Hamat NK Bah, the leader of the National Reconciliation Party NRP on Saturday presided over the national congress of his party at Brikamaba.
Addressing party delegates, invited partners and guests, Mr Bah, also the minister for Local Government and Religious Affairs, said the most effective way to solve the impasse on the diaspora voting debacle is to overhaul the electoral system to align it with a system that will proportionately cater for the protection of all minority groups.
“This current electoral system does not cater for Gambians in the diaspora to participate in elections. The Assembly must amend or overhaul it. If you want to cater for diaspora, you must also think of minority groups in the country, “he said.
According to him, when you have a proportional system of voting, every poll is counted and parties are compelled by law to include women or other minority groups, be they religious or tribal. “With that, every vote that you cast anywhere in the world is counted and completed.
“Look at this. With all this noise about diaspora voting, where does it leave the minority Christians, who today are not represented by even a single member in the National Assembly?
Where does it leave all the minority groups who have a right to be represented? In the whole of Africa, no English-speaking country has adopted the minority system of voting, except South Africa. All others in Africa are using the Westminster system of election-first- past- the- post, “he stated.
Mr Bah said in any case, people must not think that disport is just about Gambians in the UK or America. “Let me make it very clear. We have more Gambian diasporans in Senegal. Mauritania and other places than we have in the whole of Europe. They have a right to register to come and vote in this country. They are Gambians who have migrated because they have nowhere to graze their animals, “he said.
The NRP leader said another minority group not favoured by the current system is the womenfolk.
“Our women have been marginalised for so long. They have been dehumanised by men in this country. The number of broken marriages in the Gambia is alarming with men not taking care of children in divorced marriages, “he lamented.
NRP
Launched in Gunjur in the summer of 1996, the NRP has played important part in the country’s democratisation process. It has worked closely with many opposition groups fighting former president Jammeh’s reign of terror with Mr Bah himself sent to prison many times. As an opposition member of parliament Mr Bah used his parliamentary immunity and power to expose and condemn numerous atrocities of the Jammeh regime helping to shape public and international opinion against the tyrant. Always thorn in the flesh of the Jammeh regime, the APRC used all government machinery including force, arrests and terror to prevent Bah from reclaiming his Upper Saloum seat in the 2005 by- elections. Bah however continued to be even more vocal as party leader outside parliament until the historic 2016 election when his NRP joined the opposition coalition to unseat Jammeh. He joined the new government as minister for tourism and now serves as Local Government minister. His NRP remains in the coalition with the governing National People’s Party.
