President Adama Barrow has said he sacked the UDP contingent from his government because they gave him problems – and also said the group that wanted to bring his government to an end in 2019 was headed by his ‘father’ UDP leader Darboe.
Three Years Jotna rolled out a vast campaign against President Barrow’s rule in 2018 and the campaign dramatically collapsed in 2019 after police cracked down on the protesters. The group was then banned.
Speaking at a rally in Farafenni as part of his presidential campaign, the president told citizens: “These people have troubled me. Since 2017 they have been fighting me, since 2017 I could not get my peace from these people. But there is one thing that I say to them that offends them which is ‘only a hypocrite will say the knife that killed the lion cannot kill the chicken’.
“They were in my government and they gave me problems and I sacked them. Tyey said my government would collapse but that was the day my government gained greater strength. They then set a new plot [against my government] and they formed Three Years Jotna.
“Three Years Jotna’s chief executive officer is my own father Alhaji Ousainou Darboe. But when I throw teargas on them and to this day… You know I told my security leaders that it takes a fight to end a quarrel. From that day to now, Three Years Jotna died in this country as if it never existed. And when they realized that plan also failed, my elder entered into the house and said ‘we should come up with a new plan’.
“When they made their new plan, they came out and said ‘let’s remove President Barrow on the 4th of December 2021’. When they came up with that plan, I told them we have now come to a consensus. [That] it’s Gambians who own ‘4th December’. That I don’t own that and they don’t own that and it’s Gambians who own it and so the fight is over.
“I told my officials to release those that were being prosecuted. That the fight is over and since they now said they want to come through the front door and we have agreed to that. But Billahi Wallahi, what we would do to them on the 4th of December would be worse than what we did to them in Three Years Jotna.”
