Sierra Leone Telegraph: 2 December 2016
I was in The Gambia in March this year for a week, visiting my maternal ancestral homeland. The capital Banjul was bustling with human activity. But there was an eerie and uneasy calm, as political tension and media repression stifled free speech and civil liberty.
Yayah Jammeh’s twenty-two years of authoritarian rule have choked the spirit of Gambians, especially young people whose aspirations of a better and prosperous Gambia have been frustratingly dashed.
After twenty-two years in power, The Gambia has become a despotic state with family members and business associates of president Jammeh benefiting from lucrative contracts as well as running most of the country’s big businesses.
There are rumours that Jammeh has mortgaged the country’s tourism and groundnut driven economy to the Moroccans. Most imported household and consumer goods come from Morocco.
Tourism – the country’s main foreign exchange earner – especially from Europe, has in the past two years declined substantially, because of increasing political repression.
Gambia’s youth unemployment is one of the highest in the sub-region. Political repression has stifled the entrepreneurial zest of young Gambians. Thousands of educated unemployed young men and women could be seen sitting idly on the beaches – some selling handmade crafts to tourists to put food on the table.
Life under Jammeh has been very tough for Gambians, but yet the people have kept their dignity, and waited patiently for yesterday’s presidential polls to cast their votes.
Now the people have spoken. They have rejected twenty-two years of dictatorship, economic mismanagement and rampant corruption. This is how the BBC reports Jammeh’s shocking defeat:
Yahya Jammeh, The Gambia’s authoritarian president of 22 years, has suffered a surprise defeat in presidential elections.
He will be replaced by a property developer, Adama Barrow, who won more than 45% of the vote.
Mr Jammeh, who came to power in a coup in 1994, has not yet spoken since the results were announced.
Electoral commission chief Alieu Momar Njie Njie has appealed for calm as the country entered uncharted waters.
The West African state has not had a smooth transfer of power since independence from Britain in 1965.
Mr Barrow won 263,515 votes (45.5%) in Thursday’s election, while President Jammeh took 212,099 (36.7%), according to the electoral commission. A third party candidate, Mama Kandeh, won 102,969 (17.8%).
“There will be celebrations, there will be disappointment, but we all know we are all Gambia,” Mr Njie said, after announcing the results on Friday.
Who is Adama Barrow?
Born in 1965 in a small village near the eastern market town of Basse, Mr Barrow moved to London in the 2000s where he reportedly used to work as a security guard at an Argos catalogue store, while studying for real estate qualifications.
He returned to The Gambia in 2006 to set up his own property company, which he still runs today.
The 51-year-old won the presidential nomination in 2016 to lead an opposition coalition of seven parties – the largest alliance of its kind since independence, according to the AFP news agency.
On the electoral campaign, Mr Barrow – who has never held public office – promised to revive the country’s economy, which has forced thousands of Gambians to make the perilous journey to Europe.
He has criticised the lack of a two-term limit on the presidency and says he would introduce a three-year transitional government made up from members of the opposition coalition.
Why is it such a shock? By Alastair Leithead, BBC Africa correspondent
President Jammeh’s defeat comes as a huge surprise. Despite a surge of support for an opposition broadly united behind one candidate, most people expected the status quo to prevail.
Hopes weren’t high for a peaceful transfer of power, with a crackdown on opposition leaders months before the polls, the banning of international observers or post-election demonstrations, and then the switching off of the internet.
But in a place where glass beads are used in place of ballot papers, it seems that the marbles have spoken.
The unseating of an incumbent president is not the usual way politics goes in this part of the world – but it’s becoming popular in West Africa at least, with Muhammadu Buhari unseating Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria just last year.
Former businessman Adama Barrow now has his chance to tackle the poverty and unemployment which drives so many young Gambians to join the Mediterranean migrant trail every year.
How has the current president reacted?
The president has yet to give a public statement on the result.
But Yahya Jammeh, a devout Muslim, once said he would rule for “one billion years” if “Allah willed it”.
Earlier this week, the 51-year-old said that his “presidency and power are in the hands of Allah and only Allah can take it from me”.
After announcing the results, Mr Njie said President Jammeh would call Mr Barrow to concede – though there has been no indication that this has happened.
“It’s really unique that someone who has been ruling this country for so long has accepted defeat,” he told reporters.
Mr Jammeh seized power in a bloodless coup 22 years ago and has ruled the country with an iron fist ever since.
Human rights groups have accused Mr Jammeh, who has in the past claimed he can cure Aids and infertility, of repression and abuses of the media, the opposition and gay people.
In 2014, he called homosexuals “vermin” and said the government would deal with them as it would malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Several previous opposition leaders were imprisoned after taking part in a rare protest in April.
Mr Barrow has previously described him a “soulless dictator” and promised to undo some of Mr Jammeh’s more controversial moves, including reversing decisions to remove The Gambia from the Commonwealth and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Was the election fair?
Celebrations erupted in the capital, Banjul, with Gambians shouting: “We are free. We won’t be slaves of anyone.”
During the campaign, the country’s mostly young population seemed to be yearning for change, said the BBC’s Umaru Fofana in the capital, Banjul.
On voting day the internet and international phone calls were banned across the country.
Observers from the European Union (EU) and the West African regional bloc Ecowas did not attend the vote.
Gambian officials opposed the presence of Western observers, but the EU said before the vote it was staying away out of concern about the fairness of the voting process.
The African Union did dispatch a handful of observers to supervise the vote, however.
As I write the BBC reports that Yayah Jammeh has acknowledged defeat and is ready for a smooth transition of power. If he upholds his word, a dignified exit awaits him, which will make Gambians and the entire continent extremely proud of him. This should go for even those who detest him politically – and there are many of them.
The lesson which has always been there, but which most African leaders fail to understand is that they will overstay their welcome sooner rather than later, if they don’t comport themselves properly – vis-a-vis – their people.
They make things worse when they become autocratic, vindictive and quick to execute political opponents, or throw them in jail for an indefinite period. Yayah Jammeh fell victim to all these tendencies, which is why he has become unemployed with an uncertain future.
There are those within the ranks of the opposition who would love to see his head on a plate forthwith, but I hope the incoming president will resist them in the name of stability for the country. Let us face it , as much as Yayah Jammeh has been defeated, results show that he did have his supporters who may not take kindly to him being humiliated despite the atrocities he committed while he held power.
Sierra Leone should stand as intense example of instability, evidenced by the large number of Sierra Leonean refugees who settled in Gambia during the civil war in that country.
It is precisely what has befallen President Jammeh that Siaka Stevens was afraid of, starting from about the mid seventies when he had the rude awakening that if he were to subject himself to any free and fair election he would be out on his ears. Intimidation and violence, therefore became the platform of sustaining himself in office while destroying everything endearing with which Sierra Leone was once identified.
The blow which his successor – Momoh – could not dodge in 1992 was actually in the making during the Stevens years. But he Siaka Stevens, managed to get out of the way in time for it to slam Momoh to the floor. The best Momoh could do was to run to the arms of Lansana Konte in neighbouring Guinea – shaken and without a job. The rest of his team went underground.
Yayah Jammeh is lucky, he is still in his country pondering his future. He may want to contact SLPP in Sierra Leone to learn how to mount a nebulous opposition in the political wilderness, where I hope APC will join them shortly as Sierra Leoneans perform the most remarkable voting somersault in their history, by voting in a third party. APC and SLPP are one and the same.
This is how APC and SLPP are going to concede DEFEAT in 2018 to a UNION of ALL the PARTIES not CURRENTLY in PARLIAMENT. No more TO-ME-TO-YOU.
When the UNION WINS, it will help to RECONFIGURE the APC and SLPP into the mode of HARMONISING ALL TRIBES AND REGIONS OF SIERRA LEONE in order to BECOME A REAL NATION.
Remember, we are the FIRST COUNTRY in AFRICA, where the opposition unseated the incumbent party. It happened to SLPP twice, and it is going to happen to APC.
It is also important to note that SLPP has never unseated an APC Government. So the responsibility of unseating APC is on the UNION OF INDEPENDENT PARTIES. MAY GOD BLESS SIERRA LEONE.