Voters in The Gambia will again return to the polls to elect on April 9th 2022 to elect representatives who are to serve in parliament in the next five years. This is in pursuant to Section 89 of the Constitution and Section 42 of the Elections Act. Nomination of candidates for the elections is scheduled from 5th to 13th March, 2022.
So, selecting people who are to serve at the National Assembly should be vetted and critically looked into.
In a nutshell, the National Assembly is responsible for passing bills so that they could become laws of the land. Laws should prohibit and prevent practices and behaviours harmful to self and the community. It should also protect and promote practices and behaviours that are conducive to self and community development.
Lawmakers have the power to ratify international agreements. Dealing with nations requires technicalities but also pragmatic and careful approach to issues at hand. There are some agreements that could compromise the sovereignty of the country or serve the interests of others at the expense of the country.
This is where they have a crucial role to play.
Therefore, this forthcoming election is very important and it requires carefully choosing or selecting the right candidates.
We’ve seen in the past lawmakers, who are at the parliament to vote where the majority lies. They’ve not contributed little, positively or nothing towards addressing the very people who voted for them.
Therefore, it is high time voters reason and make informed choices when it comes to voting for people who are to represent them at the parliament.
Gone are those days, when some opportunities seeking for the post frequented their constituencies only to bribe or seek favors from certain community heads to make it easy to run for the post in their various constituencies. And in most cases, these opportunists hardly or once in a blue moon visit their constituencies
Watch out as in the coming days they will come with bags of kola nuts to politics the minds of electorates to enable them contest in the forthcoming elections. Let’s vote for the right people.