations who submitted their nomination papers. Therefore observation findings only generally comprise the submission procedures and the general environment at the IEC office during the the proc

  |The Tricky Business of Relying on Military Junta Decrees to Organise Democratic Elections in a Post Dictatorship Era| B y Pa Louis Sambou   F or anyone who’s had to await decision on something which meant a lot to them and into which they invested so much: whether the outcome of a job application, publication of exam results or perhaps that maiden travel visa, the agony endured by the long list of President aspirants on Saturday 6 th  November 2021 must have felt familiar. For candidates to whom unfulfilled notices of outstanding information were issued upon presenting themselves for nomination at the Independent Electoral Commission (the IEC), it is fair to say that their disqualifications would have already been obvious to them once nominations closed on 5 th  November. So one could, with a degree of certainty say that the latter category of aspirants were probably not sat in front of the television screen waiting in anguish. For all others, the question as to whether the IEC’s an

|We should be easing, not unduly heightening pre-election tension|   By Pa Louis Sambou    A s the Presidential election nears, section 62 of the Constitution appears to be attracting unprecedented level of interest, the likes of which we’ve never seen in any previous election in the lifetime of the Constitution. This provision, which details the qualification and disqualification rules as regards candidates for presidential elections appears to occupy an unusual mainstream position in political discourse among the electorate, more than even the candidates’ manifestos. For such a dull subject, one wonders whether the high interest it arouses over and beyond other issues points to the underwhelming nature of what it is that the candidates have got to offer or, whether such is attributed to sinister issues which are so far, much less obvious to pinpoint than the aforementioned. If the latter turns out to be the driver of such unusual public interest in section 62, then such’ll be an indi

|A Classic Example of Mercenary Diplomacy and How Not to Conduct International Relations|   By Pa Louis Sambou    W ith Presidential elections barely two months away, visa restriction measures imposed against The Gambia, for the government’s failure to cooperate with the EU’s deportation regime as was confirmed in a recent  press statement by the European Commission  could not have come at a more critical time. For the special interest opposition for whom accusing the government of facilitating deportations served a rewarding political weapon of choice, this development slams shut such an otherwise useful misinformation gateway. To do justice to other opponents of this government whose opposition is premised on principled disagreement, it is fair to qualify what I meant by ‘special interest opposition’ being those former political associates of the President whom are in opposition today against their will, not because of any principled conviction but rather, because the President dismi

By Philip Saine (Contributing Author) On Thursday 2 nd  September, 2021 the National People’s Party  (NPP)  and the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction  (APRC)  formed an alliance that seems not to be a popular initiative. The People Progressive Party  (PPP)  leader also said his party has no problem with the alliance, arguing that in the 2017 National Assembly and Council elections, the PPP put up candidates throughout the country, half of whom were APRC supporters. Whilst there is little or no objection for a merger between political masses this particular one is unpopular for a number of reasons. Firstly, the alliance potentially could undermine the report of the TRRC; the objective is principally for party interest rather than of national interest. Secondly, the merger is likely to try to absolve ex-President Yahya Jammeh from legal responsibility for his actions whilst in office. Another objective for the alliance could be to enhance Barrow’s victory on the Decem

  By Pa Louis Sambou    C ontinuous politicking is a permanent fixture in any democracy. Without such, there will be no democratic counterbalance to the incumbent, nor any mechanism through which the government of the day could be challenged and held accountable as is required under any respectable multi-party democratic framework. Effectively, what the President laments in his recent  State House diatribe  as ‘endless politicking’ is, a feature which is by all accounts a vitally essential pillar of Gambian multi-party democracy. The opposite is, the antithesis of democratic existence whose prevalence it seems the President aspires to doggedly pursue at some time in the very near future, never-mind the cringeworthy ‘clarifications’ and ‘re-clarifications’ (or perhaps Trump like alternative facts) advanced by his misplaced-loyalty-powered ‘politburo’. I note that most dismiss these as peak tosh by cranks, which characterisation is perhaps reaffirmed by the comical optics the affair proj