By: Malanding Darboe & Sandally Sawo
The UDP has joined the concerned citizens’ voices in condemning the arrest and subsequent criminal charges against The Voice Newspaper proprietor, Musa Sheriff, and journalist Momodou Justice Darboe.
“These charges are baseless and hearken to the days of tyranny when state institutions were politicized to advance the agenda of the president. It is a slippery slope that leads down the path of further repression, attacks on freedom of expression, and the press,” the party said in a statement issued to this medium on Thursday.
“Speculating on, or citing anonymous sources on who would be any party’s potential candidate for the presidency is no cause for “public alarm” as the police indicate in their charges. The state cannot produce any evidence to support that claim and further points to the attempts by the state, through the Inspector General of Police, to create an environment of censorship for the media,” stated the Gambia’s main opposition party.
“It is an indictment of the state, and an embarrassment that as the President stood before the General Assembly of the United Nations making misleading statements that there were no journalists or human rights activists jailed under his administration, the police were in the act of jailing The Voice Newspaper journalist on bogus charges,” said the UDP.
“It is the right of President Barrow to instruct his private lawyers to advise and act for him as the leader of NPP and to deal with any matter affecting him as political leader such as “defamation or any other partisan matter and to institute civil suit in that regard,” it added.
“UDP respectfully calls on the Inspector General of Police not to conflate partisan politics which the NPP succession plan is with national affairs and to drop all charges in order to allow the matter to proceed in civil court as hinted by the President’s private counsel,”concluded the statement.
