“As far as I know, when a matter is before a court, no party should do anything about that case because it is contempt of court. When a matter is before the court, no one should do anything in order to interfere in that particular case. Therefore, that claim to be committed to the rule of law should have left the court to decide on the matter,” he said at a press conference yesterday.
“In fact, I just don’t know what positions those deputy governors are going to be given.”
“But you cannot redeploy someone whose initial appointment is illegal. You can only redeploy public servants whose appointments are legal. We have also taken a step in order to ask the court that those redeployments are illegal. In fact, I have expected the personnel management office to issue a statement about this and not the government spokesperson.”
Mr. Darboe also warned that no amount of arrest and detention can intimidate his party.
“I can tell you all for certain that UDP will never encourage violence. However, UDP is prepared to use violence to violence. We are not going to compromise on that,” he said during a press conference yesterday.
“If you use violence on us, we will also be violent. If you come to us with violence, you will meet violence. We will certainly not sit down and allow anyone to bring violence to us and we sit and do nothing. I want to tell you Mr. President that this is not a threat but a promise.”
“If you ask your people to be violent, we will also be violent to defend ourselves. If you think you can use the security forces against us, we say we will be prepared to meet any section of the security forces, be it the police, soldiers or the PIU.”
“We will stand against anybody to protect ourselves. We are prepared to die and to also go to jail. We want to make sure that this country is governed by the laws. I can also tell you that the arrest of Dibba can’t intimidate us,” he postulated.
“It has been eight years since former President Jammeh left the country and there has never been any constitution. We still have the laws that Jammeh left here.
Darboe maintained that what Barrow promised Gambians was to do away with Jammeh's laws and bring in a new constitution.
On the issues of term limit, Darboe admitted that the current 1997 constitution doesn’t have term limit. However, he was quick to add: “The ECOWAS Protocol on democracy and good governance which was adopted by the Gambians before Adama Barrow became the president talks about two term limits, thus the president should respect two term limits.”
“What we are telling the president is to bring back the constitution that the CRC presented to the National Assembly. Again, we will reject the draft constitution if there are any changes made on it. We are not going to accept any constitution that is drafted by you and brought to the National Assembly.”
