By Lamino Lang Komma
There is a story about a battleship and a lighthouse that tells us about a massive naval ship navigating a dark, foggy night. In the distance, the lookout spotted a dim light ahead that was aligned directly with the ship’s path. The captain saw it as an incoming vessel and asked it to change course to avoid a collision. To the captain’s surprise, the reply asked him to change course instead. Naturally, the captain was infuriated and sent a signal that “I am a battleship; change your course!” The final unyielding response came back: “I am a lighthouse.”
Naturally, the battleship changes its course.
This story underlines the fact that principles, like the lighthouse, are constant, and we must align with them rather than trying to force them to change.
Talks about forming a coalition among the opposition have been promoted as the only pragmatic way to unseat the incumbent. In that regard, over the past four months, in their efforts to select a flag-bearer, most opposition factions have attempted to direct the narrative towards a candidate-led coalition within some power-sharing frameworks.
Just like the captain, the promoters are demanding that the largest political party should change its course for the sake of unity. Well, for UDP, unity without shared values and respect for democratic weight is a mathematical illusion.
Furthermore, UDP sees the proposed framework as designed to deliberately disadvantage the country’s largest opposition entity and is asking a 30-year-old political institution to capitulate to newly formed civil society groups and minor parties.
No wonder the UDP party leader clearly declared that the party will not sacrifice its foundational rules for a shortcut to State House. In other words, genuine leadership does not get blinded by the political fog of the moment.
This unwavering conviction elevates the party’s stance from mere political manoeuvring to a universal truth about political integrity. The party, thus, insisted that a true alliance must reflect democratic reality, noting that “the whole world over, the party with the majority is the one that leads” and summarizing a philosophy that has resonated massively across social media:
“If we are to fall, we will fall by our principle; if we are to win, we will win by our principle; if we are to survive, we will survive by our principle.”
The UDP chose the lonely, solid ground of principle over the shifting sands of political expediency. Within this landscape of structural exclusion, the UDP’s stance is best understood through this famous leadership parable of the battleship and the lighthouse.
In an era where political parties routinely compromise their values for power, the UDP has chosen to be a lighthouse – standing firm against the waves, proving that some principles are simply non-negotiable.
With a breath of fresh political air, the electorate is being offered a rare and refreshing alternative to opportunistic politics, one grounded in predictable, unshakeable values rather than desperate backroom dealings.
By rejecting an experimental formula designed to exploit its grassroots apparatus while denying its rightful mandate, the UDP has chosen to protect the integrity of the ballot box. Voters who believe in genuine democracy, equity, and institutional strength will rally behind this position, recognising that a victory built on the solid ground of principle is the only outcome capable of delivering lasting national stability and honest management of national resources.
Generally, it appears that the political formulas emerging from The Gambia’s opposition discourse are fundamentally experimental, routinely treating the electorate as guinea pigs for untested coalition structures. The 2016 model was the harbinger, and it failed.
The framework proposed for the 2026 presidential election repeats this pattern, focusing heavily on mechanisms that neutralise numerical strength rather than reflecting democratic reality. This consistent marginalisation of the country’s largest political entity suggests that these endless negotiations are less about equity, conviction, or democratic principles and more about a calculated strategy to circumvent a UDP-led government.
I hope that this declared principle, expressed with such unambiguous clarity by the UDP leadership, will bring the political manoeuvring to a close. It is time to hit the road and get the numbers, because numbers matter in a democratic electoral system.
As a senior member of the party once said, the UDP proverbial ladder to be used by others for climbing to the presidency is broken. Just thinking aloud.
