The Gambia’s “Elected Autocrat
Poverty, Peripherality, and
Political Instability,” 1994–2006
A Political Economy Assessment
By Professor Abdoulaye Saine, Miami University, Oxford OH.
Dr. Abdoulaye Saine, Political Sci. Prof.
This article assesses “democratization” under military and quasimilitary regimes in The Gambia following the 1994 coup d’état until 2006. The “transition” program back to
“civilian” rule in 1996, the 2001 and 2006 presidential elections, and the aftermath of deepening authoritarianism and economic crisis are also evaluated. The formation of a
five–political party coalition, the National Alliance for Democracy and Development, in 2005 raised expectations for a new political dispensation. Its breakup in 2006, however, dashed hope of this occurring. President Jammeh won a third 5-year term amid suffocating external and domestic indebtedness, declining exports, poor economic performance, and endemic corruption. Continued poor leadership and policy choices are likely to exacerbate abject poverty, countercoups, instability, and conflict. McGowan’s neo-Marxist/liberal political economy approach has helped rekindle more critical scholarship on the linkage between underdevelopment and conflict in Africa and the Third World as well as provide an antidote to neo-liberal economic policies.
Keywords: The Gambia; coups d’état; transition; autocrat; economic crisis
One striking example of current extraction by the military is found in the tiny and poor Gambia, where . . . Yahya Jammeh, now in power for over ten years has won presidential elections in 1996 and 2001 and thereby creating one of West Africa’s “elected autocracies.” Patrick McGowan1
More than a decade into what Samuel Huntington’s dubbed the “third wave” of “democratization” in Africa,2 the euphoria that accompanied both the 1994 coup and
the subsequent postcoup political and economic “liberalization” programs in The Gambia has given way to authoritarianism and harrowing poverty. President Yahya
Jammeh’s ineffective leadership combined with poor economic policies and corruption have plunged the economy into a downward spiral of unsustainable external indebtedness, poverty, and instability. Appropriating International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank “economic reform” and “governance” vocabulary—transparency, accountability, probity, and rule of law—Jammeh has used it disingenuously to deflect criticism and pressure by financial institutions for a return to democratic norms. Lt. Yahya Jammeh came to power on July 22, 1994, following a bloodless coup d’état against the Gambia’s founding president, Dawda K. Jawara, who had
ruled this tiny and poor West African country of 1.5 million for almost thirty years.3 Since coming to power, he has systematically used the state or subverted its role to control national resources for his benefit and those closest to him—“retired” military officers and handpicked businessmen. The end result has been national instability nearing collapse.
This article is concerned primarily with analyzing The Gambia’s major postcoup political and economic developments from 1994 to 2006 and the Armed Forces
Provisional Ruling Council’s (henceforth the Ruling Council) “transition” program back to “civilian” rule (1994–96). It also discusses the 2001 and 2006 presidential elections and argues that poor leadership and a lack of commitment to “democratization” negatively affected the economy, which also has taken a steady and dangerous slide toward collapse.
Methodologically, the article proceeds from a historical and chronological assessment that is embedded in international political economy presumptions and its application by McGowan to explain coups and conflict in West Africa, 1955–2004. The political economy approach utilized by McGowan derives in large measure from a neo Marxist/liberal continuum in which the world capitalist system, the centrality of the state, and class hegemony are taken as given. These foundational assumptions are
in stark contrast to the theories of “modernization” and “political development,” which were made popular by Huntington and Janowitz in the 1950s and 1960s. The first section of the article provides a theoretical overview and background politics in the first republic (1965–94), followed by a recap of the major contributory factors to the 1994 coup d’état. A detailed account and analyses of the transition program (1994–96) as well as the 2001 and 2006 presidential elections are undertaken in section two. Section three is an assessment of economic performance under Jammeh, and section four teases out theoretical implications of political economy approaches in the analyses of coups and instability in The Gambia and West Africa. In section five, I conclude.
Theoretical Framework
In his path-breaking study of West Africa from 1955–2004, McGowan used a political economy approach to analyze civil–military relations, coups, and conflicts
in Africa. McGowan contends, while West Africa’s downward spiral is primarily caused by its peripheral political economies and the selfish behavior of many of its leaders—both civilian and military—the failure to reform global trade in agricultural commodities, primarily a failure by the world system’s G-7 core powers, is the major indirect cause of the region’s discontents because it condemns West Africa to a continued trajectory of poverty, peripherality and political instability.4 The importance of the military in the politics and economics of West African states can hardly be overstated. Almost three decades ago, Luckham argued that the military was “Africa’s most important political institution.”5 In the 1990s, Welch also argued that the armed forces remain primary political actors in most states, despite growing democratization in Africa.6 In 2000, N’Diaye opined that despite a changed international system built around ideals of “democracy” and “the rule of law,” the military is still a key player in the politics of African states.7 Houngnikpo put it bluntly: “While credit to economic and political reforms went solely to civil-society, it is a fact that no African country democratizes without the consent, either tacit or explicit of the military.”8 Conteh-Morgan also maintained that the military’s reliance on force and repression as the basic instrument of both governance and political arbitration constituted a major obstacle to democratization in Africa.9
Using McGowan’s earlier characterizations of the Gambia and Africa as points of departure, the article is built around his central proposition that an “elected autocrat in The Gambia condemns it to a trajectory of poverty, peripherality and political instability,” hence the title of the article.
President Yahya Jammeh, a soldier turned presidential candidate, engineered the transition program as well as the 1996 and the 2001 presidential elections to ensure himself victory. He won a third 5-year term after holding “snap” presidential elections in September 2006 that were marred by violence and intimidation against the opposition and its supporters. The political campaigns that he ran and the type of elections that he conducted form a backdrop against which we can assess McGowan’s thesis regarding coups, poverty, and instability in West Africa and the Gambia, specifically. While the article is not a test of McGowan’s thesis per se, it could, nonetheless, provide tentative or anecdotal evidence about its explanatory power or lack thereof.
Four basic questions are distilled from the theoretical discussion and McGowan’s earlier proposition. First, after three presidential elections, has The Gambia finally turned away from its authoritarian past? Second, have succeeding elections improved the quality and fairness of the electoral process, as Lindberg contends, or have they merely served to entrench President Yahya Jammeh’s autocratic rule? Third, what impact has Jammeh’s autocratic rule had on the economy? Finally, what theoretical, empirical, and predictive value does McGowan’s political economy approach hold for The Gambia and West Africa? Before answers to these questions are offered, it is important to provide some background.
Politics in the First Republic: 1965–1994
Since gaining political independence from Britain on February 18, 1965, this Ministate of four thousand square miles and almost surrounded by its much larger neighbor, Senegal, enjoyed relative “peace” when the rest of the continent was mired in political instability. President Dawda Jawara, the country’s founding President, crafted modest development goals and a moderate foreign policy, and
adhered in principle to political democracy, human rights, and an open economy.10
The Gambia and Senegal: A Geographic Oddity
Over the years, these won him much respect both within The Gambia and internationally. The Gambia’s political history under President Jawara, however, resembled a plateau occasionally marred by volcanic eruptions. The general image as projected too often to the outside world was one of a ministate adept at survival, able in spite of its underdevelopment to run a multiparty democracy.
Notwithstanding its democratic tradition, The Gambia under President Jawara continued to have one of the lowest living standards in the continent and ranked 166th in the world out of 173 countries, according to the United Nations Development Program Human Development Index.11 Sembocracy is a word that has often been used by some of his critics to describe the Gambian political experience under President Jawara.12 Sembo is a Mandinka (majority ethnic group in the Gambia) word that means “power” or “force.” It has been used to characterize the careful concealment by the People’s Progressive Party Government of its most authoritarian practices under a veneer of democratic governance. A 1981 coup against President Jawara’s government was staged by elements in
the field force in alliance with civilians while he was away on a visit to Britain.13
Evoking a defense treaty between the Gambia and Senegal, President Jawara convinced President Abdou Diouf of Senegal to intervene militarily in order to restore
constitutional order, but at the cost of four hundred to five hundred lives.14 Following Senegal’s successful intervention, the two presidents agreed to the formation of the Senegambia Confederation.15 Characterized as a “marriage of confusion,” the confederation lasted eight years before a combination of both political and economic factors led to its collapse in 1989.16 Today, The Gambia National Army is the major standing institutional remnant of the Senegambia Confederation, which in a bloodless coup on July 22, 1994, ousted President Jawara from power. The Ruling Council was then established, headed by Lt. Yahya Jammeh, who at the time was younger than thirty years of age.
The 1994 Coup d’etat
Among the various reasons advanced for the 1994 coup d’état, the most important ones related to the complacency of the ruling People’s Progressive Party Government and endemic corruption.17 These factors inspired deep-seated dissatisfaction and disillusionment among the populace, especially its younger section, who became increasingly persuaded that the solution to their problems could be found only outside the framework of President Jawara’s democracy.18 Organizational military factors that included disparity in living conditions between senior Nigerian officers who headed the army and junior Gambian officers was a major source of discontent, as well. Individual ambition, frustration, and dissatisfaction also arose among the junior officers, who perceived their opportunities for advancement limited by the promotion of Nigerian officers to positions of power.19 An indirect cause of the coup lay,
however, in the perennial state of instability in the subregion as well as “contagion” and “reference group” effects of the Strasser-led coup in Sierra Leone.20 Located in the periphery of the global capitalist economy, these countries exhibit weak state structures, which become tools in the hands of civilian or military autocrats to extract rent. These rent-seeking states and the authoritarian structures they spawn make them coup prone.
Similar to other coups in the subregion, the 1994 coup against President Jawara generated considerable excitement and high expectations, especially among Gambian youth. Under the chairmanship of self-promoted Captain Yahya Jammeh, the Ruling Council promised to restore “true democracy,” “transparency,” and “accountability” in government. Chairman Jammeh charged that President Jawara had presided over a system that was riddled with corruption and that as “soldiers with a difference,” they
would protect human rights and govern under the rule of law.
In the end, combined western sanctions came into effect in November 1994, following an alleged coup attempt in which thirty soldiers were summarily executed. In response, the European Union froze all balance of payments support, followed by the suspension of all but humanitarian aid from the United States and Japan, pending a return to democratic rule. A British Foreign Office and Scandinavian government’s “travel advisory” in November, warning their citizens of the Gambia’s volatile political situation, destroyed the tourist industry, the country’s main source of foreign
exchange. Ultimately, the Alliance for Patriotic Re-orientation and Construction Party Government was forced to cut a four-year transition program back to civilian rule to
two, before which Captain Jammeh resigned his commission.
Transition Program to Civilian Rule: 1994–96
In Africa of the 1990s, autocratic leaders, both military and civilian, used several “transition” models to move their authoritarian polities to multiparty political systems.
These included the “national conference,” “guided democratization,” “co-opted democratization” and the “authoritarian reaction” models.21 The latter, which best
approximates the Gambia’s transition program, entails the use of state-sponsored violence against proponents of democracy to preserve the status quo. In this case, the
incumbent leader conducts elections that are neither free nor fair, with the intent of stealing the votes. The promotion of ethnic tensions to divide the opposition and intimidate the general population is often one of the hallmarks of this model. After “winning” the election, the leader subsequently seeks to silence the opposition and the press through such varied means as imprisonment, exile, and in some extreme
instances, assassinations.22 This state of affairs is inherently unstable, and as we shall see, it engendered a poor governance and macroeconomic environment, which precipitated a cycle of repression, poor economic performance, and incipient instability. Let me elaborate.
After a month-long nationwide consultative exercise from May to June 1995 by the National Consultative Committee, a draft constitution was drawn and in August of the same year, a civic education panel was appointed. By December, Chairman Jammeh appointed an eight-person Provisional Independent Electoral Commission to conduct presidential, national assembly, and local government elections. From all indications, it appeared that the Ruling Council had established in good faith a transition framework back to civilian rule. Thereafter, troubling signs began to crop up that placed the transition program and the regime’s commitment to it in question.23
A case in point was the restoration of the death penalty and the passage of Decree 45, which gave powers of search and seizure to national security personnel. Specifically,
Decree 45 was intended to muzzle the press and targeted journalists for systematic harassment, torture, detention, and deportation. In February (seven months before the
September 1996 presidential election), the Ruling Council passed twin Decrees 70 and 71. Decree 70 required individuals to execute D100,000 (US$10,000) to establish a newspaper, and Decree 71 required existing newspapers to pay a similar amount or face closure. These decrees were denounced by domestic and international human
rights organizations alike.24 In fact, the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs closed its offices in Banjul in protest over what its officials perceived as a lack of regime commitment to “free and fair” elections. In a tersely worded response, Chairman Jammeh threatened, “If the Ruling Council refused to hold elections for a thousand years, no one can do any thing about it and anyone against it will go six feet deep.”25 This would become the mantra of Chairman Jammeh and his Ruling Council.
The transition program was placed under further doubt when in February 1996, some rural women’s groups held a peaceful demonstration in Banjul in support of a “no elections” agenda. The Ruling Council’s intentions of conducting free and fair elections were once more put in doubt when on April 12, 1996 (two months before the scheduled June presidential elections), it postponed them by six weeks, the reason being the European Union’s alleged failure to underwrite, in a timely fashion, the election bill. Thereupon, a hastily organized referendum was held over the draft Constitution.26
Referendum over the New Constitution
The draft constitution was adopted in a referendum on August 7, 1996. The new Constitution provides for the separation of powers, lowered the voting age from 21
to 18 years, established the post of ombudsman, and guarantees civil and political liberties and press freedoms. Despite these guarantees, however, the adopted constitution is fundamentally flawed. For instance, when the Ruling Council seized power in 1994, it made much of the fact that the 1970 constitution had no term limits for the President, as a result of which former President Jawara remained in power for almost thirty years. In spite of popular expressions for such limits to the Constitution
Review Commission, the term limits clause was expunged from the constitution. In addition, the Gambia Bar Association, as well as many Gambians, endorsed a forty-year age requirement for the presidency rather than the thirty-year minimum in the 1970 Constitution. Notwithstanding this popular demand, the new constitution
retained the thirty-year age minimum. The adopted constitution also disqualified from seeking the presidency persons who have been “compulsorily retired,” “terminated,” or “dismissed” from public office or have been found liable by a commission of inquiry of “misconduct,” “negligence,” “corruption,” or “improper behavior.” This was a deliberate effort by the Ruling Council to eliminate public officers feared to have political ambitions.27
Subsequently, on August 12, 1996, Chairman Jammeh banned the three main opposition parties, the ex-president, and almost all of his ex-ministers from all-political activity for periods ranging from five to twenty years. The only precoup party that was not banned was the People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism, a progressive but poorly financed party. On August 17, Colonel Yahya Jammeh resigned his commission and declared his candidature for the presidency.
Then soldier-turned-presidential-candidate Jammeh immediately launched the Alliance for Patriotic and Re-orientation Construction Party (henceforth the Construction Party) and began an “official” countrywide tour before the Provisional Independent Electoral Commission declared the official campaign period open.
Political Campaigning
The official political campaign period was scheduled for seventeen days (September 9–24, 1996) before the presidential election now scheduled for September
26. Candidate Jammeh pleaded with the electorate for the continuance of his development program and to assist him in ridding the country of corruption. He skillfully evoked the excesses of the deposed civilian politician to enhance his appeal with the rural, urban poor and youth. The only serious challenger to Jammeh was Ousainou Darboe, the United Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. Formed shortly before the 1996 presidential elections, Darboe’s United Democratic Party enjoyed considerable support from the banned politicians and their parties. However, this cost him considerably at the polls, because he was seen to be too closely associated with the old guard and its interests. Nevertheless, he mounted a strong campaign and accused Jammeh of intimidation, corruption, and waste. He rekindled charges of a cover-up over the death of the former finance minister Ousman “Korro” Ceesay, who died mysteriously in June 1995. The two remaining presidential candidates were Sidia Jatta, for People’s Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism, and Hamat Bah, who stood for the National Redemption Party. None could match Jammeh’s war chest, and Dr. Lamin Bojang’s candidacy for the People’s Democratic Party folded due to financial difficulties.
Presidential and National Assembly Election Results
The transition to “civilian rule” ended on September 26, 1996, after 26 months of military rule. It culminated in the election of retired Colonel Yahya Jammeh as the second president of the second republic. Jammeh of the Construction Party won 56 percent of the vote as opposed to 35 percent of the vote won by Darboe of the United
Democratic Party. Darboe’s refusal to accept the election results because “they did not appear to reflect the wishes of the Gambian electorate” and similar concerns raised
by the Commonwealth and the EU tainted President-elect Jammeh’s victory celebrations.
On January 2, 1997, in spite of earlier opposition party threats to boycott them, the national assembly elections were held. The Construction Party won thirty-three
seats to the combined opposition total of twelve seats in the new forty-eight member National Assembly. With four additional members nominated to the assembly by
President-elect Jammeh, the Construction Party regime had complete control of this national body.28
In sum, a plethora of malpractices affected the credibility of both the transition program and the presidential elections. The Ruling Council established the rules and controlled the transition totally in its favor. It then proceeded to doctor the constitution to engineer the outcomes of both the referendum and presidential elections. The run-up to the presidential elections was also marred by violence, intimidation, and electoral malpractices that were worrisome to domestic and international monitors alike. In the end, both the legal and political processes were manipulated precisely to suit the political aspirations of Chairman Jammeh. The Gambia’s transition program parallels both the expectations and predictions of the authoritarian reaction model, as President Jammeh used the state apparatus as well as its financial resources and media
outlets to “win.” He also used the state’s security apparatus to repress, intimidate, and brutalize opposition leaders and used the constitution to eliminate opposition and threats to his self-succession goals. These practices by Jammeh appear to be consistent with McGowan’s analysis regarding peripherality and consequent competition to retain power for short-term economic goals.
The period from 1997 to 2000 saw the further entrenchment of an authoritarian state. The Gambia National Army remained without doubt President Jammeh’s most important political constituency. As Commander in Chief, he has kept a close grip on its leadership, promoting some and dismissing others to secure the loyalty of top brass army officers. He was as a result able to weather alleged coup attempts in July 1997, November 1996, January 1995, and November 1994. Many Gambians believe that these alleged coups were staged presumably by Jammeh himself in order to eliminate his perceived enemies and threats to his regime. On a day-to-day basis, the
National Intelligence Agency and the police force guaranteed him overwhelming control over the state apparatus and the country’s political life.29 President Jammeh also maintained overwhelming control of the National Assembly, and the party remained under his control, with no real room for debate within its leadership. This made the political terrain inherently unstable, as rumors of coups and countercoups saturated the political landscape, which made Jammeh extremely paranoid.
Another alleged planned coup was foiled in January 2000, which resulted in shootings in the capital, Banjul, and the death of one alleged ringleader. After the alleged attempted coup, the Jammeh regime took a particularly dramatic authoritarian character. In April 2000, security forces opened fire on a student demonstration, killing fourteen people. The students were protesting the slowness of the authorities in bringing to trial an unidentified security officer for the alleged rape of a schoolgirl and in prosecuting firemen accused of torturing to death a student in Brikama.30
In late 2000, the Indemnity Act was passed by the National Assembly, allowing the President to grant amnesty to any member of the security forces accused of misconduct
during a riot or a state of public emergency. The law was backdated to cover the April 2000 student killings.31
Two months later, the United Democratic Party opposition leader, Darboe, together with twenty-four other party members, was charged with murder after clashes between
regime supporters and a United Democratic Party delegation resulted in the death of a government supporter. To many observers, the move was seen as an attempt by
President Jammeh to prevent Darboe from standing in the 2001 presidential election.32
The 2001 Presidential Elections
On July 22, 2001, the Commonwealth forced President Jammeh to lift Decree 89’s ban on parties in advance of the presidential balloting set for that October. Under this
measure, the three major political parties dating from before the coup had been barred from political activity for periods ranging from five to twenty years. The three were the People’s Progressive Party of former President Jawara, Sheriff Mustapha Dibba’s National Convention Party, and Assan Musa Camara’s Gambia People’s Party. The
death of Decree 89 elicited reactions ranging from jubilation to condemnation. It also created expectations that a coalition of opposition political parties could form to
defeat Jammeh. These hopes were not realized. For a variety of reasons that ranged from irreconcilable ideological differences to personal feuds and ambitions, the opposition leaders failed to rally their several parties around the larger goal of defeating Jammeh. In the end, there were five presidential candidates, including the incumbent.
Ousainou Darboe carried the banner for the so-called limited coalition formed by the United Democratic Party, the People’s Progressive Party, and the Gambia Peoples
Party, while Sheriff Dibba led the National Convention Party. Hamat Bah ran on a National Redemption Party ticket, and Sidia Jatta stood for People’s Democratic
Organization for Independence and Socialism.
Already enjoying advantages accruing from both personal and state-owned resources, Jammeh ran a vigorous campaign based on his seven-year record of promoting
“development” and building new infrastructure. As in 1996, he again dismissed Darboe, the limited coalition’s presidential candidate, as a sinister front for the deposed
People’s Progressive Party Government, which Jammeh charged was bent on returning ex-President Jawara to power. Darboe countered with charges of his own, claiming that under Jammeh, the country had suffered increases in corruption, murder, and poverty and that public accountability and transparency had declined. Yet the limited coalition had trouble outlining concrete measures to remedy these ills.
Among the major preelection developments was the reinstatement of Gabriel Roberts as head of the Independent Electoral Commission. After the 1997 National Assembly elections, Jammeh had dismissed Roberts for alleged incompetence. His return, many felt, foreshadowed the unfolding of an elaborate scheme to engineer the 2001 presidential election. On Election Day, Roberts reversed one of his earlier rulings and declared that one had merely to show a voter’s card in order to cast a ballot.
(Roberts had previously ruled that only people whose names appeared on the main voter registers would be allowed to vote.) Roberts’s last-minute self-reversal made it
easy for an estimated forty thousand to seventy-five thousand non-Gambians— including large numbers of Jammeh’s Jola coethnics from the neighboring Senegalese
province of Casamance—to vote in the presidential election. It was alleged by the opposition and reported in the press that the campus of Gambia College alone harbored some thirty thousand Senegalese Jolas, all of whom were primed to vote in different parts of the country. While the exact number of non-Gambian voters is difficult
to verify, Senegalese police did confiscate Gambian voter’s cards from several Jolas who were crossing from the Gambia back into Casamance Province. President Jammeh beat his main challenger, Darboe, by a convincing, albeit reduced, margin. He polled 52.9 percent of ballots cast, giving him enough to avoid a run-off, while Darboe polled 32.6 percent. Underlining President Jammeh’s win, two of the five presidential candidates, Sheriff Dibba and Sidia Jatta, failed to win on their home turf. The other presidential candidate, Hamat Bah, captured just one district and 7.8 percent of the poll.33 Campaign and party structures had earlier given off a whiff of doom from the start.
Even in areas where Jammeh was not expected to do well because of dissatisfaction over skyrocketing food prices, youth unemployment, and his government’s poor handling
of a bumper groundnut harvest, he enjoyed a commanding edge. It was not long, however, before evidence of serious vote fraud and the Independent Electoral Commission’s complicity therein surfaced to taint, yet again, Jammeh’s victory.
Less than a week after conceding defeat, Darboe denounced Roberts and the Independent Electoral Commission for their “inept and corrupt” handling of voter registration and for an election process in which non-Gambians voted. As proof, Darboe presented to the press a Senegalese who possessed both a Senegalese citizen’s identity card and a Gambian voter’s card. Meanwhile, the Independent Electoral Commission’s own published results showed that 7,877 ballots were cast in Niani constituency-an extraordinary turnout considering that Niani has only 7,464 registered voters.
Similarly, former National Assembly minority leader Kemeseng Jammeh (no relation to the President) pointed out the dramatic increases in vote counts from such
locales as Karantaba, where just 459 people voted in 1996 as compared to 1,331 in 2001, and Soma, which in 1996 had two polling places and 1,408 votes but in 2001
tallied 3,254 votes at four polling places. What these strange figures reveal, charged Darboe, is the Independent Electoral Commission’s involvement in “extra-registration”
of non-Gambians who were then sent to various constituencies to vote.34
Perhaps the most significant event associated with the election was not its outcome but rather the lifting of Decree 89. The end of this blatantly “illiberal” measure represented
clear if tentative progress toward a restoration of democratic processes. In 1996, the opposition had been forced to labor under Decree 89’s restrictions on parties
and had had barely three weeks in which to campaign for the September 26 election that year. In 2001, by contrast, the opposition had almost three months to campaign
and enjoyed greater access than before to state-owned media outlets. Notwithstanding, Jammeh controlled the process, just as he had done in 1996.
Post-2001 Presidential Elections
The immediate post-2001 election period was characterized by deepening authoritarianism. President Jammeh resorted to force and intimidation to silence his critics. Citing concerns about alleged lack of “professionalism,” he dismissed civil servants deemed unsympathetic to his reelection bid or his policies. In doing so, he was returning to one of his favorite tactics for keeping himself in power. Jammeh also amended the constitution to do away with a second-round run-off option in response to his reduced margin of victory over Darboe in 2001.
It was passage of the Media Bill by a Construction Party–led majority in the National Assembly in May 2002, however, that exposed further the deep authoritarian
character of the regime.35 The Media Bill gave the regime and its National Intelligence Agency unchecked powers to visit terror on journalists and all those who oppose, or are perceived to oppose, the president and his policies. Ousman Sillah, a veteran human rights attorney, was shot in December 2003 and left for dead but survived his wounds and now lives in exile in the United States. Deyda Hydara, a newspaper editor, was not so lucky. He was shot dead on December 16, 2004, while two women coworkers sustained life-threatening injuries. Public domestic and international indignation was intense. As a result, Gambian journalists staged a peaceful demonstration on behalf of their fallen colleague.
Concerned about growing repression and Jammeh’s amendment of the constitution to a first-past-the-post electoral system, five major political parties, on January 17,
2005, signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the National Alliance for Democracy and Development (henceforth the Alliance for Democracy).36 The Alliance for Democracy broke up a year later, however, when Darboe, an executive member, resigned, alleging “insincerity” within its ranks.37 Halifa Sallah, the Alliance
for Democracy coordinator, was subsequently chosen as presidential candidate. Amid this political crisis, an alleged foiled coup on March 20, 2006, and its bloody aftermath
gripped the country.38
The alleged foiled coup shook the country and Jammeh’s confidence to the core. Spearheaded by the brass of the Gambia National Army’s (renamed the Gambia Armed Forces), the alleged foiled coup was the culmination of the Gambia’s deepening political, economic, and social crises under President Yahya Jammeh. It exposed the internal cleavages within the army as well as President Jammeh’s dwindling support within it. The coup revealed yet another crisis, however. This time, it was a crisis of confidence in the political process and disappointment over the splintering of the Alliance for Democracy.
To the military brass and their civilian co-conspirators, the break-up of the five-party political alliance ended what little hope there was to dislodge Jammeh in the forthcoming October 2006 presidential elections.39 The wave of arrests following the alleged foiled coup has since subsided but without lingering allegations of “disappearances” and killings of key coup leaders, their civilian co-conspirators, and
several top security officers. Daba Marena, then head of the National Intelligence Agency, has allegedly been killed. Other alleged coup plotters were said to have been brutally tortured to extract confessions, which they read on state-controlled radio and television. They have all been charged with treason and await trial amid personal insecurity, which has enveloped the country. President Jammeh continues
to use state-sponsored violence, press intimidation, and killings to maintain power, as he has over the years.
On June 2, 2006, the Independent Electoral Commission’s chairman, Ndondey Njie, moved the presidential elections from its previously anticipated October 18 date to September 22, 2006, instead. He justified the new September date change to the fact that, that year, the Muslim month of Ramadan was in October. The “snap”
presidential election certainly aided the incumbent president, because the financially strapped opposition parties not only lagged behind in their election preparations but also had little time to launch effective campaigns. President Jammeh also benefited politically from the June’s 2006 government-sponsored International Roots Festival, closely followed by the July 1–2 African Union Summit in Banjul and the July 22 celebrations of the 1994 coup, now dubbed a “revolution.” These events clearly boosted President Jammeh’s 2006 reelection bid and tilted an already uneven playing field further in his favor.
The September 2006 “Snap” Election
Predictably, on Friday, September 22, 2006, President Jammeh’s ruling Construction Party handily defeated presidential contenders, Ousainou Darboe of the United
Democratic Party and Halifa Sallah of the Alliance for Democracy. Voter turnout was estimated at 59 percent, considerably lower than the 89.71 percent in the 2001
presidential election. The low voter turnout was due primarily to voter apathy and very probably anger over opposition party disarray and the subsequent Alliance for
Democracy break-up.
Despite instances of documented electoral irregularities, which included crossborder voting by President Jammeh’s coethnic Jolas from neighboring Casamance, as was the case in 2001’s presidential polling, it appears Jammeh would have, nonetheless, won the presidential vote. Opposition party discord and the consequent
disintegration of the five-party alliance aided Jammeh’s victory considerably. It seems probable that even with a higher voter tur