OPINION
By Cherno Baba Jallow
Subsequent to its comprehensive defeat in the 2021 presidential elections, the United Democratic Party (UDP) should have wasted no time identifying what had gone wrong. A quick review would have found several shortfalls in strategies, audience engagement and personnel. All organizations, political parties included, must revamp operations time and again, and particularly after a long period of slump. ‘’if you do not change direction,’’ the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu left us a cautionary tale, ‘’you may end up where you are going.’’
All things held constant, the UDP will enter the 2026 electoral scene unchastened by its past failures, and therefore, destined for the same campaign playbook of years gone by. The ‘’perennial candidate’’ is on another mission. The candidacy of Ousainou Darboe, long deprived of excitement and better understood under the Law of Diminishing Returns, has already driven deep fissures within the party. It used to be said, a few moons ago, that Darboe needed to be the presidential candidate again in order to keep the party intact. The current reality points to something else: a bumper-crop of resignations.
These resignations are a striking detour from the cohesion of the UDP as normally understood. Gambians weren’t used to seeing such exodus from the party’s ranks. This anomaly, fast approaching tumultuous levels, has unmasked what is unclear only to the unrepentant Darboe loyalists: there are serious doubts about the prospective fortunes of the UDP leader.
But the Darboe loyalists keep pushing the boundaries of irrational exuberance. They ‘’must’’ make him president. Many UDP supporters believe Darboe should be president because he ‘’suffered’’ for the country. He went through humiliation, intimidation and imprisonment. So, the voters are indebted to him for his ‘’sacrifices’’ and hardships during the dark years of the Jammeh dictatorship.
Almost 30 years ago, the UDP arrived on the political scene to serve as a defensive wall against an ascendant quasi-military dictatorship. The party helped delay, until it never materialized, former ruler Yahya Jammeh’s secret but cynical dream to turn The Gambia into a one-party dictatorship. The UDP helped keep the democratic option open until it almost gave up on it. Gave up, because it seemed all had been lost. Darboe was in jail. The democratic movement was in retreat. Had Gambians listened to some calls from the UDP to boycott the 2016 elections, history would have taken another course. (But Mama Kandeh and his GDC reassured Gambians about the ballot-box option.)
As Darboe remained in jail, his personality soared. He built a larger-than-life status primarily within his own party. The resultant Darboe fandom in the UDP, once fascinating, and sacrosanct to the party’s identity and continued growth, has now become an impediment to its rebirth. Like a fly in amber, the UDP is unable to move thanks mainly to its blind allegiance to one man. It is symptomatic of the culture in the party and a huge disservice to Gambians that young, capable and ideas-driven aspiring leaders have to prioritize one man over the priorities of the nation. They have failed to understand that there are limits to allegiance, especially when it involves the acquisition of democratic means to make amends for the wrongs in society.
It must be said that the UDP was once a political party, at its infancy, a few years into its adolescence and when it had a set of core objectives for the nation. But now it has turned into a cult driven by combustible passions and pent-up resentment. Ideas and changes have found the UDP an inhospitable climate to germinate because cults demand homogeneity, conformity and loyalty; they harbor a certain hostility towards criticism and contrarian views.
The UDP, or primarily those in-house members trapped in the illusion that the party cannot operate or succeed without Darboe, still don’t get what the rest of the electorate does: to be given the privilege of the presidency, ‘’suffering’’ for your country isn’t good enough. Among other tangibles, the voters must like you, too. Darboe continues to struggle in the likability arena. He still can’t grow a cross-over appeal; he remains a one-dimensional candidate. Why?
Perhaps, the voters just don’t naturally warm up to him because they see him as unyielding, ill-suited for the give-and-take of consensus politics, Or because they see an important omission in his political résumé: he has never held elective office (no leader of a major political party in The Gambia —- Jammeh was an exception —- has ever sought the presidency without having been first elected into office running some constituent matters somewhere. Or because they don’t like the quest to make him saintly, to pave his road to the presidency with pomp and pageantry and to make him powerful ever before the voters have handed him the instruments of democratic power.
It is incomprehensible, bizarre even, that almost 30 years of consecutive losses have not embarrassed or emboldened UDP members enough to demand accountability from Darboe. They can’t because their reverential treatment of their leader has rendered them incapable of reining him in. This is troubling, because if they cannot say NO to him now, how could they if he became president? The other segment of the electorate, aka, the Silent Majority, connected the dots a long time ago.
On Darboe’s losses, the UDP has many explanations: he was dealing with a brutal dictator; the elections were neither free nor fair; actually he won all of them including 2021; he was cheated. On the ongoing resignations: these were not real members; they were opportunists; good riddance. The American humorist Mark Twain had a response for such flippant talk: ‘’the more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.’’
The UDP will reach its full potential, revving on all cylindres. It will be a receptacle for contesting ideas and robust debates. And it will be a political party once again. But only when Darboe relinquishes his hypnotic leadership of it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Fatu Network’s editorial stance.
OPINION By Cherno Baba Jallow Subsequent to its comprehensive defeat in the 2021 presidential elections, the United Democratic Party (UDP) should have wasted no time identifying what had gone wrong. A quick review would have found several shortfalls in strategies, audience engagement and personnel. All organizations, political parties included, must revamp operations time and again, The Fatu Network
