The following is culled from:
clari.world.gov.politics,clari.world.africa.western,clari.world.mideast+africa
Newsgroups.

 BANJUL, April 23 (AFP) - Gambia holds local elections on
Thursday, with the victory of the ruling Patriotic Alliance for
Reorientation and Construction (APRC) a foregone conclusion as two
key opposition parties boycott the polls.
   The APRC is standing unopposed in 85 of the 117 local council
seats and four of the eight town halls up for grabs, according to
the independent electoral commission (IEC).
   In the remaining council seats, the ruling party will face 17
independent candidates and a handful of contenders from the small
opposition Party for National Reconciliation (NRP), the IEC's head
of operations, Maleh Sallah, told AFP.
   The four town halls still to be attributed include that of the
capital, Banjul, where the regime faces two independent candidates.
   The two main opposition parties, the United Democratic Party
(UDP) and the Democratic Organisation of the People for Independence
and Socialism (PDOIS), are refusing to take part in the vote.
   The UDP, which boycotted legislative elections in January, has
vowed not to take part in any ballots until the electoral register
has been revised.
   It complained in January that there had been a "massive
transfer" of voters between the electoral lists of different
constituencies.
   The PDOIS is refusing to field candidates because a law on
decentralisation was not approved until two days before the deadline
for registering contenders and has still not entered into force.
   The poll in the tiny West African country of 1.4 million people
is therefore set to hand an easy, pre-determined win to the party of
President Yahya Jammeh, who came to power in a coup in 1994 and was
elected for the first time in 1996, before being re-elected in
2001.
   The APRC holds 45 of the 48 elected seats in Gambia's
parliament.
   The IEC's Sallah remained upbeat about Thursday's ballot.
   "We are happy there have not been any complaints from the
candidates," he said, adding that the poll was important because it
gave "power back to the people".

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