Barrow’s insisting he is constitutionally permitted to stay at the helm for five years.

According to a memorandum of understanding signed by President Adama Barrow when he took power in the Gambia, he would lead the country through a three year transition.

Gambians are wary of leaders clinging to power. Yahya Jammeh was there for 22 years and only stepped down threatened by military action by his neighbours after losing the 2016 election to Barrow.

The fact that Gambians now feel confident to take to the streets to make their grievances known is a testimony to the new democracy in that small West African country. 

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She been attacked by the Gambia, who is leveling the charge, for her silence about alleged atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Speaking on the final day of hearings, Aung San Suu Kyi called the 2017 crackdown on on the Rohingya a clearance operation targeting  militants.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner is accused to ignoring widespread allegations of  mass murder, rape and forced deportation of Rohingya.

Thousands were killed and at least 700 000 forced to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.

The court now has to decide whether to impose legally binding measures to protect the Rohingya.

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She says the allegations from the West African state a re incomplete and misleading.

ends intro

Aung San Suu Kyi didn’t have to appear at the International Court of Justice.

Indeed she’s risking what remains of her reputation doing so.

She tells the court that Burmese soldiers might have used disproportionate force in dealing with the complex Rohingya crisis.

But she insists a regime that has investigated, prosecuted and punished soldiers and officers guilty of wrongdoing could not be guilty of genocide.

And she insists appropriate action will be taken against civilians guilty of violence.

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He’s under pressure to find and punish the people traffickers who left over 150 people tossing around the Atlantic in an overcrowded boat for more than a week.

When the boat capsized, 83 people managed to swim ashore to Mauritania.

This left at least 62, including women and children, drowned.

Mauritanian Interior Minister Mohamed Salem ould Merzoug said they had done all they could in the rescue operation and providing emergency medical aid to the survivors.

Tens of thousands of young Gambians have made the perilous trip up the bulge of Africa, hoping to find political and economic security in Europe.

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The  watchdog group is involved in joint investigation with  TRIAL International that involved interviewing 30 former Gambian officials, including 11 officers, and a survivor of the round-up as part of a joint investigation.

Human Right Watch and the Swiss-based group fighting impunity say 44 Ghanaians and several Nigerians, Senegalese, as well as a Togolese  were arrested on a beach in Gambia while trying to reach Europe.

They were suspected of being mercenaries wanting to overthrow thenPresident Yahya  Jammeh.

The NGOs, say in a joint statement the migrants were handed over to a paramilitary unit, and executed on Jammeh’s orders.

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His host, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema says he’s consider any extradition request for Jammeh from the Gambia.

At least twice last year, Gambia’s new President Adama Barrow said he’s considering asking Equatorial Guinea to send Yahya Jammeh home to face charges of human rights abuses and crimes against the state.

The fact that President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has not ruled it out completely is seen as threatening to Jammeh.

He left Gambia a year ago after losing elections and then being forced out by pressure from the country’s neighbors.

Jammeh is reportedly deeply isolated and restricted in Equatorial Guinea where he’s farming cacao and plantains.

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The turn out for National Assembly poll is lower than than that for the presidential election.

ends into

Nine political parties have fielded a record number of 239 registered candidates campaigning for 48 seats.

Gambia has more than 800 000 registered voters.

Five MPs will be appointed by President Adama Barrow to make up the 53-seat parliament.

The election is the  first major political challenge to Barrow who needs a  majority in the National Assembly to conduct host of legal and constitutional reforms.

He’s leading a coalition of seven parties.

The election’s  being monitored by dozens observers from the African Union, European Union and officials of the regional economic bloc, ECOWAS.

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He has used racist terms to belittle Africans and just last October he referred to Africa as that country.

Boris Johnson is visiting Gambia which made recent headlines when President Yayha Jammeh tried to cling to power have lost an election won by President Adama Barrow.

Johnson says he’s delighted to be the first British foreign secretary to visit Gambia since its independence 51 years ago.

He’ll tell President Barrow, a former supermarket security guard in Britain, that  Gambia will soon be able to rejoin the Commonwealth.

From Gambia, Johnson will move to Ghana for talks with President Nana Akufo Addo.

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Barrow’s aides say he’ll would arrive in Banjul today from neighbouring Senegal, where he was sworn in at an impromptu ceremony at the Gambian embassy a week ago.

Gambia’s new president Adama Barrow, a property developer who lacks political experience, has to allay fears that his administration has got off to a shaky start amid concerns that his delayed return was causing a power vacuum.

There has been criticism over his vice-presidential nominee, and he has yet to appoint a cabinet.

Barrow’s nomination of Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang as his deputy prompted criticism.

She  is allegedly two years over the constitutional age limit of 65.

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The bloodless and belated departure of Yayha Jammeh after he lost an election in Gambia is an undoubted African success story.

Even the light-fingered denouement – with Jammeh taking $11 million from the state coffers into exile with him – has not taken the icing off the cake.

That decorative delicacy was provided by the intervention of neighbours of this thin silver of a country that has just experienced its first democratic change of government.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) made it immediately clear to Jammeh that it would not tolerate his staying in power when he contested the fairness of the December 1 election he lost, by his own admission, to Adama Barrow.

It made a number of unsuccessful demarches on Jammeh, urging him to step down before the victor’s scheduled inauguration date of January 19.

Jammeh declined offers of asylum in Senegal, Morocco, Mauritania and Guinea.

He hoped to wait around for the supreme court to consider his arguments about the unfairness of the election.

The court reminded him that he sacked half the judges last year and said they would be able to consider the matter before May.

ECOWAS decided to play hard ball. The grouping sought approval by the United Nations Security Council to use force, if necessary, to move Jammeh.

Senegal, which surrounds Gambia on three sides, and Ghana, moved troops to the border to show the region’s seriousness.

If Jammeh  had any doubt of this, the ECOWAS forces crossed the frontier and deployed in the capital Banjul.

They gave Jammeh a deadline of noon last Friday to either go or be forcibly removed.

The defeated president successfully requested an extension of this deadline while he spoke to Presidents Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz of Mauritania and Alpha Conde of Guinea.

He’s been abandoned by key members of his cabinet and finally by his military commander.

The game was up for this man who took power in a bloodless coup 22 years ago.

Eventually Jammeh loaded a string of luxury cars onto a Chadian cargo plane.

Then, seen off by a small group of hardliner, he boarded a plane with President Conde and headed for Guinea.

Gambian, who could not believe their good fortune had been demonstrating their delight at Jammeh’s imminent departure for day.

They cheered ECOWAS troops patrolling the capital.

Barrow, who was inaugurated at the Gambian embassy in Senegal, says he will go home within the next week once his security can be assured.

He has his work cut out tracing the $11 million that Jammeh looted from the public purse.

He also has to get back the tourists who are vital to Gambia’s economy.

Alone with more than 46 000 Gambians, the tourists quit  the country when military action to move Jammeh looked likely.

So, chalk one up to ECOWAS’s unlinking determination to see that democracy triumphed.

Consider too the benefits of other African regional groups showing the same courage and application against the hard-to-move leaders who have cynically disregarded their constitutional limitations on power.

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