A Rejoinder- The Way Forward For Democratic Change

By The UDP Steering Committee-UK

On the 25th September 2009, the spokesperson and former flagbearer of the opposition National Alliance for Democracy and Development [NADD] published an article in the Foroyaa Newspaper under the above heading in which he made the following statements;

‘The split confirmed that a party led alliance or a divided alliance is not the way to bring about change in the Gambia.  A divided NADD became extremely weak. The UDP party led alliance also showed its weakness. Instead of adding votes from the NRP and GDP, the UDP led alliance lost approximately 80,000 votes. In short, while UDP had approximately 145,000 votes in 2001presidential elections, in 2006 it ended up with approximately 104,000 votes. NRP had approximately 35, 000 votes in 2001. This did not feature in the votes of the UDP led alliance in 2006. Hence putting the three parties together did not lead to more votes; on the contrary it led to a lower number of votes. There is no empirical evidence to indicate that the same tactic will yield a different outcome.’

This is a complete glib and forms part of Halifa Sallah’s subterfuge to conceal his personal longstanding reluctance to rally behind a UDP led alliance and/or candidate. The UDP led alliance did not lose 80,000 votes in the 2006 presidential election neither is it tenable to attribute its defeat in that election to the type of alliance they had adopted with the National Reconciliation Party [NRP] and the Gambia People’s Democratic Party [GPDP.] Here are the facts;

In the 2001 presidential election, UDP had 133,590 votes. This was reduced to 104,000 votes in 2006 thereby registering a drop of 28,782 votes. The claim of approximately 80,000 lost is therefore outlandish and completely unfounded. Even if the NRP’s 2001 votes [32,198] are put into the equation, votes which Halifa himself posited did not feature in the UDP votes, the figure is still less than 80,000. It would be 60,980.

UDP’s drop in votes has to be put into the right perspective if one is to avoid misreading the result and distorting facts. The voter turn-out in 2001 was almost 90% [89.71%]. This figure had dwindled down to 58.58% in 2006 amounting to a registered drop of 31.1%, and this is notwithstanding the fact that the national voter register had been updated with 219,630 new voters. This is clearly a significant drop and has undoubtedly affected the general performance of the opposition in the 2006 presidential election. This is the conventional wisdom and it also explains why UDP had fewer votes in 2006 than in 2001. It is therefore untenable to use this as some kind of empirical evidence to the suggestion that a party led alliance is unsellable. It wasn’t like if these votes were lost to another party[s]. These are votes which weren’t in the pond for any party to fish. In other words, they did not participate in the electoral process. There is no evidence to the suggestion that this is due to the type of alliance adopted by the UDP or some form of protest specifically directed against it. In fact Halifa’s own view was that the low voter turn-out was due to the NADD fall-out while the UDP blame it inter alia on the harassment and intimidation tactics employed by the incumbent.

 It has always being known that a low voter turn-out would most likely benefit the incumbent. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a surprise to have seen the main opposition party getting fewer votes in 2006 than in previous elections where voter turn-out had been extremely high just as it is not a surprise that NADD barely crossed over the 5% threshold.

Another factor responsible for UDP’s drop in votes was lack of adequate prior preparation. While the incumbent was using the ample time [five years] at their disposal to effectively prepare themselves for the 2006 election, UDP had itself bogged down in an endless dogmatic political wrangling within NADD. They attempted to start preparing the ground two years before the presidential election by embarking on a tour of the North Bank Division in their own right but this was suddenly called short after a request to that effect was made by NADD’s Executive Committee. They ended up being politically frozen within the NADD bubble which took them nowhere but the gutters of smear and being conspired against. This was a very expensive mistake which cost the UDP dearly and eventually hindered their ability to effectively mobilise and prepare the ground for a successful campaign and election in 2006.

The lost of NRP leader’s Upper Saloum parliamentary seat in the 2005 by-election which was by the way necessitated by Halifa’s clandestine registration of NADD as a political party against every sound legal advice and in contravention of the Preamble and Part1[1] of the Memorandum of Understanding that explicitly established NADD as an alliance, has had a demoralising effect on the party’s base particularly in the Central River Division, and due to the dogmatic wrangling within NADD, they too have not had a chance to adequately prepare their base for the upcoming election. Even when the party contested the Upper Saloum parliamentary seat again in 2007 and in their own name, they still lose albeit narrowly. This was another factor that affected the UDP led alliance’s votes in 2006. However, to construe the effect of this problem as some kind of empirical evidence to the suggestion that party-led alliance does not work without taking into account all the inherent factors that inhibited UDP led alliance’s vote maximisation strategy is a superficial assessment that has no chance of flying across the face of diligent scrutiny. Despite all the unfair criticisms and accusations of all sorts that were levelled against them in the run-up to the 2006 presidential election, the UDP and NRP were absolutely confident that in the light of the existing circumstance, a party-led alliance was the best option available to all opposition parties at the time and that position had been vindicated by the results of that election.

The Misrepresentations

Halifa’s claim that he had proposed a party-led alliance before is not strictly true. What happened was that PDOIS like all other parties knew very well that UDP’s position was to have a party- led alliance with the rest of the parties. They also knew that none of the parties including the NRP were at the time ready to support this proposal. As the chairperson of the meeting that was convened to discuss possible proposals for the creation of a coalition/alliance of all opposition parties, Halifa then felt obliged to put this proposal to the meeting alongside his own, the NADD option. At the end, the UDP position could not earn support from the other parties and that is how the NADD option ended up being adopted. This does not however reflect Halifa’s support for a Party-led alliance. In fact, he has a history of opposition to this type of alliance. In 2001 when the idea of a UDP led alliance first surfaced, Halifa openly rejected it in a radio talk show saying that when the first republican parties were banned under the terms of Decree 89 saved for PDOIS, the proponents of the UDP refused to join them to fight the junta in the 1996 presidential election but instead decided to form their own party. When he was invited to a meeting in 2006 that was to discuss UDP’s proposal to create a party-led alliance that was to include NADD, Halifa didn’t even bother to show up.

His claim in a Daily News interview of 28^th October 2009 that the UDP was better served by NADD by reasons of the former’s past electoral boycotts is not borne by facts. The UDP ended their boycott well before the signing of the MOU that established NADD and had successfully sponsored, in their own name and under their own banner, a candidate [Ousman Rambo Jatta] in the Bakau Old Cape ward bye-election ever since. Kemenseng Jammeh too contested and won the Jarra West bye- election of 2004 under UDP ticket and represented his constituency in parliament as a UDP member until when his seat was declared vacant in 2005. That was the time he contested under the NADD ticket. Therefore, to suggest that UDP somehow owe their return to the electoral process to NADD is palpably absurd and disingenuous. The UDP has always being a force to reckon with and the near lethal effect of their withdrawal on NADD is a clear testimony to that.

Halifa’s own diabolical electoral performance

Rather than merely questioning the viability of the UDP led alliance and hyping on its setbacks, and in the interest of fair and balanced factual reporting, Halifa should have been kind enough to elaborate on his own political failings and that of the party [NADD] he led into the 2006 presidential election as a flag bearer. This would have given the readers a broader perspective of the issues before us. Not doing this is cheap politics and Halifa should have risen about it.

In 2006, Halifa scored less than thousand [1,000] votes in 43 constituencies out of a total of 48. In ten of them, he scored less than hundred [100] votes namely; Foni Berefet [67 votes], Nianija [65 votes], Foni Jarrol [62 votes], Jarra Central [55 votes], Kiang Central [51 votes], Kiang East [51 votes], Foni Bintang [45 votes], Foni Bondali [23 votes], Janjanbury [16 votes] and Foni Kansala [13 votes]. In his own constituency of Serrekunda Central where he was a sitting member of parliament, Halifa’s votes [2,182] were doubled by the UDP candidate’s 4,908 votes.  His national score was only 23, 473 representing less than 6% [5.98%] of the total votes cast. This raises very serious questions about the political viability of NADD and the kind of political weight and pedigree Halifa often associates himself with. The level of political narcissism he has displayed in this unity debate is certainly not matched by his electoral records. It would therefore be very helpful to the unification efforts if Halifa, PDOIS and PPP-OJ take it upon themselves to immediately dissolve NADD without precondition. This will enable its leaders to easily return to their original parties thereby providing an opportunity for a fresh start that is untainted with the venom of the NADD debacle of 2006 and thereby closing the chapter of misinformation and slender that has poisoned relations between the UDP and leaders of certain fringe parties including PDOIS.

While remaining steadfast in their determination to work with any party and/person[s] to build a strong and genuine coalition against the APRC in 2011, the United Democratic Party will not allow itself to be hoodwinked by an eloquent but disingenuous and dogmatic ideologue.

Steering Committee

UDP-UK

London

Contact; gambiaforall@googlemail.com