By Buba Gagigo
Haji Suwaneh, the National Youth President of the United Democratic Party (UDP), has accused President Adama Barrow of engaging in deceptive politics in his Eid message shared with Kerr Fatou.
“My message to President Barrow and his politics of Deception! NPP’s incompetence, indifference, corruption and identity politics are the causes of the current status quo. Because identity politics and fearmongering are the only things they can peddle with all kinds of fear tactics, as we all know, they can’t defend their government’s bad records and performance since coming to power because they lack vision,” he said.
Before addressing reconciliation, Suwaneh argued that President Barrow should first seek forgiveness for the harm he and his NPP party have inflicted on Gambians.
“I think we should know first why he uses divide and rule tactics to divide Gambians. We all know President Barrow used tribal politics often against one single party, even though he knew all that he was alleging the UDP was baseless. So if he thinks Gambians are divided and some reconciliation is needed, let him make a public apology to the Gambian people and confess to them that he uses dirty politics for his own interest to win elections. I also heard him appealing to Gambians to support his Government’s infrastructural developments. I think the president needs some serious help because he is completely lost. The first thing I want to tell Adama Barrow is: Does he think people are rejecting his developments? No, No,” Haji said.
He claimed that Gambians are rejecting the manner and way these projects are done in the name of the president’s ‘so-called’ infrastructural development. He also alleged that the projects President Barrow talked about have no value for the funds spent due to massive leakages in almost every sector of his government.
“The millions spent compared to the quality of the infrastructural developments are just a rip-off. One wonders if there is a president in this country at all who is sworn in to serve the Gambian people without fear, favour or ill will. Barrow has never take the rampant corruption and embezzlement of public resources seriously. In fact, he always downplays it and ridicules critics of corruption and maladministration. Instead of assuring citizens that he will tackle the endemic corruptions, he claims that corruption in Auditor General’s Reports are just mere opinions and bias,” he said.
Suwaneh also criticized President Barrow’s government’s current tax policy, claiming it severely impacts all walks of life in the country except those at the top, who are taking advantage of ordinary citizens.
“How can president Barrow expect people to support a government which is only good at creating poverty and unemployment with high taxation and little, if, any interest in investing in the productive sectors like mechanised agriculture. Mr. President, electricity and water tariffs increased to over 37%. Sadly, even on this holy day of Eid al-Adha many people can’t get water to take a bath. Tailors were having serious problems with their customers because they didn’t have electricity to do their tailoring work effectively. Mr. President, None tax revenue such as National ID card, passport, hospital tickets all increased and yet the Gambia immigration cannot even print our ID cards leaving people to travel with their payment receipts.
“Again, you created another tax collection strategy called Digital Stamp instead of giving it for free to encourage transparent and efficient tax payment. Your Gov’t decided to add it to the exorbitant tax tariffs to make life even harder. You also took an ill-advice to protect a few cement importers by hammering their competitors with a 180% tax increase to discourage them for the interest of your closed business associates. Do you think you can close people’s businesses for you to earn a genuine living, and we enjoy peace? Do you know that this will also reflect on rents, which are already very high for the masses to afford,” he said.