Embattled President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia has declared a 90-day state of emergency in the West African country, BBC reports.
This move, one of a series of desperate attempts to retain power, comes on Tuesday, January 17, 2017, about 24 hours to the end of Jammeh’s tenure as president.
The terms of the curfew and its implications have not been made known, but there are possibilities that it could affect the swearing in of Adama Barrow, winner of the December presidential election, TheCable reports.
On Monday, Jammeh leaked a phone conversation which he had with Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in which he pleaded with Sirleaf to convince West African leaders to allow judges from other West African nations step into the legal process in Gambia to listen to his petition against Barrow’s victory.
Sirleaf is the chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, which is leading the charge in mediation between Jammeh and the winner of the December election, Adama Barrow, the opposition candidate.
Barrow is currently in Dakar, the capital of neighbouring Senegal, but his supporters have said nothing would stop his inauguration, which is scheduled for Thursday.
Jammeh had accepted the result of the election which threw up Barrow, a former security operative, as the winner of the December 2016 poll. But, later recanted and annulled the election.
Leaders of the Economic Community of West African State, ECOWAS, have appealed to him to step down, but he refused, insisting that the supreme court must decide on his suit challenging the result.
Gambia’s Supreme Court has operated with only one justice for several years, making it impossible for it to form a quorum. Jammeh made a spirited attempt to appoint new justices to the Supreme Court in the past weeks. But the justices, who are not from Gambia, for various reasons, are yet to resume.
Earlier, the African Union (AU) had told Jammeh that it would cease to recognise him from Thursday. A conference of African leaders and the French president, held last week, also rose with the same resolution.
