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| Jammeh speaking to journalists: Pix - Statehouse |
The Gambian President, Yahya Jammeh
express dismay at the African Union’s failure to elect a new Commissioner of
the African Union Commission (AUC) to serve a four-year term of office.
Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) met at the 18th
Ordinary Session of the AU Summit at the new Conference Center of the Union in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from January 29-30, 2012, on the theme “Boosting
Intra-African Trade”.
African leaders failed to elect a Chairperson of the African Union
Commission (AUC) to replace the Gabon-born Jean Ping and a deputy chairperson
of the AU Commission alongside that of the eight Commissioners.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ping’s mandate has been extended until the next AU Summit.
The decision followed long debate as none of the candidates for the
chairmanship could obtain the 2/3 votes as stipulated in the AU constitution. A
law President Jammeh called “stupid” and “meant to embarrass Africans”
“We have this law which was created from outside because it
is only the African Union which has this law that says a candidate must have
two-thirds majority. This was put there deliberately to create the type of
embarrassing situations giving our detractors the justification to say we are
incapable of managing our affairs,” Jammeh told local media shortly after
disembarking from the airplane that has brought him from the summit.
He recalled a similar
situation occurred during an AU summit in Lusaka, Zambia in 2004, where they
had to vote 12 times before one of the candidates decided to withdraw from the
race.
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| AU Chairperson Jean Ping is seeking 2nd term |
“I told them in Zambia; it created tensions and we had to
spend almost about seven hours arguing about it; everybody went home very
angry. So just voting for the then secretary general of the AU as it was called
took so much time that we could not talk about countries that were in
conflict,” Jammeh said.
He explains that this time in Addis Ababa, they voted and by
the third round, the South African candidate withdrew because that is what the
statues say. “Then we had to bring ballot boxes again to vote for the one who
is leading, and he had 32 votes just four votes short of the majority, they say
the chairman should cancel the election and the incumbent chairperson would
step down and his deputy would take over. But according to the statues that
they want to respect, his term ends only in April and so why illegally
terminating his term because of an unintelligent election law,” Jammeh laments
According to him, there are two things that cannot be amended, the Holy
Qur’an and the Bible “because these are the words of God”.
For now, the AU resolved that an ad-hoc committee be set up as soon as
possible to look into the election matter ahead of the next AU summit scheduled
for June 2012 in Malawi. The ad-hoc committee is expected to meet in March
2012.
However, Jammeh reduce this decision to a “coffee-drinking” initiative.
Author: Modou S. Joof
Twitter (@Msjoof)
Hmmmmmmmm. same old story my boy. Thats how it is at the level of the AU.
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