{"id":92446,"date":"2025-12-21T16:32:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T16:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/uncategorized\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders"},"modified":"2025-12-21T17:30:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T17:30:34","slug":"presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders","title":{"rendered":"Presidential Hopeful Criticizes Mayors and Council Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. <\/strong><\/span><b>Amadou Jaiteh, a former diplomat and a lawyer, and leader of the Peoples Reformist Organisation for Growth, Renewal, Equity, Security, and Social Justice (PROGRESS), has sharply criticized local government leaders, describing mayors and council chairmen as extensions of political parties rather than true representatives of their communities.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>In an interview with West Coast Radio on Thursday, Jaiteh said many local officials prioritize party loyalty over the needs of the people they are meant to serve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRemove mayors, remove chairmen, remove governors\u2014these are all political tools; they have no use. All they do is represent their political parties; they collect revenue, and part of the revenue goes into funding their political parties anyway,\u201d Jaiteh said.<\/p>\n<p>He argued that this system undermines local accountability and suggested that revenue collection would be more efficient if centralized under the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA). According to Jaiteh, the GRA could conduct a thorough audit of commercial, residential, and rental properties, ensuring proper taxation and potentially doubling the revenue currently collected by the Brikama Area Council.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cImagine the GRA comes in, the GRA is able to do a complete overhaul of the situation, and they get the right data for all commercial businesses, all residential homes, and all rental homes, and they put the right taxes there. We can double what the Brikama Area Council is collecting currently, or even more than that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Jaiteh emphasized that the majority of the revenue should be returned directly to communities to fund development initiatives. \u201cThat 90%, if it is 500 million annually, that\u2019s 400 million right there for the Brikama Area Council. Now the area council and the community members can set up a system that they want that can be representative of the people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He also called for an end to the veneration of local officials, stating, \u201cNo more creating demigods in mayors and chairmen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jaiteh\u2019s comments reflect ongoing debates in The Gambia about local governance, accountability, and the role of political parties in municipal administration.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Gambia<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Gambia. Amadou Jaiteh, a former diplomat and a lawyer, and leader of the Peoples Reformist Organisation for Growth, Renewal, Equity, Security, and Social Justice (PROGRESS), has sharply criticized local government leaders, describing mayors and council chairmen as extensions of political parties rather than true representatives of their communities. In an interview with West [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":92445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,12],"tags":[260],"class_list":["post-92446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-head-lines","category-policy","tag-gambia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Presidential Hopeful Criticizes Mayors and Council Leaders - Gambia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amadou Jaiteh, a former diplomat and a lawyer, and leader of the Peoples Reformist Organisation for Growth, Renewal, ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Presidential Hopeful Criticizes Mayors and Council Leaders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Amadou Jaiteh, a former diplomat and a lawyer, and leader of the Peoples Reformist Organisation for Growth, Renewal, ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gambia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-12-21T16:32:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-21T17:30:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/gambia\/sites\/19\/2025\/12\/sm_1766325369.391287.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Presidential Hopeful Criticizes Mayors and Council Leaders\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-12-21T16:32:33+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-21T17:30:34+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders\"},\"wordCount\":351,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/gambia\/sites\/19\/2025\/12\/sm_1766325369.391287.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Gambia\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"head lines\",\"policy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/presidential-hopeful-criticizes-mayors-and-council-leaders\",\"name\":\"Presidential Hopeful Criticizes Mayors and Council Leaders - 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