culled from todays Point Newspaper.





      Hamat Bah Takes Jammeh To Task
      
     
     "The fact that President Jammeh has confirmed in his speech that he was 'constantly in touch with' his government made us believe, and conclude that all those who spoke and acted during the crisis were doing so on his instructions and directives." 

      So said Hamat Bah leader of the opposition National Reconciliation Party (NRP) at a press conference called at the party's bureau on Monday in reaction to the President's address to the nation on Sunday evening. 

      Mr. Bah said the Vice President, Interior Minister and the security forces all acted under the orders of the President, since the President did not condemn their actions in his speech. 

      Noting that under section 61-1a of the Constitution, President Jammeh is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Bah declared, "We believe that he was involved in the actions that took place during the crisis." 

      Saying "no stone will be left unturned," Bah continued, has been a famous slogan of the government of the day, adding that "we heard it when Koro Ceesay was killed, we heard it many a time, we heard it in the aftermath of the torture of UDP militants and nothing came of it." 

      He said the talk of inquiry and inquest in just a mere statement "as they would tell you that they would investigate, at the end nothing would come out of it." 

      "I am convinced that most Gambians have lost trust in this strategy, and the statements his people have been making, on his instructions, are merely intended to pre-empt the proposed inquest, because they've already made a conclusion apportioning blame in advance even before the inquiry starts," he noted. 

      "As far as we are concerned, they've already strategised to impede the investigation and to mislead whoever is going to make the investigation by their flimpsy and inconsistent statements," he said. 

      "We know that they are very good in misleading the people. We've heard it many a time. They fabricate stories against people and get away with it, but this one they would never get away with, we will get to the truth," Bah declared. 

      He recommended that independent and neutral persons be charged with the responsibility of investigating the whole crisis, and that the post mortem report be made pubic. 

      He said when Abiola died, the Nigerian government invited independent pathologists all over the world to do the post mortem which, he said, is not the case here. 

      He described the incidents of April 10 and 11 as the darkest days in Gambian history. 

      He said the students gathered to exercise their constitutional rights only to be slained. 

      "It is unfortunate that a government that talks about the welfare of the youth of this country could mobilise security forces, and arm them to kill school children in broad daylight," Bah lamented. The government should be held responsible for all what happened, he said. 

      "It is unfortunate that they are looking for excuses or scapegoats, by labelling criminals that were held in various police cells as responsible for the deaths. They failed to realize that people are aware that students were already killed well before the cells were opened," he pointed out. 

      The leadership of the APRC regime has been emphasising things of material value rather than human life, he further noted. "Yes, I agree that there were property damages to the tune of several millions of dalasis, but for the lives lost, just one of them could have earned this country hundreds of millions," he noted
     


A.Drammeh