The Fatu Network has landed on a credible but disturbing story of elaborate plans by Dictator Yahya Jammeh to cheat the 2016 elections. A very credible source within the corridors of power has brought this to the attention of The Fatu Network through dispatch from Banjul.
The source said: “Fatu, I want to inform you of the latest plan by the Dictator to cheat the elections. In the open it will appears that the Dictator is interested in clean elections….but in reality, everything that is being done right now is the opposite albeit subtly.”
The source continued: “currently, the APRC has mobilized Regional Governors, Area Chiefs, Members of Parliament and Village Head Chiefs who are all going round in rural areas collecting signatures. They are led by some opinion leaders who are lying to people that their signatures are being collected to document the number of people who needed food aid to be supplied by the president in the coming months.”
But according to our source, the issue which was discussed at the highest level of government, is a scheme to handicap the opposition and their ability to nominate their candidates for the upcoming presidential and other elections slated for November 2016.
How? Well according to our source the elaborate scheme is that in each village of the Gambia, the APRC wants as many as half the number of villagers to sign the so called food aid forms so that when the nomination time comes, the opposition will be starved of the right number of people to nominate them in the election.
Indeed under the new Electoral Amendment Act, Presidential candidates in particular will have to secure nomination of a specific percentage from each of the seven Regions of the Gambia. Our source said since the law does not permit one voter to nominate more than one candidate, it would a rude shock for the opposition on the day of the presentation of nomination papers to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) that those people they’re banking on had also been duped to nominate the Dictator.
Indeed some few days ago, a member of the UDP diaspora Mr Suntou Touray had raised the alarm of people going around the country securing and collecting voters’ signatures.
The Fatu Network can today confirm this scheme. We can in fact confirm that much signatures have already been secured by the Regional Governors who will submit their handiwork to the Dictator at the APRC congress later tomorrow.
Also members of the security forces including the Army, the Police, the NIA, the Prison Services, the Fire and Ambulance Services and the Immigration Department have also been tasked to force their family members to sign the so called food aid form. The Fatu Network has got a credible news that already large amount of nomination forms have been handed over to individual security officers to execute the orders of securing nomination for the head of state.
The Fatu Network is currently working with our credible sources to send us the APRC nomination forms that are making the round in the country in the guise of food aid to a population that has already been made destitute by an insane, power hungry dictator. We are keenly following up with our sources on this story and we shall update you with any latest we get.
In the midst of all this however is what some people believe is the apparent lack of urgency on the part of the opposition to unite and or challenge some of these elaborate schemes to cheat the elections under their own eyes.
As we piece this story together, the APRC is on a congress where large chunk of the population are being ferried in trucks as far places as from Cassamance.
