With The Gambia’s simple majority electoral system, unseating an incumbent is a monumental task. In clear violation of the law, incumbents had and still utilize state resources to boost their chances against opponents. It has been the key instrument in Jammeh’s arsenal and worse under current president Adama Barrow. But in a country where the rule of law means nothing, the Independent Electoral Commission is impotent in addressing that and so it goes on as if it is a normal thing we have to accept.
Recognizing that reality, in 2016, a formula to boost chances against the incumbent was used, and it worked. Coalition 2016 was a success because it unified the opposition and succeeded in pooling all the votes cast against then incumbent Jammeh into one lot, save for a few thousand votes claimed by the opposition Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC) when that newly formed party decided to not join the opposition unity camp.
Coalition 2016 effectively claimed the votes of both the loyal opposition, the independent voters, as well as protest votes ultimately defeating Jammeh.
Now that the economic, legal and political climate are reminiscent of those dark, desperate days of Jammeh, Gambians are growing increasingly frustrated with the failures of the Barrow administration and its widespread failures across all sectors through sheer incompetence, corruption, and state capture. The calls are getting louder and more urgent for another opposition unity as we draw closer to the next presidential elections expected to be in December 2026.
The main question now is centered around the modalities on how to build such a unified front that caters to the views of all sides with mechanisms in place to avoid the pitfalls that derailed Coalition 2016 especially, and similar attempts in the past.
Before the more successful coalition of 2016, which saw all opposition parties in one camp with the exception of one, there was a similar attempt in 2005 when the National Alliance for Democracy and Development (NADD) was formed ahead of the 2006 presidential elections.
By the time of the presidential elections of October 2006, the alliance, which comprised five parties initially, broke up when the main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) withdrew from the alliance along with the National Reconciliation Party (NRP). The People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS), the National Democratic Action Movement (NDAM), and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) remained in the alliance. With the fractured opposition, Jammeh sailed to the presidency yet again.
In 2011, a unified approach to a coalition could not be formulated with some of the distrust from the failures of 2006 still lingering. Again, Gambians went to the polls with a divided opposition. Although there was some sort of aligned efforts with a UDP led camp on one side and the United Front led by Hamat Bah on the other.
Opposition alliances are unquestionably marriages of convenience borne out of necessity. Political parties with different agendas and views on how to develop the country can only put their policy differences aside temporarily, sooner or later, those differences in approach emerge and lead to a souring of relationships. This is true in all political environments, not just The Gambia.
It is clear that the 2016 formula worked in so far as unseating the incumbent, as was the goal. But soon after defeating Jammeh, the differences emerged in the proposed approach to contesting the National Assembly elections leading to the eventual disintegration of the coalition.
Clearly, there are deep seated issues that need to be resolved and only those intimately familiar with what happened behind closed doors can address those issues through sincere dialog.
Some argue that the problem lies with the UDP camp, which is fair. When there is plenty of blame to go around, everyone gets a share of the blame. No question on the fact that the UDP has always favored a party-led alliance, which proposes that the party that has consistently pulled the highest percentage of votes after the incumbent (UDP in the Gambian case) gets the backing of the smaller parties (figuratively speaking) to bolster its chances. The party cites numerous examples from the subregion and around the world as evidence of a workable formula.
In fact, in absolute majority democracies, if no one secures more than fifty percent of the votes cast, the runoff is held between two candidates or parties. The candidate that came closest to securing the 50+1 percentage and the runner-up candidate go head to head and the rest are effectively eliminated. In such scenarios, the remaining parties back either of the two candidates leading to an eventual unity/coalition government that we see around the world today.
But regardless of their favored approach, the party had always been a willing participant in talks and had compromised its stance to go along with other proposals. Various representatives of the party have stated that they will participate in any future talks aimed at unifying opposition efforts. So, the will is there for another attempt at that.
Some in the UDP also argue that its proposed approach to forming a coalition has never been tried and that it had always had to cede ground to parties whose collective electoral pull have been historically lower than theirs, consistently.
In that obvious stalemate, it will be helpful if the pundits and analysts could look at all proposed approaches, as well as past experiments, and evaluate each on the strength of their arguments. Just like we did not give up on trying to unify our efforts in 2011 and 2016 after NADD failed in 2006, we should not let the failures of 2016 deter us from dusting up and trying again.
Should the proposed UDP party-led approach be adopted, what should that look like?
Beyond the urgent need to redirect the ship of state away from the rocks its headed towards, the underlying principles in building coalitions should be purely agenda driven.
What issues do the various parties care about and want to give priority to? Instead of which party gets what portfolio in the eventual defeat of the incumbent.
Each party can bring a priority list to the table, which, if accepted in whole or in part, would earn their backing.
For example, stating that one’s backing of a candidate/party would be contingent on promising the following:
- Re-introducing the 2020 draft constitution as is, to the National Assembly for amendments.
- Implementing the recommendations of the TRRC fairly, without prejudice
- Implementing the recommendations of the Janneh Commission
- Implement an across the board Security Sector Reform as recommended
- Robust civil service reform
- Constituting an impartial commission of enquiry to probe the outgoing administration and a promise to implement the recommendations fully without prejudice.
- Reviewing the activities of the lands commission and addressing all land dispute issues etc.
This is something that any party can get on board with or submit their own agenda items of where their party’s priorities lie, constituency boundary reform, local governance reform, remuneration for public servants, etc. are all policy issues to address.
When a party is backed by other parties based on their promise around a specific agenda, that party gets to own the failure of that policy not being implemented as promised. When Barrow failed in his policies, he excused those failures as being a Coalition agenda and not an NPP/APRC agenda, basically dodging responsibility.
One of the pitfalls of the Coalition in 2016 was that the new president was sworn in on the 1997 constitution which made him an executive president, a fact that constrained the much anticipated “Think Tank” idea of shared input on policy implementation. The same will be true for any democratic transition from one administration to another. That needs to be factored into any promises being made to avoid the issues of 2016.
Every registered party has a platform and an agenda that they would want to stick to, but having some self-assessment and evaluating what one’s realistic chances are based on historical figures, current trends, and realities, and then determining if one’s party is well positioned to win the presidency on its strength and messaging alone is a requirement before going into any alliance talks and then be prepared to cede some space to the other parties being reached out to.
Failure offers an opportunity to learn and to do better the next time around.
Mankajang 