By Adama Makasuba
Mai Ahmed Fatty, leader of Gambia Moral Congress has objected to the idea that political parties should declare their assets to the Independent Electoral Commission.
Mr Fatty made the objection during a political dialogue organized by the Constitutional Review Commission recently.
He described the law as “extremely unjust” adding we vote for it we were against it and it shouldn’t happen again, IEC shouldn’t even try to implement that law.
“You can’t subject me-no taxation without representation. You cannot subject me to give you my account and you’re not giving me anything, why should I tell you how I spend my money,” he said.
Mai Fatty also described the political parties to declare assets as a “nonstarter” saying “we are not giving the money.”
Meanwhile, Fatty said a stipulated amount of money could be put in place for anyone contributing to political parties, adding “there shouldn’t be any restriction on Gambians to contribute to political parties in any form.”
He said: “every Gambian should be allowed to contribute in any form to a political party and avoid in every form non-Gambians for dominating our political space.”
“If a Gambian who is…can contribute 100,000 dollars to a political party the Gambian has the right to do so. Unless if we want put a task on political parties funding and we say every single contributor should not exceed this amount,” he said.
However, he added that a stringent law has to be enacted in the new constitution to penalize any political party found to be fund by non-Gambians.
There are nine legally registered political parties in the country among which four parties are influential -UDP, PDOIS, APRC and GDC.
