ANRD Party Leader
By Landing Ceesay
The Leader of the Alliance for National Re-orientation and Development (ANRD) Retired General Lamin Satou Bojang said his party wants to end what he called ‘bad leadership in The Gambia.
“As a sovereign state, our sovereignty, we believe, is at stake. Therefore, there is a need for some of us who think that we are in a privileged position to abandon those luxuries to join the underprivileged and the people whose voices were not heard to help them and stand by them, hence the existence of ANRD. We are into helping Gambian people, we are into changing the dynamics, [and] we are into changing the status quo. We want the Gambia to be on the map of countries, especially Africa that are considered to be developed.
“Here in The Gambia, we missed and lacked leadership and this is what we identified. So therefore, we want to replace that ‘poor leadership’, with a leadership that will inspire young people, with a leadership that will help young people to be innovative, with leadership that will help people to be creative but also for our independence to be reclaimed and restored. That’s why ANRD is into politics and that is what we want to bring into this whole thing,” General Bojang said.
Asked why Gambian should vote for him, General Bojang said his party has a ‘meaningful change’ for Gambians.
“We are in politics because we want to bring sanity to Gambian politics. We also want to make sure that the change that all Gambians are yearning for is the change that we will bring to the Gambian people. Alliance for National Re-Orientation and Development (ANRD) is into politics because we have found out that 56 years into our independence, If you look into Agriculture it’s in the hands of foreigners, if you look into other important sectors, health, education, security, in particular, are in the hands of foreigners,” he said.
The retired ANRD presidential hopeful, and 3 independent president aspirants professor Momodou Bah, Ebrima Tobara Manneh and Bankole Ahadzie, presented their credentials to the IEC on Sunday, day 2 of the nomination process.
The nomination of presidential aspirants continues tomorrow at the Election House in Kanifing. The process would complete on Friday, and the details of the aspirants are expected to be published on Saturday for public scrutiny before the Electoral Commission would either accept or reject them.
The criteria for the nomination of presidential candidates for the much-anticipated December election are: a candidate shall be a citizen of The Gambia; a candidate has attained a minimum age of thirty years; candidate has completed Senior Secondary school education, a candidate has been ordinarily resident in The Gambia for the five years immediately preceding the: election; a candidate shall be nominated by not less than five thousand voters whose names appeared in the register of voters with at least two hundred voters being drawn from each Administrative Area; a Sworn Declaration of Assets; a Tax Clearance Certificate; Payment of Deposit of Ten thousand dalasis (D10, 000) as amended; Representative symbol, colour and photographs of a candidate; a person who is qualified to be registered as a voter under the Constitution and the Election Act may contest as an independent candidate in any election; a political party/candidate shall abide by the code on election campaign ethics which the Commission may time to time prepare; and a submission of manifesto encouraging the spirit of tolerance and multiculturalism.
Comments are closed.