By: Christian Conteh
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) has on Tuesday 15th February 2022 held a consultative engagement with eminent personalities including religious leaders, civil society actors and media practitioners.
The consultations which took place at the Sir Dawda Jawara International Conference Centre at Bijilo was organised based on a draft code of conduct for candidates in the upcoming National Assembly Elections.
Mohamed Ibu Chambers is the Lead facilitator of the Gambian Code of Conduct. He said the code will help regulate the conduct of candidates in the upcoming elections.
“Civil Society Organisations (CSO) and the media are the glue of society, they take information from the government to the people and from the people to the government,” Mr Chambers said.
He further encouraged CSO groups and the media to widely circulate the code of conduct to the grassroot so that the people can hold their leaders to account when they breach the code.
“You have an important role to play, from the campaigns to the voting. We commend you for what you did during the presidential elections we hope you improve on it. Remember that you are an important part of the Gambia. Because you are important and because people listen to you, you must try to be balanced and impartial, you must try not to use inflammatory language,” he said.
“Peace is very important in the nation, we are all aware that in Mali and Sudan there is no peace, so we all owe it to ourselves our families and the nation to ensure we do not have such a situation,” he added.
Making her presentation Hon. Elizabeth Renner, Former Speaker of the National Assembly noted that The Gambia is a small country and all its people are related one way or the other.
Therefore, she called on every Gambian to ensure that their existing unity is not affected but strengthened as they participate in the upcoming electoral process.
“People normally don’t take assembly elections seriously, but we must help change that because the assembly is an important constituent of government, we must send fitting candidates to the National Assembly,” Hon Renner said.
She called on the media and CSOs to ensure their various platforms are not used to propagate hate speech, tribalism or religious divide.
“This must be avoided, these have no place in our politics,” she said.
The code of ethics “Towards Peaceful National Assembly Elections in The Gambia” outlines 15 codes including: calling for the running of issue-based political campaigns at village, town, city, district, constituency, municipal, regional and national levels.
Ensuring uninterrupted and uncompromised freedom of expression and sharing of accurate information, both online and offline, throughout the Electoral Process.
Accepting the results of the elections as announced by returning officers of IEC at constituencies and to resort to judicial processes to address disputes which may arise from the makeup of the election.
The candidates are further required to reaffirm their commitment to abide by the tenets of the 1997 Constitution of the Republic of The Gambia, the Elections Act (2009), the Inter-Party Committee (IPC) Memorandum of Understanding and Code of Conduct (2017), and the IPC Peace Pledge also known as the Jangjangbureh Peace Accord (2021).
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) is conducting a dialogue on consensus-building process on peaceful elections among the various political parties and electoral stakeholders in The Gambia. IDEA is an inter-governmental organization with a mandate to promote democratic governance worldwide
