Demba Ali Jawo, Former Minister Of Information and Dr. Ismaila Ceesay Minister of Information
By D. A. Jawo
We recently heard the Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Media Services, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay acknowledge on ‘Coffee Time with Peter Gomez’ that about 90 percent of elections recently held throughout the world were won by the opposition, giving examples of recent elections in countries like the United States and United Kingdom, and of course we cannot forget the dramatic regime change that took place in neighbouring Senegal.
While Dr. Ceesay said that the government of President Adama Barrow was not scared of suffering such a fate because they had lived up to the expectations of the Gambian people, but recent indications, including the latest Afrobarometer survey, which said that about 77 percent of Gambians are not happy with the performance of the Barrow administration, certainly do not seem to corroborate such optimism.
We can also recall the performance of the ruling National People’s Party (NPP) in both the last legislative and local government elections in which they were outperformed by the opposition. We saw that in the National Assembly elections, throughout the West Coast Region and the Greater Banjul Area, for instance, where more than 70 percent of the Gambian population resides, the NPP and its allies, the APRC won only three seats, out of the 22 constituencies in the area. Out of the total national voter turn-out of almost 500,000, the NPP and its allies scored less than 170, 000 votes while the combined opposition, including the Independent candidates, scored over 300,000 votes.
I am sure the indomitable Dr. Ceesay is aware that under the first-past-the-post system of the 1997 Constitution, the candidate who gets just one vote ahead of his/her next opponent, wins the election. It is quite apparent that we are stuck with the Yahya Jammeh Constitution for the foreseeable future because it is hard to see how the Dawda Jallow Draft, which gives so much power to the president, would pass the second reading in the National Assembly. Obviously, if President Barrow’s sympathizers in the fifth legislature had the audacity to throw away the 2020 Draft, which was the outcome of an extensive national and diaspora consultation, then it is not hard to imagine that a similar fate would also await the 2024 Draft, which mostly caters to the views and aspirations of the Barrow administration rather than those of the general public.
Therefore, with all that perception of rampant corruption within virtually all sectors of the public service, and the apparent failure of the government to take any visible steps to curb the situation, including not mustering the courage to set up the long-awaited anti-corruption commission, it would be hard to see how the Barrow administration can escape being sanctioned by the electorate in 2026.
Obviously, the failure of the government to increase the producer price for groundnuts this farming season, as well as such situations like the complaints from the farmers of being compelled to download the QMoney app before they would receive payments for their produce when the vast majority of them do not even have smart phones, are not definitely going to endear them to the NPP.
Therefore, the best advice anyone could give to President Barrow is not to risk running for a third term because all indications are that the odds are heavily stacked up against him. He should understand that a majority of those advising him to run again are only interested in continuing being paid from the public coffers, some of them for doing virtually nothing. This is because him remaining in power is the best guarantee that they would continue to maintain their flamboyant lifestyles at the expense of the Gambian tax payers.