It is illuminating because it demonstrates the shifting political forces in the country since the end of the Jammeh regime nearly a decade ago. For the first time in The Gambia’s political history, about two dozen political parties have been registered, reflecting the opening of political space as part of the democratization process following the end of Jammeh’s authoritarian rule. At the same time, the debate can be obfuscating because it tends to focus heavily on personalities and leadership choices while giving insufficient attention to the structural and behavioral factors that make coalition-building inherently difficult.
The central problem appears to be the absence of a meeting of minds on the practical modalities for building a workable pre-election coalition. Opposition party leaders appear to have become bogged down in personal rivalries, competing ambitions, and disagreements over leadership. At the same time, comparatively limited attention has been devoted to the policy program and governing arrangements that would underpin a united opposition. To fully comprehend the challenges facing opposition parties, this note examines three principal barriers to pre-election coalition-building in The Gambia in 2026:
· the current pulverized party system as an impediment to unified and cohesive inter-party collaboration;
· an institutionalized structural barrier in the form of a dominant ruling party with substantial incumbency advantages; and
· behavioral characteristics among opposition parties and their leaders that do not measure up to the fundamental requirements for effective collective action.
Pulverized Party System
The proliferation of political parties in The Gambia today is part of the democratization process that followed the end of authoritarian control of the political system. Such a process often produces a pulverized party system comprising disparate political entities of varying sizes, orientations, and organizational capacities. The fragmentation of the party system creates pressure for opposition parties to cooperate, particularly when no single opposition party possesses sufficient electoral strength to challenge a dominant incumbent. Yet fragmentation can simultaneously make cooperation more difficult because the very multiplicity of parties creates competing interests, leadership claims, and negotiating positions.
The term “pulverized” is used here in the sense associated with Giovanni Sartori’s analysis of party systems, in which political competition becomes dispersed among a multiplicity of relatively small parties rather than being organized around a few dominant or major parties. Such fragmentation can contribute to instability and make the coordination of political forces more difficult. The phenomenon is not unique to The Gambia. Benin, following its transition from authoritarian rule under Mathieu Kerekou’s Marxist regime to multiparty democracy in the early 1990s, also experienced a proliferation of political parties, with about one hundred parties registered in a country of approximately nine million people at the time. In both cases, democratization opened political space for the formation of numerous parties and political groupings.
What may initially appear to be a healthy expression of political pluralism can, however, create a serious collective-action problem when opposition parties must subsequently come together to challenge a dominant political force. Each party has an incentive to preserve its identity, leadership, organizational interests, and bargaining position, even when cooperation would provide a greater likelihood of electoral success. The challenge therefore lies not merely in persuading parties to cooperate but in persuading them to subordinate some of their individual interests to a broader collective objective.
At the time of writing, there are reports of at least two separate alliances among opposition parties, creating another layer of fragmentation at the collective level. Each bloc appears to be seeking to attract the remaining unaffiliated parties into its alliance. Instead of reducing fragmentation, the process therefore risks reproducing it at a higher level. This development creates uncertainty not only among opposition parties but also among their supporters, while the already dominant ruling party continues to expand and consolidate its political position.
More significantly, the recent breakdown of efforts at opposition unity ahead of the 2026 presidential election mirrors similar failed efforts in 2006 and 2011 to construct a grand coalition of opposition parties to challenge the dominant APRC party under Yahya Jammeh. Those earlier efforts were also substantially affected by disagreements over leadership. The recurrence of this problem suggests that the difficulties confronting opposition coalition-building cannot be explained solely by the personalities of the current political actors. They are also rooted in deeper characteristics of the Gambian party system and the political behavior it has generated.
InstitutionalBarriers
Although colonial authorities established multiparty political systems in their colonies on the eve of independence, the centralized nature of colonial administration contributed to the emergence of dominant ruling parties in many African countries after independence. Colonial administrations were designed primarily to maintain political control and administer territory rather than to foster competitive democratic institutions. The centralized administrative structures inherited at independence could consequently provide a foundation for the concentration of political authority in the hands of dominant post-independence parties.
In The Gambia, this legacy was shaped in part by the colonial division of the territory into the Colony, comprising Bathurst (now Banjul) and its immediate surroundings, and the much larger Protectorate, where the majority of the population lived. The extension of the franchise beyond the Colony to the Protectorate fundamentally altered the political landscape by bringing the predominantly rural population into the electoral process. It was within this context that the People’s Protectorate Party, later renamed the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), emerged as the dominant political force following independence in 1965.
For nearly three decades, the PPP maintained its electoral dominance, while opposition parties, including parties formed through splits and breakaways from the ruling party, were largely unable to make a significant electoral impact. The persistence of this pattern illustrates how institutional and political structures inherited from colonial rule could shape the development of post-independence party systems, reinforcing centralized political authority and weakening the prospects for effective opposition.
The pattern was subsequently reinforced, although in a very different manner, following the military coup of 1994. Prominent opposition parties were summarily banned, enabling the APRC party of the military leaders who subsequently assumed civilian roles in government to become the dominant political force for more than two decades. During this period, the disjointed efforts of opposition parties to form a broad-based coalition helped assure the APRC government of continued political dominance. It was not until 2016 that the circumstances of the moment enabled seven opposition parties to come together in a grand coalition and defeat the incumbent in the presidential election.
The success of the 2016 coalition was facilitated by an exceptional convergence of political circumstances. These included a groundswell of support for virtually any credible effort to defeat the Jammeh administration, which an increasing number of Gambians regarded as intolerant and repressive. Other, less certain factors have also been suggested by observers. These include the alleged destruction of a large stock of voters’ cards when the headquarters of the ruling APRC party was set ablaze before the election by suspected arsonists, although this remains unverified. Another factor cited by some observers was the decision of the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC) to contest the election independently rather than join the coalition. Some argued that this decision deprived the ruling party of a significant segment of its traditional support base because the GDC leader had previously been a member of the ruling party before being expelled.
The circumstances of 2026 are vastly different, and the challenges facing the opposition parties are consequently more daunting. The emergence of the National People’s Party (NPP) as the current ruling party points to the persistence of a broader structural pattern: the tendency for political power in The Gambia to become concentrated around a dominant ruling party, even as the formal political system remains multiparty.
The continuing dominance of the ruling party within an increasingly fragmented party system presents another major barrier to the development of a genuinely competitive and institutionalized multiparty system in The Gambia. The legacy of colonial centralization therefore extends beyond the organization of the state itself; it has also influenced the character and evolution of political competition in the post-independence period.
The consolidation of dominant ruling parties has taken different forms across the three post-independence administrations. During the Jawara administration, the ruling PPP became a political magnet, attracting prominent individual politicians who abandoned opposition parties to join the government through the process commonly described as cross-carpeting. This progressively weakened the opposition and reduced its capacity to challenge the ruling party effectively.
Under the military and authoritarian rule of Jammeh, the mechanism was more coercive. Opposition parties were systematically suppressed, forcing some politicians to join the APRC, in some cases for political survival and personal security. Under President Adama Barrow, by contrast, the dominant strategy has been political co-option. Since coming into office in 2017, Barrow has demonstrated considerable ability to absorb some of his most vocal opponents into his political camp, thereby weakening or neutralizing their opposition activities.
To broaden the base of his newly formed party, Barrow also entered into a controversial alliance with a segment of the former dominant ruling party, the APRC, whose former leader has been investigated for alleged financial malpractices and human rights abuses. More recently, in late July 2026, he formed another alliance with the Gambia Democratic Congress, whose leader contested the last two presidential elections, polling approximately 17 percent and 12 percent of the vote in 2016 and 2021, respectively, although the party does not have representation in the National Assembly.
The mechanisms have therefore varied-from political attraction and cross-carpeting under Jawara, to coercion and suppression under Jammeh, and political co-option under Barrow-but the broader structural outcome has been remarkably consistent: the consolidation of political power around a dominant ruling party and the corresponding difficulty of sustaining an effective opposition.
…..To be continued in Part 2.
