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by Alagi Yorro Jallow.
Fatoumatta: In the Gambia and elsewhere across Africa, elections are a threat, primarily to state capture fundamentalists, the self-styled elite choreographers of doing business with governments, and politicians who advance personal business interests with government ministries. These interests fuel solid competition for the presidency in the Gambia and beyond.
Of course, political processes always have outcomes, whether intended or unintended and presidential contests areas such. At issue are both the form and the substance of presidential transitions in the Gambia. The big question is how do we ensure that presidential contests are a matter of practical, verifiable, and demonstrable ideas, far from the tribal cards that are always at play?
Nasty political mud-slinging. Under the belt insults. Campaigns and personal attacks Offensive media tirades. A dismal, disgraceful, and disastrous performance from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) yet again. For anyone who followed the activity within the Gambian terrain last week, they would know that it describes the preelection violence rearing its ugly head.
Fatoumatta: Elections have a natural way of disrupting the status quo, especially when the people’s will is respected and sealed through new social contracts for governance. Democracy is sustained through regular, predictable, dependable, and transparent elections.
In political democracies, no doubt, each time a country goes to a general and presidential election, it does so not just to sustain its democracy but also to re-negotiate and reclaim its nationhood. Ideally, elections serve to advance the aspirations, goals, and values of the majoritarian collective.
In most elections, the institution of the presidency is at the center of electoral politics. The attendant power it wields makes it a hot contest between opponents at the end of each electoral cycle. The incumbent is either keen to retain the seat or pass it on to a preferred successor. However, at the same time, the opposition wants to ascend to power.
Writing on the performance of African political parties after the ‘Third Wave,’ Carrie Manning (2005) noted that since the early 1990s, many countries in Africa embraced multi-party democracy. However, few of the elections conducted during the period were successfully democratic. The incumbents returned to power after extensively manipulating the electoral process.
Across the African continent, there were only a few cases of successful competitive electoral democracies in countries such as Botswana, Senegal, and Mauritius, which had held competitive elections before the opening of democratic space in the early 1990s. However, the list also includes countries such as Benin, Malawi, and recently Zambia, which had successful transitions through elections.
Fatoumatta: Credible, free, and fair elections are fundamental and crucial for the success of any democratic society in any part of the world. Where the integrity of elections is undermined, there would invariably be a direct challenge to the stable and democratic society we in the Gambia have been trying to develop since 1965.
On December 4, 2021, the Gambia will hold its presidential elections. This presidential election would be decisive for Gambia’s political future. However, from what has transpired between the APRC faction merger with /GANU and the police firing tear gas and disrupting APRC/GANU press conference and the various political intrigues, sagas, and permutations overheating the polity before now, one cannot help but feel apprehensive about the conduct of the election, as we might have a preelection marred with violence, election fraud, and inconclusive results. Unfortunately, IEC is still far from conducting free, fair, and credible elections in the Gambia.
In a crisis-ridden way, IEC has just shown us what to expect come December 4, 2021; the many prevailing anxieties people are feeling are very likely to combust spontaneously. Gambians may no longer be ready to accept such infamy in a blind rush. Moreover, IEC and the ruling party must take note of this. Instead, the electoral commission must get its act together and negotiate between its past abysmal standards and the moment’s demands.
Moreover, the majority demand for the moment in the interest of justice would be to see election conduct of using justice, fair play, and the rule of law.
As the presidential election campaigns inadvertently overheat the polity, in a seemingly preelection day Gambians fashion, political violence is increasingly becoming the order of the day. In other places, stones and water were thrown into political opponents’ campaigns. Four of its members were hacked with machetes in the URR area. Recently, police disrupted the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) No To Alliance and Gambia Alliance for National Unity (GANU) press conference), tear gas was sprayed, and several others were arrested.
It was reported that the National People’s Party (NPP) campaign bus was stoned by angry youths in Amdalai village in the Western Region area. Online political bullying has equally permeated discourse on political issues, as “die hard” supporters of both political parties and presidential candidates are increasingly becoming repugnant and intolerant to one another. This preelection violence is coming against the backdrop of the presidential elections.
Whereas pluralism has engendered an environment of competitive elections in the Gambia and other democratic ornaments such as tenure limitation, the electoral culture has remained the same, a few successful regime changes notwithstanding. Behind the veneer of constitutional democracy, ideology is the binary between ethnic fundamentalism and elite capture of the Gambia’s political space. Ethnicity has been weaponized for subjugation and emotional control. This instrumentation of ethnicity in Gambian politics has consistently paid enormous dividends to the few elite, who use it purely for personal gain. That is precisely where the problem starts, with infinite consequences.
Fatoumatta: Since the reintroduction of substantive and procedural democracy in 2017, ethnic politics and political violence have repeatedly reared their ugly head around before election time. Even in recently unofficial political campaigns periods considered mild and preelection violence, the threat of politically instigated ethnic violence remained real. This has continued to make presidential transitions in the Gambia, a game of political survival where opponents are defeated and not ideological perpetuation or propagation of ideal nationhood. As a result, many political bigwigs who never succeeded in earth-shaking presidential elections were relegated to political oblivion.
In almost five elections now, elections in the Gambia have often been the metonymy of violence and insecurity. While many general and presidential elections have been conducted in the post-independence Gambia, some specific electioneering events and elections stand out. They are crucial in analyzing election preparedness and presidential transitions across the election cycles.
In its organic form, political violence is an anecdotal illustration of intolerance, intimidation, and barbarism, through which insecurity instills fear among the electorate so as not to register as voters or not to turn out to vote as such political violence is always pre-meditated, targeted and financed. However, the aftermath of the 2016 post-election violence or what has been described as a political impasse sharply focused on the Gambia’s electoral and presidential transition dynamics.
There is a need to undertake thorough planning for general and presidential elections and monitor all forms of early warning systems for violence and incitements regarding election-based violence. This should include assessing the capacity needs of the police, establishing coordination mechanisms at different levels among all relevant governmental and non-governmental actors. Additionally, presidential elections, including election security and public order management, have to be given particular scrutiny.
Fatoumatta: The Gambia’s nation-state has been a constitutional democracy since 1965 until the brief military took over in July 1994, and the military donned in civilian clothes. Furthermore, just like in other African countries, the institution of the presidency has been at the center of politics. The politics of presidential transitions can easily be seen through the duopoly of manipulation and political guardianship shaped by self-preservation, ethnicity, protectionism, favoritism, safeguarding primitive accumulation of wealth, and ring-fencing the political elite club that the presidency seems to be. Arguably the immediate post-independence predecessor regimes’ key concern was securing the interests of the emerging political class through capital accumulation.
It is infamy that in The Gambia, after 56 years of independence and uninterrupted democratic dispensation until the abrupt intervention of the military in 1994, we still cannot conduct free, fair, and credible elections. Virtually every election results in the Gambia are always fiercely and vehemently disputed with some considerable amount of justification. While elections have been successfully held in other African countries such as Ghana, devoid of violence and massive election fraud, the Gambia’s election has habitually been fraught with irregularities.
Fatoumatta: In 2016, the IEC could not count a final tally of votes, precipitating a political impasse without conducting a credible and acceptable election. However, astoundingly, even though there were clear evidence, accounts, and media reports on how the voting was conducted, as the opposition defeated the incumbent president hitherto, there was no parallel body at the top” epithet, having an invincible but influential hand in its defeat.”
Let the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), Alhagie Alieu Momar Njie, give reassurances that the December 4, 2021, presidential election would be devoid of any violence, free, fair, and credible; from all indications, the polls in 2016 were far below par when defining a free and fair election.
Since the 2016 presidential election was a “show of shame,” Gambians have experienced one of the most turbulent post-election periods in recent memory. Despite losing to Adama Barrow, Yahya Jammeh refused to concede the election defeat. Instead, it launched unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud. In addition, Yahya Jammeh continued insistence that Adama Barrow had not won a legitimate contest.
Admittedly, the political stakes involved in elections in the Gambia are very high, as political offices ensure instant access to massive wealth and social preferences. Many politicians get into politics, not for public service or good, but the accumulation of wealth and the desirability of position. Allegation of electoral fraud and rigging are primarily practiced and improvised by these politicians; hence, alienating the electorate and disenfranchising them from performing totally in the electoral process automatically renders that election having credibility issues.
Fatoumatta: Lastly, more steps need to be taken to ensure responsible and objective media coverage of political campaigns and elections, with the intent to illuminate the form and substance within the twists and bends of presidential transition politics. Successful and peaceful political transitions fortify democracy. This is a principle that the consciousness of the citizenry should properly and eternally guard. Therefore, high standards of democratic elections, respect of independent institutions, and care for free, fair, and verifiable elections should be non-negotiable principles. These will be guarantees of peaceful and cherished presidential transitions.