AFPTV shows The Gambia’s
President-elect Adama Barrow looking on following his victory in the polls in Kololi on December 2, 2016. AFP PHOTO / AFPTV / Joe Sinclair Gambia’s National Assembly Wednesday passed a resolution that gave the incumbent president Yahya Jammeh a three-month tenure extension, Reuters reported quoting Gambian state television.
Jammeh lost to opposition candidate Adama Barrow in the December 2016 presidential election after ruling the West African nation for 22 years. But he later announced that the election results were flawed and unacceptable.
But Barrow, who is currently
sheltering in neighbouring Senegal,
maintains his inauguration will go
ahead on Thursday on Gambian soil,
putting the country on a collision
course.
On Tuesday, Jammeh declared a state of emergency just two days before he is due to step down, citing
“extraordinary” foreign interference
in the country’s post-electoral crisis.
The declaration was necessary, he said on state television, after the
“unprecedented and extraordinary
amount of foreign inference in the
December 1 presidential elections and also in the internal affairs of The
Gambia.”
The declaration immediately triggered travel advisory warnings by Britain and the Netherlands, with around 1,000 British tourists expected to leave on special flights on Wednesday alone.
