By Sheriff Bojang
Adama Barrow, the candidate of the National People’s Party has won the 2021 presidential election. The incumbent polled 457,519 votes representing 53.2 per cent of the 859,567 valid votes cast. A total 962,159 Gambians were issued voter cards.
Mr Barrow had 219,266 more votes than his closest rival Ousainu Darboe of United Democratic Party who got 238,253 votes representing 27.7 percent of votes cast.
In third place is Mamma Kandeh of the Gambia Democratic Congress who got 105,902 votes representing 12 per cent of the votes. In the 2016 presidential election, Kandeh got 89,768 votes but with a higher 17.7 per cent. He contested this election in alliance with a faction of the former ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction party and Gambia Action Party.
Halifa Sallah of the People’s Democratic Organisation for Independence and Socialism came fourth with 32,435 votes representing 3.8 percent. Mr Sallah announced he would no longer stand for election to the office of president.
Lawyer Essa Faal who made his name at the recently concluded Truth, Reconciliation & Reparations Commission and stood as the only independent candidate in the election, got 17,206 votes representing 2 per cent.
Coming sixth is Abdoulie Jammeh of the National Unity Party. The popular former head of the Gambia Civil Aviation Authority polled 8,252 or 1 percent of the vote.
The final results were endorsed by the NPP and PDOIS. Essa Faal, the UDP, GDC and NUP did not. Faal and at least two of the parties have publicly stated they rejected the results and will be investigating “a number of issues” raised by their voting agents.
Barrow swept the three constituencies in the capital, the home of Faal, as well as the native constituencies of his other contenders – Jimara (Kandeh), Serekunda (Sallah), Brikama (Abdoulie), and Bansang (Darboe).
However, Kandeh and his Yahya Jammeh-backed APRC faction trumped him in the Fonis where he polled 12,115 votes against Kandeh’s 18,539.
In the last presidential election in 2016, Barrow got 227,708 or 43.3 percent against Yahya Jammeh’s 39.9 percent. In the preceding 2011 and 2006 votes, Jammeh trounced Darboe by winning 71.5 and 67.3 per cent of the votes respectively.
(See full results opposite page).
