Election day passes off peacefully

Calm prevailed throughout The Gambia on Friday as thousands of people around the tiny West African country queued up for hours in the baking heat and then driving rain to cast their ballots in the presidential election.

If the incumbent President Yahya Jammeh of the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) is announced the winner after the votes are counted this weekend it will be his third five-year term.

Jammeh has ruled the country since seizing power in a coup with a group of low-ranking officers in 1994, rewriting the constitution and holding widely criticised elections in 1996 and 2001.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters after casting his vote on Friday morning, Jammeh said he was confident of another victory.

"I am going to win this election," he said. "Even the birds know that I am going to win because I have done so much to develop this country. I will develop Gambia to its highest peak and make it the richest country on the continent."

Jammeh's main challenger is Ousmane Darboe of the United Democratic Party (UDP), who has lost against Jammeh in both previous elections. In the 2001 poll he lost by a small margin of around 20,000 votes.

"I am confident and if the election goes fairly I will surely win," Darboe said.

But echoing complaints he made after the 2001 election, Darboe said he had evidence of unregistered voters being allowed to cast ballots.

"People are voting without being registered and it is the responsibility of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to see that everything is put in order," he said.

Halifa Sallah, the leader of the third party, the New Alliance for Democracy and Development (NADD), said he was satisfied with the way election day had progressed.

The chairman of the internationally respected IEC, Alhagie Mustapha Carayol, also said there were no problems except for long queues at some polling stations. "The day is going smoothly according to reports from my people on the ground," Carayol said.

Polling stations were kept open for an extra two and half hours until 6:30 p.m. to allow everyone to vote, and to compensate for torrential rain in some regions of the country in the afternoon, the IEC said.

Analysts have said that The Gambia's majority vote system, whereby the winner is the candidate who simply achieves the most votes, does not favour the opposition, which is small and divided compared to the APRC, even though the president comes from the Jolla ethnic group - a minority in The Gambia.

Neither opposition party has a profile or budget to match the APRC. In the weeks running up to election day billboards in the country were covered with posters bearing the president's face and promising Gambians a "brighter future", while the opposition was nowhere to be seen.

However, time for appearances on state-run television and radio was given equally to all the candidates, opposition party spokespeople confirmed.

International rights groups have widely criticised the Gambian government's attitude to civil liberties, especially freedom of the press.

The ruling APRC has also been accused of registering thousands of people from the Jolla ethnic group in neighboring Senegal, or Diola as they are known there, offering them residency cards in exchange for their vote. APRC representatives have denied the allegations.

There is no constitutional limit on presidential terms in The Gambia.

An attempt by the African Union to get regional heads of state to sign up to a charter committing them to neither doctor their constitutions nor stay in power for longer than two terms failed to pass during the organisation's most recent summit held in Banjul in June.

mc/nr/cs