By: Malanding Darboe
The BB Darboe-led Gambia For All (GFA) party has contended that President Adama Barrow’s death remarks against the UDP leader have precedents as, according to the party, it was not “the first time that the President has shocked the nation with his usual unrefined, undemocratic, and plainly unacceptable hate speeches, given on the spur-of-the-moment, at random political rallies throughout the country”.
The GFA said it was concerned by the development.
According to the party, on each occasion that the President makes unpresidential remarks or behaves in an unpresidentialmanner, his “incompetent political advisers tried to offer untenable alternative explanations for the president’s numerous faux pas”.
“Unfortunately, President Barrow’s advisers are faced with a herculean task as the President seems unable, unwilling, or incapable of formulating rational political speeches at political rallies without these types of verbal gaffes,” stated the GFA in a press release issued to this medium.
“The latest outrage from the President was in Brikama, where he was heard wishing for the death and actual burial of UDP opposition leader Ousainou Darboe. This has really gone far beyond the pale of acceptable political discourse. For a democratically elected leader of a country to say that he will not relinquish power unless he sees the main opposition party leader “dead and buried ” is indeed a big threat to national security,” GFA said.
The party pointed out that there are more pressing issues for President Barrow than upscaling his political assault on opponents.
“Instead of addressing the multiple crises that The Gambia faces, which includes the unbearable high cost of living for the great majority of Gambians, the menace of dangerous
drugs and drug traffickers infiltrating all sectors of our society, the tragic plight of our youths perishing in the Mediterranean Sea, and the daily reports of unbelievable government corruption scandals, the President offers no hope to Gambians, except an escalation of personal and useless political attacks on his opponents,” maintained the party.
“GFA strongly condemns the President’s hate speech because we believe that on the Richter scale of political demagoguery, this is higher than the “bury six feet deep” speech that transformed former dictator Yahya Jammeh from a “soldier with a difference” to the killing monster that he later became.
“It is important to remind all Gambian political leaders their words, especially what they utter at political rallies and elsewhere, matter. Each political leader has a portion of the Gambian population that supports and follows him/her. Making this type of hateful rhetoric, sows seeds of hatred and potential conflict in our country,” stated the release.
The GFA asserted that politics should be about ideas that can significantly change the livelihood of ordinary Gambians for the better, rather than hate speech that has no place in “our democracy”.
“We appeal to all Gambians and to President Barrow in particular, that his perceived fratricidal war (TURUBANG KELLO) with his former allies, should be abandoned in exchange for good and progressive ideas that will help develop our country and transform the lives of her citizens,” concluded the release.