By Lamin Njie
UDP leader Ousainou Darboe has said he would want the party to choose him as its candidate in the 2021 presidential elections.
“I hope the party selects me and I would want the party to select me and I am going to apply to the party to select me,” Mr Darboe told The Fatu Network in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.
It comes as the UDP leader also spoke on other issues of national interest including his party’s infamous exit from the Barrow coalition government.
Mr Darboe said: “We are in no business of buttering President Barrow. People who butter him, maybe they are the ones who are there. And I am happy I am out of government not because I’m inefficient, not because I’m incompetent, not because I have not been diligent in my service to the nation. I am out because I refused my party to be hijacked by anybody.
“His agenda was to contest in 2021 and wants UDP to endorse him and I said no. That is not the government agenda that the coalition was formed to implement. It is the coalition agenda that we supported. After all, the National Development Plan – the principal agenda.
“We have been the principal advocates of that. But an agenda to endorse him as candidate for 2021 elections which other parties are doing, we are not part of that and we will not be part of that.
“We heard him say he has the support of NRP, he has the support of Mr Gomez. They can endorse him but we will not endorse him. We will not endorse him because the way he has been behaving to our party, to some extent that he has been insulting…”
