The Way Forward for Democratic Change in the Gambia"  Rejoinder to Modou Nyang

 By The Democrat

Dear Editor,  

Please allow me space in your widely read paper to take part in this dialogue with the people about “The Way Forward for Democratic Change” in the Gambia. The topic, which was initiated by Halifa Sallah on 25 September 2009 and rejoined by the UDP UK, seems to have been hijacked by the misconception of Modou Nyang into some sort of backward political obsequiousness rather than a dialogue that offers solutions to the best way forward. Therefore, Nyang’s elongated and monotonous invective response of the 22 February 2010, lacked both substance and bearing to the topic. Instead it was a blanket condemnation of the UDP UK’s rejoinder to Halifa’s proposals. Surely, in initiating this dialogue Halifa had intended to invite such rejoinders, which Nyang seems to have detested so strongly. 

 The dialogue started as stated by Halifa in his article of the 25 September 2009, which was published on Foroyaa newspaper under the title “THE WAY FORWARD FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE”. In that piece, Halifa had presented what he described as the Agenda 2011; the way forward for the Gambian opposition. Halifa explained in his piece that the Gambian opposition had three options, through which they can mobilize themselves into a formidable force capable of defeating Yahya and the APRC regime. Two of these options, according Halifa had already been tested in the 2006 election and both had failed in succeeding to yield that result. As a result, Halifa had proposed the third option, which he described as the Agenda 2011, which he further reasoned as the only option left to be tested by the Gambian opposition. The UDP UK took a deferring view to that analysis of Halifa, which resulted in their late rejoinder of the 31 January 2010. 

 Modou Nyang on the other hand offers no propositions narrowed the issue down to debate between election result figures which this important debate is far beyond. The issue is not who got the figures correct as Modou Nyang had misconceived. The topic is about two political philosophies that of the UDP and the Halifa (NADD/PDOIS). For that reason, I don’t want to make the same mistake as Nyang; instead I wish to separate the facts from fiction, in order to assist our baffled readership in understanding what is at stake here.

To start with, I have revisited Halifa’s article of the 25 September 2009, which had gave birth to this dialogue. In the said article Halifa had explained how he proposed two options to the Gambian opposition leaders during the formation of the NADD opposition alliance in 2003. These options were:

“One; was to allow one party and its leader to be the flag bearer. …. if this option is adopted all parties should go ahead and promote their own agendas and come to the negotiation table six months before an election to decide which party and its leader would be allowed to lead. The second option entailed the establishment of an Umbrella Party right away which would select a Presidential Candidate either through unanimity or the holding of a primary at which the party chairpersons, male and female of each ward as well as the youth leaders would select the candidate through a voting process”.

According to Halifa the second option was what all the opposition party leaders accepted, which included Lamin Waa Juwara and his NDAM party, and that lead to the creation of NADD. However, from Halifa’s account things did not go as plan from the onset, which is no news to any one at present. As Halifa explains:

“The leaders accepted to form an umbrella party instead of waiting to select the Presidential candidate of one of the political parties six months prior to the presidential elections. A memorandum of Understanding came into force on the 17 of January 2005. In order to ensure the integrity of the office of coordinator and Chairperson, Part II of the memorandum indicated that both positions are advisory and that “neither the Chairperson nor the coordinator or the deputy coordinator shall have voting powers.” Furthermore, Article 17 of the memorandum put an end to my mandate as coordinator upon the signing of the memorandum of understanding. The executive members who were the two representatives of the parties had to elect a new coordinator.

On 17 January 2005, the mandate given to the coordinator at the Atlanta meeting in 2003 came to an end. Interestingly enough, I was elected again to be coordinator”.

So basically NADD executive members, made up of two representatives from each of the 6 opposition parties, were supposed to chose a substitute coordinator after Halifa’s Atlanta mandate of 2003 came to an end on 17 January 2005. However, instead of choosing a substitute coordinator to replace Halifa, the executive went against Article 17 of their memorandum of understanding and chose Halifa again to continue as their coordinator, even though this was not supposed to happen. Surprisingly, Halifa too happily accepted their offer, even though it was against the Article 17 of the Memorandum of understanding.

Though, Halifa had failed to explain in his article, what must have motivated him to accept the coordinator post on 17 January 2005, when he is barred by the memorandum of NADD, but one could forgive him for being typical Gambian politician.

However, what happen next in the NADD saga was even more interesting; as Halifa further explained:

“The IEC was approached to register NADD while (he) the Coordinator was attending a meeting of the Pan African Parliament in South Africa. Upon his return, (he) inquired whether it was clear to the IEC that NADD was a by-product of the coalition of parties. No clear answer could be given. The Executive committee had failed to be conclusive regarding the issue of merger before the registration of NADD even though the Memorandum has left no one in doubt that a merger had occurred. When the IEC was consulted they did indicate that they saw NADD as a merger of parties and even proceeded to draft rules to guide the formation of Alliances and Mergers. The draft rules were forwarded to the parties for discussion. The membership of NADD by some members of the National Assembly eventually led to court action. The counsel of the IEC argued that NADD was a merger but the Counsels for NADD held a different opinion.”

The consequences of the court actions, proved costly for both Halifa and Hamat as the pair ended up losing their parliamentary seats to the APRC. However, the above admission by Halifa proves that NADD was badly coordinated. May be somebody should have taught politicians about good house-keeping.

Nevertheless, NADD’s woes continue to grow worst after it’s lost of the parliamentary seats of Halifa and Hamat; as Halifa further explained:

“The UDP leader resigned from NADD and was later joined by the NRP leader. The NRP leader accepted a party led Alliance which was later joined by the leader of GPDP whose nomination papers were rejected by the IEC”.

What later developed between the signatories of the NADD memorandum was that of animus and distrust, which resulted in accusations after accusation, as manifested by Modou Nyang, who had informed us that he was there at the formation of the NADD. Not surprisingly, Nyang still cannot forgive the UDP for what he perceived as their killing of NADD. NADD therefore left legacy of bitterness between the Gambian opposition parties than it had inherited.

According to Halifa what the down fall of NADD proved was that his two options, as stated above, had failed in the 2006 presidential election. He explained:

“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 GPDP, the UDP led alliance lost approximately 80,000 votes. In short, while UDP had approximately, 145,000 votes in 2001 Presidential 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 the first lesson to draw”.

For this reason, Halifa offered us a new option, which he described as his third option or “Agenda 2011”. Halifa gives the following reasons, why his third option is the only way forward for democratic change in the Gambia.

“There are three options before us. Two of the options have already been tried. The UDP, NRP and GPDP have already tried the Party led Alliance. Instead of the votes of the alliance increasing the opposite was the order of the day. Secondly, the creation of an umbrella party by taking the initiative to merge all opposition parties into one political force, has also failed. The only option is the third one which calls for the formation of a broad coalition of the people who will demand to have only one presidential candidate to contest the seat and demand for all parties to sit and work out an agenda to make that possible and to isolate any party which refuses to accept the Agenda. An electoral Alliance under which one presidential, National Assembly and council candidate will be put to contest against the APRC candidates in the 2011 Presidential, 2012 National Assembly and 2013 council elections must be demanded by the people and imposed on opposition parties or punish them for non compliance with their dictates. The candidates do not necessarily have to come from political parties. They could be distinguished members of civil society. We SIMPLY need honest, mature and dedicated PERSONS who would preside over a transition lasting between 2 to 5years to give the country a new start. This is the way forward”.

The UDP UK steering committee rejoined to Halifa’s article of the third option or “Agenda 2011”, under the title “A rejoinder – the way forward to the democratic change, on 25 February 2010.

Firstly, the UDP UK steering committee did not agree with Halifa’s figures, which he fairly stated as approximates and not the exact figures. This becomes the figures debate, which forced Modou Nyang into his much publicized research for the exact figures. However, Nyang has lost his sight from the real issue, which was not about whose figures were right or wrong, as that was coincidental to the topic, but about whose option offers the best way forward for the Gambian oppositions.

The UDP UK steering committee does not believe in Halifa’s conclusion that party led alliance had failed in the Gambia. The UDP UK’s position is that of Halifa’s second option, is still the best way forward rather than to be abandoned.

This is what the UDP UK stated from two paragraphs of its rejoinder:

“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. Rather than merely questioning the viability of the UDP led alliance….”

This position was further reiterated and elaborated by Sonny Daffeh in his rejoinder to Jeggan Grey Johnson, in which he stated:

“Therefore and instead of asking the leaders to commit the same mistake and somehow expect a different result or leveling false accusations against the leadership of the United Democratic Party – accusing them of paying a lip service to the call for unity -, Jeggan should have been bold enough to ask Halifa Sallah and his PDOIS Party to put their personal pride, egos and idealism aside and immediately embrace a UDP led alliance without any obnoxious precondition whatsoever. That is the only thing that has never happened before and it is about time history is made.

The UDP has proven itself over and over of being the dominant force in Gambia’s opposition politics. Any future alliance/coalition of all opposition parties must therefore be built around them. This is a sacred principle of any democratic political dispensation and no amount of spinning and hypocrisy will be allowed to circumvent it. The earlier the fringe parties recognize this, the better for our chances of forging a unified alliance of all opposition parties against the ruling APRC in 2011. This is not about helping someone to become an elite as Halifa would say. It is about adhering to the rules of conventional politics; coalitions are usually led by the biggest party in the group”.

The UDP UK further do not believe in Halifa’s third option, the agenda 2011, simply because as Sony Daffeh puts it:

“A grand coalition as spelled-out in Agenda 2011 is pretty much akin to the NADD coalition - the only difference being the name - and would be vitiated with the same problems that eventually led to the breakdown of NADD. Hence, it is not an option. It is just a mere but crude academic exercise”.

Thirdly, the UDP UK steering committee rejoinder, did not accept Halifa’s explanation as to why the UDP led alliance’s votes were reduced in the 2006 presidential election.

According to the UDP UK this has happened for the following reason, which they explained below:

“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 significant drop and have undoubtedly affected, this is the conventional wisdom, the general performance of the opposition in the 2006 presidential election. This 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 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 blamed it inter alia, on the harassment and intimidation tactics employed by the incumbent.

It has always been known that a low voter turn-out would most likely benefit the incumbent. Therefore, it should not have been a surprise to have seen the main opposition party getting fewer votes in 2006 than in previous elections, where voter turn-out was extremely high. That is why it was no 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 for the 2006 election, UDP had itself bogged down in an endless dogmatic political wrangling within NADD. They attempted to start preparing the grounds 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 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 them dearly, and eventually hindered their ability to effectively mobilize and prepare the grounds for a successful campaign and election in 2006.”

This is the dialogue presented, which for some reasons Modou Nyang best known to him wishes to score some cheap points rather than offer us a view point that offering a way forward, he engaged into some sort of political tantrum. From reading the above; the issues are indeed wider than the figures debate that Nyang is interested in pursuing.

From my own view, Halifa’s agenda 2011 is indeed an option, but an option that sounds very much like the NADD project. Secondly, it is without precedent in the modern politics. Political alliance of recent years, as currently existing in Germany and Israel and soon to be in Britain, are always led by the leader of the party with the majority vote. Thirdly; I do not believe that a party led alliance option had failed to work in the Gambia, simply because UDP/NRP alliance did not gain more votes in the 2006 election. Furthermore, the party led alliance as proposed by the UDP UK, had not been fully tested in the 2006 elections, since not all the opposition parties participated in that alliance. Therefore, Halifa’s second option, which is his party led-alliance, is still yet to be fully tested in the Gambia.

Let the dialogue continue