Contrary to his recent claims that his popularity forced the opposition parties to nominate him their presidential flagbearer, Mr. Adama Barrow, the then candidate of the United Democratic Party, was forced to the negotiation table that formed the 2016 Coalition. The strategy and tactics deployed by the architects of the coalition, according to Halifa Sallah, gave the vast majority of Gambians the awareness that “negotiation was taking place and that any political leader who went to them, they said ‘go to the negotiation table.’” The coalition, Sallah added, “was the coalition of the people not a coalition of any political leader,” and because “the people asked for it, they demanded it” and any opposition leader who refused to be a party to it would have lost. Sallah made this remark in a town hall meeting last Saturday that’s now referred to by his supporters as “The Seattle Speech.”
Sallah’s fiery speech came after President Adama Barrow claimed that he was destined to win the presidency with or without the support of the eight parties and an independent candidate who backed him to run against the incumbent Yahya Jammeh—the former president who had ruled The Gambia for twenty-two years. Reflecting on the presidential election during a visit to the Republic of Turkey last month, Barrow told a television reporter that:
When I toured the country as my party’s candidate that turned everything in The Gambia. My crowd was the biggest crowd ever in the history of that country. It was with my party, it was not with the coalition. That forced everybody to the [negotiation] table; that we can make a difference; that we can make this change; that gives us confidence and everybody to come on board. That was just with my party. There was no coalition by then. The records are there. So, if I say I was destined to be president I think you will agree with me.
Barrow made a similar contention on his appearance on the Kerr Fatou show. He said after he was selected and had tested his candidacy on a nationwide tour, “the welcoming was what win us the elections. It turns everything. Since that day I have 100 percent conviction that I will defeat Jammeh.”
In what is now emerging as different storylines in the writing or rewriting of the history of Coalition 2016—depending on whose viewpoint one is looking at—Ousainou Darboe, also said on the Kerr Fatou show that no other opposition candidate, other than a UDP, would have defeated former president Jammeh in a coalition. Darboe, himself, contested as a UDP candidate in four successive presidential elections all against Jammeh who had defeated him. He contested as the flagbearer of opposition alliances in 2002, 2006, and 2011 presidential elections but lost all to the incumbent.
Sallah insisted that the coalition was demanded by the people and that when they started the negotiation some political aspirants and parties sent proxies as they were not appearing themselves, “but the people questioned that, so they had to start appearing” at the negotiation table. He added that:
when it was clear [to the political leaders] that what the people wanted was people to come together this is when Dembo Bojang was called upon to convene a meeting of The Gambian Opposition for Electoral Reforms. There that too was done at Kairaba Beach to give it clout because at that material time opposition parties could not hold meetings in any other place in that country because hotels would not allow you to hold meetings there because they were afraid of the state. But the meeting was held there by all the parties. Some finally accepted, few declined, but then the negotiation continued with one agenda—that this was not going to be a party matter. That’s why when we met on the 17th October, we all agreed and all those who were to stand as presidential candidates signed or someone signed on their behalf that we will hold a convention on the 30th October, and that convention will give rise to a presidential candidate, that presidential candidate will resign from his/her party and stand as an independent candidate. Who on earth will be a presidential candidate of a party and you believed you can win under the ticket of that party and that you resigned from that party to become an independent candidate? That is not possible!!! That is not possible! And it is not rational. No right-thinking person will do that.
Sallah’s speech in Seattle is a sharp response to his former coalition partner whom he’d played an instrumental role in helping to elect as president in December 2016 for a transitional government to democratize The Gambia. It’s not clear if this is the turning point for Sallah, who had said last summer in a press conference that he did not want to engage the presidency directly on a press release the government issued in response to statement he made on a trip to Europe.
Speaking to The Gambia Times earlier before the town-hall meeting in Seattle, Sallah said given the terms of Gambian politics where politicians say things here and there, he was not surprised that Barrow made such statements. He said that if Barrow “wants my advice I would say those are not statements he should be making.” Insisting that the support of the coalition was not party based, and that the peaceful atmosphere created by the coalition— which overwhelmed Jammeh—was really the basis of the victory, he argued, and so the statements of the UDP leaders were “rather unfortunate.” He said the campaign was not one of any political party and that they stopped lots of “campaign remarks which would have led to some form of confrontation.”
Despite claims made by Barrow and Darboe, Sallah said “the peaceful atmosphere created by the coalition is really the basis of the victory; that’s what overwhelmed Jammeh” in the campaign. He added that “the anger, the frustration, the insults one would have anticipated when people started campaigning on the platform of another political party that campaign would have been full of contradictions and I doubt whether any such party would have been able to even campaign in Gambian politics on the terrain at the time.” Assessing the mood in the country prior to the presidential election, Sallah believed that the emotions were too high that UDP campaign methods would have just enabled Jammeh to really take over everything. Members of the UDP, Sallah believed, “would not have been able to restrain themselves because of the anger and obviously they would have played easily into the hands of those who control power, because no power would allow anybody to campaign on the basis of hostility and insults and anger.” He added that a UDP campaign, without doubt, would have been suppressed in that political environment.
Barrow, Sallah indicated, was a symbol of unity for some in the country who “did not know who he was” as he speaks Mandinka, Fula, Sarakuleh, and Wolof. Some people, he added, also saw Barrow as “humble, not very assertive, he’s somebody waiting for others to really guide him through.” Therefore, Sallah argued, some people who wanted to believe in the coalition were looking for a way of attaching themselves as they thought he’d be a good transitional figure. But the vast majority of people in the country at the time, Sallah argued, “did not know who Barrow was.” It’s that transition role respected by Gambian people that should be the legacy of Barrow, Sallah added.
Sallah stated that when they formed the coalition, they made the condition that whoever became the candidate and won the election, that the person will be there for three years to give and add value to the coalition on the historic mission to wiping out self-perpetuating rule on Gambian soil. For Barrow as their candidate who won on that platform to actualize the legacy envisioned by the coalition, he must show that “he’s not interested in power and not power hungry”—the only way to leave an example that nobody would question again.
The coalition was created, according to Sallah, “to make The Gambia an example for the whole world,” and that Barrow should honor that promise to facilitate The Gambia to “enter history with a legacy that no one would be able to beat.”