Gambian President Yahya Jammeh throws big par-tee after win -- dancers painted green and everything

Dancers painted green celebrate on the beach in support of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh after results of presidential elections were announced September 23, 2006. Tens of thousands of people crammed onto Gambia's tiny island capital Banjul on Saturday as Jammeh threw a massive beach party to celebrate his re-election for a third term.

Gambia leader throws beach party after re-election

BANJUL - Tens of thousands of people crammed onto Gambia's tiny island capital Banjul on Saturday as President Yahya Jammeh threw a massive beach party to celebrate his re-election for a third term.

The authoritarian leader was declared the winner of Friday's poll with 67.33 percent of votes cast across the tiny West African nation.

[color="Red"] "My priority is to make this country the best in the world," Jammeh said as thousands of his supporters swarmed around his beachside state house, banging drums and screaming.

Soldiers danced in Banjul's ramshackle streets, chanting "President Jammeh, the government is yours", as tractors, trucks, police cars and taxis ferried thousands more people towards the beach.

Fireworks crackled overhead as young Jammeh supporters, soaked in sweat, elbowed their way through the crowd carrying women who had fainted in the crush.

Jammeh, a 41-year-old former wrestler and coup leader, had been widely expected to win the election in continental Africa's smallest country after dominating campaigning and after a rift among his challengers split the opposition vote.

Human rights lawyer Oussainou Darboe came in a distant second with 26.69 percent but well ahead of the third-placed candidate, sociologist Halifa Sallah, with 5.98 percent.

Jammeh's thundering charisma dominates political life in Gambia, a crooked finger of land surrounded by French-speaking Senegal and stretching 350 km (220 miles) in from the Atlantic.

Many Gambians privately disapprove of the iron-fisted nature of his rule, which has seen political opponents and journalists imprisoned without charge, but say he has done much to improve schools, hospitals and roads.

Election observers said polling day had gone smoothly, praising Gambia's unique system in which voters drop marbles into metal drums for their chosen candidate, ringing a bell to stop anyone voting twice.

But they also said the campaign had been skewed, with Jammeh using a "meet the people" tour to canvass more widely than the opposition and enlisting overt support from state officials.

"The timing of the presidential 'dialogue with the people' tour and the open demonstration of support by public officials ... especially in the security services, have the potential of affecting the level of the playing field," said Salim Ahmed Salim, chairman of the Commonwealth observer group.

Darboe and Sallah have also complained Jammeh controlled media coverage and used state resources during his campaign.

Policemen wore party colours over their uniforms during his rallies while government vehicles, their number plates removed to avoid being identified, were used in the campaign.

Jammeh seized power in 1994 as a young army lieutenant in the former British protectorate and won two elections, the first in 1996 dismissed as unfair by Commonwealth observers, and the second in 2001 with 53 percent.

"He will take a bigger majority as an opportunity to intensify what is already a very authoritarian rule," said one foreign diplomat in Banjul.

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