Gambian President Tells Critics to Go to Hell After “Winning” Another Term

The Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh has told the BBC that he will rule for "one billion years", if God wills.

He said critics who accused him of winning last month's elections through intimidation and fraud could "go to hell".

The West African regional body ECOWAS said the electorate had been "cowed by repression".

Mr. Jammeh, who took power in a coup in 1994, was re-elected with 72% of the figures, official figures show.

The 46 year old President said he did not fear a fate similar to Egypt's ousted President Hosni Mubarak or killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

"My fate is in the hands of almighty Allah," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa program.

"I will deliver to the Gambian people and if I have to rule this country for one billion years, I will, if Allah says so."

The November poll was the fourth since Mr. Jammeh overthrew The Gambia's first post-independence leader Dawda Jawara aged just 29.

Opposition candidates Ousainou Darboe and Hamat Bah took 17% and 11% respectively.

Mr. Darboe called the results "bogus, fraudulent and preposterous".

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) refused to send observers, saying the polls would not be free and fair because voters and the opposition had been "cowed by repression and intimidation".

The media group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says there is "absolute intolerance of any form of criticism" in The Gambia, with death threats, surveillance and arbitrary night-time arrests the daily lot of journalists "who do not sing the government's praises".

In 2004, the editor of the privately owned The Point newspaper, Deyda Hydara, was gunned down, but no-one has been charged over his murder.

In the BBC interview, Mr. Jammeh denied that the government's security agents had killed him.

"Listen to me: Is he the only Gambian who died? Is he better than Gambians who die in accidents, Gambians who die at sea, Gambians who die on their way to Europe?" Mr. Jammeh asked.

"Other people have also died in this country. So why is Deyda Hydara so special?"

Mr. Jammeh said he was not bothered by the criticism of human rights groups.

"I will not bow down before anybody, except the almighty Allah and if they don't like that they can go to hell," he said.

In 2007, Mr. Jammeh caused controversy by claiming that he could cure Aids with a herbal concoction.

Later, he also claimed that he could cure infertility among women.

Medical groups denounced him for making such claims.

Kabila Romps to a Controversial Win In DRC

The Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila has rejected claims that he won elections through widespread rigging.

The Carter Center observer group said the results "lack credibility"; while the Catholic archbishop of Kinshasa said they did not reflect "the truth". Mr. Kabila denied this but admitted that "mistakes" had been made.

Opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi claimed victory for himself. Several people were killed in weekend protests.

After days of delays, Friday's official results which gave Mr. Kabila 49% of the vote against 32% for the 78-year-old Mr. Tshisekedi.

At a news conference in the capital, Kinshasa, Mr. Kabila, 40, denied that the results lacked legitimacy. "The credibility of these elections cannot be put in doubt," he said.

"Were there mistakes? Definitely, but [the US-based Carter Center] has definitely gone far beyond what was expected."

He pointed to his own disappointing scores in the eastern provinces as proof that the election process had been transparent and said these elections were "far better" than those in 2006, when he was first elected.

Mr. Kabila said he was not surprised by Mr. Tshisekedi's declaration of himself as president, but he would press ahead with the task of governing DR Congo and was confident that the economy would achieve double-digit growth in the next two or three years.

"We don't have a crisis in this country... We're going to stay calm and continue with the day-to-day activities of the state," he said.

The people of this country don't want another turmoil, another conflict, another crisis. That's the last thing we need in the Congo."

The opposition has announced plans to hold protest marches after rejecting Mr. Kabila's victory. "We insist that the protests will be non-violent. The population knows this may be a long, long walk but they are ready for it," opposition spokesman Albert Moleka told Reuters news agency.

Four other opposition candidates have said the election was rigged and should be annulled.

DR Congo, a country two-thirds the size of Western Europe but with hardly any tarred roads or other basic infrastructure, is trying to recover from the 1998-2003 war which claimed an estimated four million lives.

International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo warned that renewed conflict would be a ticket to The Hague, not power.

Mr. Kabila's victory in the last election in 2006 led to street battles between government security forces and militias allied to losing candidate, Jean-Pierre Bemba.

Mr. Bemba is now on trial at the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in neighboring Central African Republic.

In a statement, the Carter Center, which had 26 teams of observers monitoring the elections, pointed to differences in the vote count between areas where Mr. Kabila had strong support and areas that favored Mr. Tshisekedi.

Some constituencies in Katanga province "reported impossibly high rates of 99 to 100% voter turnout with all, or nearly all, votes going to incumbent President Joseph Kabila", the Center said.

Meanwhile in Kinshasa, where Mr. Tshisekedi has strong support, results from nearly 2,000 polling station stations were lost - roughly a fifth of the city's total.

The Center said the violations it had documented do not mean "the final order of candidates is necessarily different" from official results.

The Catholic archbishop of Kinshasa, Laurent Monsengwo, said the results "comply with neither the truth nor justice".

The BBC's Thomas Hubert in Kinshasa says the Roman Catholic Church was one of the main election observer groups, with some 30,000 monitors around the country.

Archbishop Monsengwo said the results should be challenged in the Supreme Court "[The court] is called by all Congolese people to say what is really right."

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

The Gambian Political Puzzle Called Yahya Jammeh

As I followed the election news coming out of The Gambia, my mind invariably went down memory lane.

It came as no surprise that President Yahya Jammeh was declared winner with 72% of the vote, giving him a fourth five-year term.

Seventeen years ago when Mr. Jammeh - then aged 29 - staged a coup that overthrew The Gambia's first President Sir Dawda Jawara, I went to report from the country and I met the fresh-faced young man who sounded like all the other young military men in Africa at the time.

Seventeen years ago he hadn't yet acquired all the titles that are now obligatory adjuncts to his name but he already certainly had illusions of grandeur”

Mr. Jammeh's inspiration and role-models were Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Valentine Strasser of Sierra Leone and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

I had a memorable interview with him then and again in 1996 when he was under intense diplomatic pressure to return the country to constitutional rule.

I remember he tried to sound confident and even authoritative but every once in a while his nerves failed him.

And when BBC Focus on Africa's Umaru Fofana asked him if he would accept defeat if he lost, Mr. Jammeh asked if he looked like a loser, to applause from the crowd around him.

Back in 1996, a few of the friends that he started out with had already fallen out with him and I took a deep breath when someone in the capital, Banjul, told me I should be careful and not think that I was protected by my BBC badge.

A quote from my old notebook reads: "If he thinks you are threatening his position, you will disappear."

I don't remember what I made of that warning but I recall being more amused than frightened by Mr. Jammeh's antics.

Fast forward to the year 2005, when a group of 44 hapless Ghanaians and nine other West Africans were to experience what happens when the president of The Gambia is perceived to be under threat.

The security forces arrested and killed them, suspecting they were mercenaries when they were, in fact, migrants trying to make their way to Europe.

Mr. Jammeh eventually paid $500,000 to Ghana in compensation for those murders.

Seventeen years ago he hadn't yet acquired all the titles that are now obligatory adjuncts to his name but he already certainly had illusions of grandeur.

You had to be blind not to see that he would be better for The Gambia than Mr. Jawara was, Mr. Jammeh told me.

His belief that The Gambia has achieved more during his 17 years in office then during 400 years of British rule must have occurred to him later.

When I heard Umaru's interview with him, he came across as unabashed, unapologetic and indeed quite proud to say that The Gambia was "hell for journalists" - even in those early days journalists were not his favorite people and some learnt the hard way not to upset the young leader.

The bit I couldn't have predicted was Jammeh the healer. Not only did he announce in 2007 that he had discovered an herbal cure for HIV/Aids, he now has a cure for infertility as well.

The government's official website carries reports of barren women being kept in villages for the president's wonder cure.

Aged 46 and with no apparent likelihood of Gambians being tempted to lose their marbles at polling booths, the chances are His Excellency Sheikh, Professor, Alhaji, Doctor Yahya AJJ Jammeh will be around for a long time as President and Commander in Chief of the Republic of The Gambia.

The Arab Spring might find it difficult to cross the Sahara desert.

In West Africa, our weather pattern does not include spring - we have only dry and rainy seasons.

I only wish I had the opportunity to interview him again. I suspect he won't talk to me now.

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