FROM MY ARCHIVES:THE DEFEAT OF A TYRANT-LESSONS FOR NIGERIAN POLITICIANS
Gambia’s President, in Power 22 Years, Loses Election
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By Jaime Yaya Barry and Dionne Searcey
BANJUL,
Gambia — Yahya Jammeh, the president of Gambia, has been defeated in
his bid for re-election, according to results made public on Friday. It
is a stunning turn for a nation that has lived for more than two decades
under what human rights groups have described as a repressive regime.
Adama Barrow, a real estate company owner, was declared the winner a day after voters cast ballots, in an upset victory that astonished observers.
In
a concession speech broadcast on state television on Friday night, Mr.
Jammeh, one of Africa’s most eccentric leaders, calmly accepted his
loss.
“I told you, Gambians, that I
will not question the outcome of the results and will accept it,” he
said. “I did not wish to contest or find out why they did not vote for
me. I leave that with God.”
Mr. Jammeh’s whereabouts on Friday was unknown, and speculation was rampant that he had fled the country.
People celebrated in the streets, calling it a new era for the West African nation.
“We
have our country back,” shouted Modu Ceesay, a taxi driver who took his
shirt off and waved it furiously over his head. “This is our country,
and now we have it.”
Mr.
Jammeh’s defeat is a rare turn for the crop of longtime African leaders
who have amassed so much power — and often, wealth — through decades of
incumbency that they sometimes manage to stay in office until death.
Other so-called leaders for life have interfered with elections to cling
to power. Mr. Jammeh had himself been accused of keeping power by
rigging elections in the past.
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And
so it came as a surprise that in this tiny sliver of a country, the
smallest on continental Africa, voters managed to oust a strongman who
has reigned for 22 years in a government that prosecuted and jailed
critics, some of whom wound up dead, and sent thousands of fearful
citizens into exile.
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After
more than 24 hours of an internet and phone blackout, networks lit up
Friday morning in the nation, which has a population just under two
million, as the news that Mr. Jammeh was trailing in the vote count
began to trickle out. On the streets in Gambia, men took off their
shirts in celebration, pounding on passing cars. One yelled repeatedly,
“Today we are free!”
Mr. Jammeh
seized power in a coup in 1994, and he has become known for eccentric
behavior that included claiming to be able to cure AIDS with herbs,
prayer and a banana. He has been denounced by human rights groups for threatening to behead gay people, ordering so-called sorcerers to be hunted and killed, and arresting and prosecuting journalists and supporters of the opposition.
“It
is the birth of a new Gambia where we can together as people raise our
fists to the sky and say ‘never again shall we experience
dictatorship,’” said Sheriff Bojang Jr., a Gambian journalist who has
lived in exile in Dakar, Senegal, for 15 years.
Mr.
Barrow, a real estate agent and former security guard at a London
department store, is an accidental presidential candidate. He was thrust
into the position after members of his party were either arrested or
died in prison this year. Supporters describe him as an unassuming
businessman.
Yet he managed to do
what no other opposition candidate has done in recent elections: bring
various groups together to support him. His coalition of opposition
groups jelled in the final days of the campaign as enthusiasm swept the streets
of Banjul, the capital. People gathered by the hundreds for peaceful
protests, crying out for the end to what they said was an oppressive
government.
“What happened is unity,”
said Jeffrey Smith, founder of Vanguard Africa, a political consultancy
and nonprofit group that supported Mr. Barrow in the campaign. “That is
precisely what is needed to take down highly entrenched regimes.”
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