By Ousman Saidykhan
People’s Alliance Party (PAP) has decided to withdraw their aspiring candidate for the April 26 Half-Die Ward By-election in Banjul to support the candidature of aspiring People’s Progressive Party (PPP) candidate Momodou Salieu Jallow, The Alkamba Times authoritatively reports.
The leader of PAP said the arrangements to support the PPP’s Momodou Salieu Jallow candidature were made after they had discussed “at length” at the executive level and agreed that one could give a chance to the other.
“We believe that it will give us more weight, more opportunity against the incumbent. It is an agreement that we have reached with them,” Mr. Manneh said.
PAP was scheduled for nomination today at 11 a.m. at the IEC’s regional office in Banjul, but this development means that would be cancelled.
The IEC’s director of communications, Pa Makan Khan has confirmed they have received a call from PAP notifying them that they would not come for nomination, although the party’s decision is beyond their knowledge.
“We are hopeful,” he said. “We know the one who travelled [former councillor] was from the ruling party and they have their support base. So, we have the opposition also. So we tried not to split the opposition supporters.”
The PAP leader said they are not “scared” of the crowd that followed the NPP during their nomination yesterday, saying that the alliance was being discussed “even before they went for the nomination.”
“Not that we are scared of them. Beside resources, we don’t think they have any other advantage; not the message, not the people,” Manneh said, emphasising it has nothing to do with being scared of NPP or the crowd that they pulled “because we know in politics, especially for such, large crowd could mean very little.”
He said they know Banjul, the support base that exists there, and they also know the strategies the NPP would try to use. “We have an idea about their strength. So, we know that when we combine together that will increase our chances even more.”
PPP will go to the IEC for nomination tomorrow, Saturday, April 12. The People’s Alliance Party will show up in their numbers to show they are really rallying being the PPP’s aspiring candidate, Manneh said.
“In fact, if you will be there tomorrow, you will notice our presence. It will be a combination of PPP and PAP. So, they will definitely see our presence there.
The nominations started yesterday with the NPP aspirant submitting his papers to the IEC.
The election will be conducted on April 26 to fill the seat which remains vacant after the former councillor under the NPP absconded during an official trip to Belgium.
