The parliamentary minority leader, Samba Jallow, has said that the fallout from the recent allegations by UDP parliamentarian, Sanna Jawara, is an internal UDP affair and does not involve his party.
Jallow who is the representative from Niamina Dankunku, told The Standard yesterday that after launching his investigations, he found out that none of the members from the minority parties had taken the cash reportedly given out by the president.
He said the allegations levelled against President Barrow “may be regarded as an internal UDP problem, not necessarily that of the Assembly… because the revelation came from the same party and the recipients are all from the same party.”
He said consequently, the Assembly has not convened any meeting on the matter even though many regard it as a problem.
He added: “It could be right that the UDP is using this to prevent President Barrow from running for next term. This is African politics and it is not easy to trust anyone, but I have not talked to the president about the allegations and there are always two sides to a story.
“Technically, Barrow is ruling without a parliament so there are many things that could happen. I think the president would need support from the Assembly, and he could think ‘let me do this to win the minds of the members of the National Assembly’ because of certain threats he [Barrow] might have encountered. Nobody knows,” he said.
The minority leader further speculated: “There could be a UDP pro-Barrow; there could be a UDP pro-Darboe. Everything could be possible if you look at the way the trend is moving. If some members of parliament from UDP are accepting money from Barrow and others rejecting it, that shows categorically that there is division in the UDP, if not, they would all have moved in the same direction.”
Jallow said in terms of realpolitik, “it was only a formality to bring Barrow as an independent candidate but in his blood it’s UDP. That’s what he manifested when he won. The first thing he did was to make sure the entire executive of the UDP came out of prison”.
Jallow said the minority party members “have nothing to do with all of these allegations. It is only the UDP members”.
He said the UDP is in disarray, and that the cash-in-envelope saga is indicative that the UDP, or at least a faction of the UDP, are at loggerhead with President Barrow.
By Standard Newspaper
