Dear Mr. President: Please allow me to address another open letter to Your Excellency in the form of well-meaning advice from a self-appointed adviser. My advice to you is purely motivated by a desire to see you do the right thing, and my desire, which I’m sure you share, to see our country moving in the right direction while avoiding the many dangerous pitfalls of political power and incumbency that have afflicted and continues to afflict many of our sister African countries. I know you may say you do not need my advice, with which I would beg to differ. You need all the good advice you can get, regardless of its source, and so does our dear country. And so I beg your pardon for the inconvenience you may suffer in reading this letter or having it written to you in the first place. My conscience as a citizen of the country you lead convinces me that giving you this advice is the right thing to do.
Mr. President: I am writing to advise that while your third term bid may be legally or constitutionally right, it is morally wrong with potential damaging consequences for our country, and for you in person. While the 1997 constitution permits you to seek another term in office, the supreme interests of The Gambia demand that you do not, because it could jeopardize our national wellbeing. When constitutional provisions clash with the moral obligations of a leader, the moral obligations must be prioritized, for they point to not what the law allows you to do, but to what reason, common sense, natural law, and the national interest demand that youshould not do. The choice of course, remains yours, but the wise thing to do is find a trustworthy successor to serve as the candidate for your party in the 2026 elections. The nation will be grateful and your legacy will forever be graced by an act that will perhaps saveour country from political chaos in the short, medium or long term.
Mr. President: Over the two decades between July 1994 and December 2016, we all cautioned former president Jammeh against any action that would jeopardizeour national interest. You were part of a party and among a wider community of Gambians who fought tooth, nail and claw to ensure that Jammeh’s self-perpetuating rule was brought to an end. Many among the members of your party and this wider community suffered untold harm, including loss of life in the hands of a leader who would not listen to well-meaning advice, and who today languishes in miserable exile precisely because he refused to heed well-meaning advice. The constitution that today allows you to seek another term is the same constitution that Jammeh used to abuse the lives, rights and dignities of Gambians, including your good self. The term limit that you now refuse to recognize is the same term limit that we all fought for, the same term limit that, in the early days of your presidency, you firmly assured the Gambian people and the world that you would enforce, and the term limit for which you were endorsed as the candidate for Coalition 2016. In these dimensions, Mr. President, legal arguments have little to no room for justification. The right thing to do, inspite of legal and constitutional provisions, is to avoid seeking a term in office and allow the country to move forward. If you insist on seeking a third term, you will be exercising your constitutional right, but violating the Gambian people’s right to the change we all fought for over twenty-two long years. You will also be violating your own moral responsibility to fulfill your solemn promise to subject your personal desire to the nation’s desire to move on from self-perpetuating rule.
Mr. President: It is true that you have the constitutional right to seek re-election. But you lack the moral right to do so. You had the constitutional right to refuse to abide by the three-year transitional agreement you had with your 2016 coalition partners. But you have no right to abolish the dreams of the Gambian people for frequent and orderly changes of political leadership. You have the constitutional right to refuse to abide by your promise to ensure term limits during your early presidency. But you have no right to do anything that could jeopardize the supreme interests of this nation. You have the right to subject yourself to the harsh judgment of history. But you have no right to make your progeny become victims of whatever unfavorable consequences arise from your decision to seek a third term in office. There are legal rights and there are moral rights, and there are choices with consequences. I humbly and earnestly urge you to think very carefully about the implications and potential consequences of exercising your constitutional right to seek a third term against your moral responsibility to do the right thing, however much this is in opposition to your individual personal desires for re-election.
We have seen and heard some people who purport to love you more than you love yourself, come out with all kinds of justifications for why you legally can and therefore should seek a third term in office. I’m sure you recognize some of these people as those with whom you were in the struggle against the Jammeh dictatorship. And you recognize some of these people as those who opposed and fought against you tooth, nail and claw in the very recent past. And in particular, you recognize them among those for whom the very idea of a third term was anathema, and as those who were among the most faithful advocates of term limits. If today these same people can publicly endorse all that they opposed so recently, they are not fit to give you and will not give you any sincere advice. And if they support and defendyour every word and action today, please know that in reality, your interests are secondary to their personal interests and insincere motives. They want you to stay in office because they believe their survival depends on it, not because they believe it is in the best interest of the country, or in your own best interest.
Contrary to the mind-boggling absurdities some of your insincere supporters are peddling as informed public opinion, no one is saying that having term limits automatically ensures democracy and development. What we are saying is that in our own national context, which is unique and different from any other context, term limits are one way of helping move our country in the right direction, one way of ensuring that we have frequent and orderly change of leadership, one way we will be able to experiment with ideas from different minds, and one way of helping avoid or significantly reduce the prospect of unruly and unconstitutional change of leadership which will affect our nation in unimaginable ways.You have done reasonably well in opening up the democratic space in this country. Do better by fulfilling your promise to end self-perpetuating rule in The Gambia.
Finally, Mr. President. One argument you have made in support of your desire to run for a third term is that your party is too young, and may collapse or die if you cease to be president at this point. This is a legitimate concern, one that cannot and should not be dismissed out of hand. However, the fact that a leader leaves, either by personal choice or natural course, does not necessarily mean that the group will collapse or die. The fact that a family head leaves, either by personal choice or natural cause, does not mean that the family will collapse or die. The fact that a parent leaves a young child, either by personal choice or natural cause, does not mean that the child will die. The child may well grow up, strong, resilient, wise and even more powerful than the departed parent. Under the right type of leadership and with your continued tutelage and support, the NPP can grow even stronger after your presidency.
So, dear Mr. President, my sincere advice to you is this: choose a successor, a person among your party members that you can trust, a person of integrity the nation can trust, make him or her the NPP candidate for 2026, support and campaign with them, and if they win, graciously hand over to them and peacefully retire as a respected elder statesman. The Gambian people will be forever grateful to you. The world will admire you. And history and natural justice will be kind to you. Your successor will continue building your party and your legacy and you will go down the annals of history as a courageous and wise leader who did the morally right thing when it was easier and more tempting to do the legally right but morally wrong thing. What’s morally wrong is wrong, however legal, however constitutional.
Please permit me to end on that note, Mr. President. Thank you Sir.
