The leader of Gambia Moral Congress, Mai Ahmed Fatty, has criticized the section of the electoral law that compels every political party to declare its assets to the Independent Electoral Commission.

Mr Fatty, who is also the president’s special adviser, was speaking during a political dialogue organized by the Constitutional Review Commission on Saturday.

He described the law as “extremely unjust” adding “we didn’t vote for it as we were against it and it shouldn’t happen again. IEC shouldn’t even try to implement that law.

“You can’t subject me to taxation without representation. You cannot subject me to give you my account and you’re not giving me anything. Why should I tell you how I spend my money?”

Mai Fatty also described the political parties to declare assets as a “nonstarter” saying “we are not giving the money.”

Meanwhile, Fatty said a stipulated amount of money could be enshrined in the constitution, adding “there shouldn’t be any restriction on Gambians to contribute to political parties in any form.”

 “Every Gambian should be allowed to contribute in any form to a political party and avoid in every form non-Gambians from dominating our political space.”

 “If a Gambian who is…can contribute 100,000 dollars to a political party the Gambian has the right to do so. Unless if we want to put a threshold on political parties funding and we say every single contributor should not exceed this amount,” he said.

However, he added that a stringent law has to be enacted in the new constitution to penalize any political party found to be funded by non-Gambians.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba