Gambia’s internet cut as ‘billionyear’ leader faces challenge

BANJUL, Gambia: Gambian President Yahya Jammeh faced the strongest electoral challenge of his 22-year rule Thursday as voters went to the polls, braving an internet and phone blackout the government defended as a security measure.

After an unprecedented two-week opposition campaign that has energised his rivals, Jammeh rumbled into the capital’s cricket ground in a 4X4 and after casting his vote predicted his best score ever.

“By the grace of the almighty Allah, there will be the biggest landslide in the history of my elections,” said Jammeh, wearing his usual white robes and sunglasses and carrying a staff and Koran.

Some 890,000 Gambians were eligible to vote – by dropping a marble into a coloured drum for their candidate – in a west African nation long accused by rights groups of suppressing freedom of expression.

Votes were being counted after polling stations closed at 5pm (1700 GMT).

The winner in the three-way race will serve a five-year term in the tiny former British colony with pristine beaches that occupies a narrow sliver of land surrounded by French-speaking Senegal.

Jammeh, who once said he would govern for a billion years if God willed it, is running for a fifth term with his ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC).

He faces previously unknown businessman Adama Barrow, chosen as the opposition flag bearer by a group of political parties who have joined forces for the first time and won unprecedented popular support.

“Power belongs to the people. You cannot stop us and you cannot stop them,” Barrow said after voting in the village of Old Yundum.

“If (Jammeh) loses, let him concede defeat. And we know he is going to lose,” Barrow told AFP.

The United States noted that turnout appeared to be high and that the vote took place in ‘generally peaceful conditions’.

But State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington remained concerned about “the arrest of opposition supporters and the disruption or blockage of internet, SMS, phone, and social media”, as well as claims of voter intimidation. — AFP