The overwhelming majority are engaged only in concerted criticism, character assassination, mudslinging and sometimes personal insults and rarely offer any alternative [policies, programs and/or strategic solutions to the issues they criticize with so much passion. This aggressive behavior, in all honesty, contradicts the tenets of democracy and devalues the opportunity for peace, constructive discourse and social justice. The country, like many others, is faced with so many developmental challenges that need urgent attention from everyone that we cannot afford to waste so much time on trivial issues. For some, the only argument they have got to offer to the Gambian people is ‘Let’s vote Barrow out’. Some would misguidedly draw parallels between the Gambian and Senegalese political environment citing the victory by PASTEF in the last Senegalese general elections and some hold the most extreme view that Gambians should take to the streets to liberate the country. But to liberate the country from whom and from what? These set of people must realize that the overwhelming majority of Gambians understand that we are not dealing with an unpopular dictator who must be removed by all means but with a president whom with all intent and purposes, is a peaceful leader and a democrat to the core.
Besides, those who think they can replicate what happened in Senegal here in the Gambia must truly have a rethink because the scenarios in both countries are completely different for three (3) reasons
- The Senegalese constitution has a clause that deals with term limits clearly prohibiting any one person to govern for more than two consecutive terms, but the 1997 Gambian constitution doesn’t
- Former President Macky Sall tried to stop the PASTEF movement and many other political movements from participating in Senegal’s last general elections by all means but President Barrow is not trying to stop any political movement from participating in the 2026 general elections
- The PASTEF movement presented to the Senegalese people alternative policies and programs that they believed to be far more reflective of the wishes and aspirations of the Senegalese people especially the youth hence the massive support for Sonko and PASTEF but the political movements in the Gambia are mainly good at criticizing and politicizing every little thing but rarely put anything convincing on the table for the majority of Gambians to even consider.
Those calling for Gambians to rise up to remove President Barrow by all means must realize that the country does not need heroes but strategic thinkers who can effectively champion and/or contribute to the economic transformation of the nation. For example, what do they have to offer to transform our education system we inherited from the colonialists that does not equip us with the necessary skills and tools to help us decolonize our economic structures to make us less dependent on loans for our economic development.
It is important to note that the economic structures designed by the colonialists to perpetually keep us poor still persists today, and that is the problem for the Gambia in particular and across Africa in General. This is seen in the form of our external debt. Superficially, the debt trap sounds like a problem we have created because we are the ones borrowing and that our leaders and politicians are corrupt and mismanaging our resources. Some of these arguments may be true but looking deeper under the surface, one realizes that the colonial structures that were imposed on us only help to reproduce the debt trap. The truth is when a country is indebted, it relies on external lenders based on imposed conditions that tend to pursue deeper into the debt trap.
What do those seeking to replace Barrow suggest we should do about our youth unemployment issue which, by the way, is not specific to the Gambia. Even highly industrialized nations like China, The US, Great Britain, Germany and others have their own share of youth unemployment issues. This is indeed a problem that needs urgent attention to tackle as many of our youths have perished and continue to perish in the Atlantic.President Barrow and his government are doing what they could to address the youth unemployment situation in the country. Now it is left to those who seek to remove president Barrow from office to propose strategic alternative policies, programs and actions that are seen to be better than what currently existsas their own solution to this important issue.
What better alternative policies and programs are they putting forward that could transform our agriculture sector to ensure we attain food sovereignty such that we wouldn’t depend on others for our survival. It is of utmost importance for Gambians to note that there is a difference between food sovereignty and food security. Food sovereignty means that we have a right to defineour food and agriculture systems and produce what we eat by ourselves and not depend on others for our basic food requirements. Food security on the other hand is a technical term which means that you are able to secure the calorie nutrition of your people either by producing the food by ourselves, or by using our own money or by borrowing to import from abroad which we do as a nation or by way of food aid. Let me remind ourselves that at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, more than half of the African Heads of State travelled to Russia to meet and negotiate with Putin for a corridor for the uninterrupted flow of wheat into the continent. These are the kinds of serious developmental issues that we should be discoursing and fighting over and not some trivial superficial issues that only seek to entrench our seeming lack of political maturity.
Many people outside of the government sometimes make sweeping allegations of corruption against public officials even though they rarely provide evidence to back up such allegations. But even if those allegations were found to be true, what viable and result oriented measures are they proposing to tackle corruption in the public service of the Gambia?
It is a documented fact that a handful of people have tried so hard since 2021 and even before to push president Barrow to the wall in a calculated effort to force him to react viciously to their provocations there by presenting them with the opportunity they have been looking for to prove their wrong and misguided designation of him as a dictator. The Gambian people know that president Barrow is not a dictator, and this includes those trying to make us believe otherwise. If President Barrow was truly a dictator like former president Yahya Jammeh, then most of those making the loudest noise today would either have still been living abroad or hiding in their small corners in the country pretending not to have any interest in politics as was the case in the Jammeh era.
President Barrow is not perfect, and none of us is, but he has a perfect idea in his heart that we can engage in our political discourse with tolerance, patience and sometimes with little humor for the good of the country. It is important for all of us to realize that with our current democracy, we have an opportunity to be more civil in our politics and engage with each other positively and constructively for the strategic transformation of our country.
