Gambia's Jammeh wins disputed polls

  1. Posted on Saturday 26 November 2011 - 08:13
    Mabvuto Phiri
    Image of Mabvuto Phiri
    Mabvuto Phiri, AfricaNews reporter in Lusaka, Zambia
    Gambia's election commission has declared incumbent President Yahya Jammeh winner of Thursday's elections. Jammeh, who has been in power for 17 years, scored a landslide 72 per cent victory, according to results read out on Friday by Alhagie Mustapha Carayol, the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission.
    yahya jammeh
    The vote was regionally criticised as it was marred by intimidation of voters and the opposition.

    Early results had shown the main opposition leader, Ousainou Darboe, trailing with just 14.5 per cent of the vote while independent candidate Amath Bah had polled 8.3 per cent.

    Nearly 800,000 voters were registered in a system under which they were given one marble each to be dropped into a drum corresponding to the candidate of their choice. The marble strikes a bell inside the drum, preventing multiple voting.

    "I am confident to win with a landslide majority," Jammeh had told reporters as he voted in the capital Banjul.

    "People know what I did for the Gambia for the past 17 years in terms of development. The British who were here for 400 years never did that," he said of Gambia's former colonial ruler.

    Jammeh, one of Africa's most controversial rulers, first took power at the age of 29 after a 1994 army coup.

    He declared in July that neither a vote nor a coup could oust him, saying he ruled thanks to divine intervention.

    Observers from the African Union, Commonwealth and European Union were monitoring the vote.

    Regional body ECOWAS decided not to send a mission, saying its fact-finding mission had found "an unacceptable level of control of the electronic media by the party in power ... and an opposition and electorate cowed by repression and intimidation".

    Many voters turned up on Thursday only to be told they were at the wrong polling station.

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