President Barrow and his entourage are attending the 29th Summit of the African Union currently under way in the Ethiopian Capital Addis Ababa from July 3rd – 4th of July 2017. The President departed Banjul on Sunday July 2nd and is expected to arrive in Addis Ababa the same day.
This will be President Barrow’s first summit of the African Union since he won the elections and took over power in January 2017. The President will have an opportunity to meet with other African Union leaders for the first time who supported his election victory and the West African regional body ECOWAS who had an intervention force which threatened to force the former President from hanging on to power after he refused to peacefully hand off power.
This is the first time Gambia will be fully represented as a democratic nation without the massive cloud of gross human rights violations and political oppression. In the last decade or so Gambia was looked with a different set of eyes as its military dictator turned civilian president was out of sync with many of his colleagues especially in West Africa. Former President Jammeh had used the AU platform to lash out on African leaders who he saw as puppets to the West for embracing Democracy and freedom of expression. He was more comfortable with the AU body over the ECOWAS because several other African Union leaders were and are still dictators like him.
This would be a good opportunity for the Gambian President to thank African leaders and update them on the political situation and progress or lack thereof in the Gambia since he took over. It is refreshing to know that Gambia has now joined its ECOWAS counterparts to promote democracy, rule of law and freedom of the press. Readers may recalled that ECOWAS leaders had floated the idea of embracing term Presidential term limits for all its members. Gambia and Togo were the two countries who refused to sign off to that idea and as a result the idea was scrapped at the time. Gambia certainly is now in a position to take the lead in those areas giving the democratic reforms the new government is embracing. Gambia is also likely to now legitimately contest for the Chairmanship of not only ECOWAS but the AU as well. Such conferences will accord president Barrow another opportunity to build bilateral relationships with other African nations.
Story filed by Demba Baldeh