Adama Barrow may have been returned to the Gambian presidency with a bigger than expected margin of victory but some takeaways from the December 4th presidential vote are just as hard to miss.
56-year-old Barrow vying under the ticket of the National People’s Party polled 53 percent of the total votes followed by his ally-turned bitter foe Ousainou Darboe of the United Democratic Party.
Mamma Kandeh of The Gambia Democratic Congress was further behind in third while the rest polled results which categorised them as also-rans (no ridicule meant).
Barrow sprang a surprise not only on his opponents but also on analysts of contemporary Gambian politics, winning big even in opposition strongholds where he was given little or no chance of affecting the ballot the way he did to the chagrin of many.
Looking into their crystal balls, many a pundit had bandied the well-worn notion that it was going to be a tight two-horse race between him and Darboe and as tight races go, it was anybody’s inspired guess.
Incumbency an irresistible draw
The outcome of the vote may have bemused and even shocked many, but there was always something about incumbency in Gambian politics that still holds some sway despite the pre-poll predictions that the presidential race featuring Barrow and the five other contenders could buck this trend.
A random pre-poll survey by APA revealed that four out of ten prospective voters said they had never made it a habit to vote against the incumbent in Gambian elections and therefore were not likely to deny Barrow their votes this time round.
The overall psychology of these voters suggested that little or no persuasion was required for them to vote for the incumbent.
Unique voting system gets vote of confidence
Voting using crystal marbles may be dismissed as archaic in some parts of the world but in The Gambia this system while not perfected has been tried and tested for several generations beginning in the 1950s when the smallest country on mainland Africa was still a British colony. This was effective and simple for a predominantly illiterate voting population who are asked to cast marbles into drums emblazoned with the images of the candidates of their choice. Proponents of this system of voting prefer it to the paper ballot because it is “cheat-proof”. To the average Gambian voter, this way of secret voting is so simple and straightforward that its reliability for the integrity of elections is never in doubt. Despite the opposition claiming the election was rigged, many believe nothing untoward could have happened once the marbles find their way into the painted barrels.
Yahya Jammeh, a spent force
Once upon a time, Yahya Jammeh’s word carried the full force of Gambian law and this was put to the test from faraway Equatorial Guinea where he has been in exile since 2017 after his surprise election defeat by Barrow. Although physically not present in The Gambia, his voice was a regular during Kandeh’s campaign rallies across the country, urging Gambians to vote for his choice. His endorsement of the GDC candidate instead of President Barrow had thrown his former ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction in disarray. While its leadership based in Gambia coalesced with Barrow’s NPP, he and APRC breakaways stuck with Kandeh. Thus the December 4th presidential race not only pitted his favoured candidate against Barrow but also found him at cross-purposes with the APRC leadership based in The Gambia. Although Kandeh made significant gains in Jammeh’s home region of Foni by winning two constituencies, that was as far as it went. The word of the former Gambian strongman had lost its sheen. It no longer carried that awe-inspiring ring to it and was therefore not in vogue nationally.
Unprecedented voter turnout
Past presidential elections in The Gambia have seen widespread voter apathy behind low turnouts that left pundits scrambling for reasons that led to them. Even in the David and Goliath contest of 2016 when Barrow managed his historic win over Jammeh against the odds heavily stacked against him, the turnout out was an abysmal 59.34 percent from 886,578 eligible voters. It had followed the same dismal patterns of the 2011 and 2006 polls when there was concern about voter apathy partly thanks to the absence of any real space for democratic tendencies to take firm root. Perhaps taking inspiration from Gambia’s return to serious democratic practices, the December 4th 2021 vote witnessed an 85 percent turnout from over 900, 000 eligible voters.
The losers’ curse holds firm
Gambian elections are still under the loser’s curse which in 2016 plunged the country into a post-electoral crisis, the consequences of which are still being felt five years on. If many could concede that politics is a game of winners and losers, some in The Gambia especially its key players are still unprepared to countenance being on the losing side. It was explosive in 2016 because the loser was the incumbent, a strongman who could not go down without fighting. It ushered The Gambia into the jaws of a monstrous crisis, the likes of which it was never prepared for. This time the losers belong to the opposition and like all African oppositions, they begin the electoral race inherently from a disadvantaged position and the implications thereafter are obvious but the good thing is they did not carry the potency to drag the country into a crisis that the power of incumbency did in 2016. Given the high stakes of the exercise and the charged atmosphere of the campaign which preceded it, the run-up to the 2021 election had all the ingredients of a great contest – drama, cliffhangers, emotions teetering on the brink, unexpected twists and turns leading to a cruel sting in the tale from the opposition’s perspective.
WN/as/APA