Leader, Ousainou Darboe, has strongly criticised President Barrow’s state of the nation address, which he dubbed a “sermon on coronavirus”.

Mr Darboe’s said the president speech was light on substance and was a rehash of his previous speeches. 

“It appears to be more of a speech or deliberations on the COVID-19. I think that is all. The whole speech is about that. It’s a sermon on coronavirus.

“The speech is not different from the previous ones and I’m sure when you look at the last budget, you see that it’s not very different from it and I’m sure in December when the minister presents his budget, it’s not going to be very different from this.”

On elections 

The Opposition Leader said the President has no choice on the date of the 2021 elections. President Barrow in his address on Thursday has pledged to honour next year’s election timetable despite the coronavirus pandemic. 

Mr Darboe said: “We do not expect him to say anything other than that. After all in 1982, elections were held in this country under a state of public emergency, although the state of emergency may be different but there was a state of public emergency which had affected freedom of assembly and so forth. We didn’t expect anything different.”