The Gambia Faces Challenges Ahead of December Presidential Election

Gambian President Adama Barrow’s first-term success will be tested in Gambia’s December election. (Wikimedia)

Hundreds of thousands of Gambians will take to the polls on December 4 to cast their votes for the state’s next president. Gambian President Adama Barrow seeks to retain control of the presidency in the upcoming elections. The upcoming vote will test the country’s democratic resilience since the seemingly impossible victory of Barrow in 2016, a former businessman who ousted Yahya Jammeh, the country’s ruler of 22 years.

This marks the 6th presidential election since 1994 and the first in which Jammeh is not the incumbent to beat. Barrow came into power by running in stark opposition to the deeply unpopular president, pledging to call elections every three years and to reverse the policies implemented by Jammeh that curtailed individual rights. The former president is notorious for the brutality, repression, and wide slate of human rights abuses that occurred on his watch. After refusing to concede in the 2016 election, Jammeh was forced into exile in Equatorial Guinea, where he remains to this day.

Despite Barrow’s promises to change the landscape of Gambian civil society, he did not step down after three years, and there are still a wide number of laws that restrict the media, and journalistic and individual freedoms. Harsh penalties are still in place for those who denigrate government officials, and police brutality remains rampant in forcefully suppressing opposition protests, a fact exhibited by the arrests of 137 citizens and the abolition of a notable resistance group in January 2020, amid anti-Barrow demonstrations.

Nonetheless, democratic gains have been realized under Barrow’s administration, with 18 different political parties running against one another in the upcoming election. Despite the continuation of some of Jammeh’s repressive policies, the level of government-sponsored crackdowns regarding the next election has not matched previous years. Indeed, the 2016 election saw arrests of more than 90 opposition activists, the death of a prominent protestor, and widespread accounts of torture and intimidation in the weeks and months leading up to the vote, incidents not present during this campaign cycle.

On top of the legally permitted suppression of media and journalistic freedoms, as well as the country’s absence of a constitution ensuring a smooth presidential transition, Barrow’s September decision to unite his National People’s Party with Jammeh’s Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation left much of the country in shock.

Both parties stated that the alliance signaled their dual commitment to work together in moving the country forward; however, some see the move as a sign that Barrow might cling to power following a possible defeat in December. And regardless of the electoral implications, human rights organizations across the country have lambasted the coalition for its enabling of Jammeh’s previous crimes. The Victims’ Center, a group formed two months after the exile of Jammeh from office, cited the alliance as a “betrayal of public trust,” an affront to all those impacted by the former president’s despotism and inhumanity.

Barrow will be forced to grapple with the threat of 17 other parties vying for the presidency, and whether he follows the path of the former president or remains uncertain. Nonetheless, the lack of legal safeguards and backstops to protect against a refusal to concede remains the foremost threat to a smooth transition moving forward.