By Yunus S Saliu
As the D-day for the Gambia National Assembly election draw closer, some candidates for the parliamentary positions in some constituencies still remain unknown and invisible to some electorates.
Across all the regions in The Gambia it is only in Banjul many candidates spread and pasted their posters on walls and poles for easy identification.
In Kanifing Municipal Council also known as Greater Banjul Area like other regions did not witness more or have well circulated posters of candidates for the upcoming NA election due Saturday, 9th April 2022.
For visibility and easy identification poster is one tool you can use to promote your campaign some people even called it a marketing strategy for politicians who want to make their names known and faces recognize by the electorates with important messages.
As part of their strategies to be visible, political candidates’ posters are pasted in different locations across the community, paste them at their campaign offices or at their political party bureaus, paste on political campaign vehicles and as well use to decorate the political stages when they are campaigning.
Speaking to some electorates around Greater Banjul Area, Hamadi Touray has this to say that “candidates for this year National Assembly election will be the worst so far in the history of NA election in the country. Some of them are broke especially the so called independent candidates among them.”
He expressed further that even those that are not independent candidates “some are limited in knowledge and have no clue about functions of the National Assembly.”
“Looking around your street or other communities, how many of them can you find his or her posters, those that even pasted posters on walls printed them on A4 and octavo papers. And those that printed big posters or billboard among them have sponsors somewhere, can you imagine that,” he rhetorically asked.
Alasana Jammeh argued that majority of the candidates are invisible and they are not politicians but “forcing themselves to become one. Simply because they think politics is an avenue to make money. They want to follow the footstep of some others to corrupt. Gambians are wiser than ever now.”
“I said they are not politician because we can all see some unknown politicians rushed to contest in the last NA election in 2018, after the election we don’t hear about them again hence they could not make it to the National Assembly. It is the same trend in the coming election,” he added.
“Well, I have nothing to comment about these candidates, because with those that I am seeing campaigning, to me ninety percent of them are not qualified. It is unfortunate, I think some of them should have started their political ambition by contesting for position of ward councilor first and move on gradually,” Ramatoullai Camara said without bad feelings.
Parliamentary position, she disclosed, “is not just for Dick and Harry, but for people that are well matured in politics and experienced people who have worked and served in different areas either as civil servant, businessmen/women among others. It is not a position for school boys and girls and ordinary men in the street.”
