The ruling National People’s Party (NPP) has cautioned the country’s main opposition the United Democratic Party (UDP) to respect the laws and institutions created by the country’s constitution.
The NPP gave this caution whilst responding to UDP’s statement on the Supreme Court Ruling on the election petition.
The statement which was put out by Seedy SK Njie, Deputy Spokesman of the NPP said that consequent to the recent statement issued by A N M Ousainu Darboe, UDP and what it describes as ‘some unfortunate statements circulating in social media seeking to denigrate the recent decision of the Supreme Court’ in the election petition brought by United Democratic Party (UDP), the National Peoples Party (NPP) has deemed it necessary to release this statement.
The statement noted that the candidate of the NPP Adama Barrow won the said election by a very convincing number (Adama Barrow received 457,519 votes whilst A N M Ousainu Darboe received 283,253 votes) and the election was monitored by several international and national election observers who all commended the conduct of the said election.
The statement said that following the said loss, the UDP has made several unsubstantiated claims in a bid to have the verdict of the Gambian people set aside. One of the claims made related to the registration of non-Gambians.
“The registration of voters by IEC was very transparent and complaints about this should have been made to the revising court as required by the Elections Act. The Supreme Court would not, therefore, have been the proper forum to determine this issue.
On the other issues raised in the petition, NPP answered same and was satisfied that they would have prevailed at trial despite the 2000 pages of documents submitted by UDP.”
The NPP said, despite the above allegations it is satisfied that the Supreme Court of The Gambia carried out its constitutional mandate in dealing with the UDP petition.
“The Supreme Court could not legally proceed with the hearing of the petition on its merits without the UDP complying with the preliminary issues of law which would give the Court the jurisdiction and the mandate to proceed with such a hearing,”
The statement reminds the UDP that it was their (UDP) failure to comply with the law that caused the striking out of the petition and prevented the hearing on the merits.
Meanwhile, the NPP and His Excellency President Adama Barrow the statement reiterates have always accepted decisions of the courts including the Supreme Court decisions whether for or against the government without seeking to vilify the courts in any way.
The party, therefore, calls on all other political parties to act in a similar manner. Indicating that,
“Our judges must be allowed to give their judgments based on their oaths of office and their understanding of the law.”
“All of us need to respect our laws and the institutions created by our Constitution to ensure that we live in a peaceful and democratic country where we can continue to approach our courts with our grievances. We must not encourage our citizenry to ignore the laws and our institutions and must have respect for the Rule of Law,” the NPP statement maintained.
