BB Darboe defends decision to serve junta accused of rights abuses

Ahead of the People’s Progressive Party(PPP) Congress this weekend, a former Vice President who is making a bid for party leadership, Bakary Bunja Darboe, has denied any awareness or condonation of human rights abuses during the time he served the then AFPRC junta. While speaking to the press in his bid for the soul of the parry that governed The Gambia from independence in 1965 until it was removed in a military coup in 1994, he was taken to task on how he could have moral clarity serving a government that came to power by force of arms and perpetrated abuse of human rights ,including those his former cabinet colleagues. In retort, Bakary Bunja Darboe postulated that he “served for only 70 days and during that time I was aware of only one or two instances where people from the former government were arrested”. Darboe added that he made efforts on behalf of those people not just “out of sympathy, but out of a belief in the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I only served for 70 days after which I resigned and left the country”.