The Gambia is not short on politics. We are short on decency.
Every week brings a new insult traded across party lines, a new conspiracy theory dressed as analysis, a new attempt to turn opponents into enemies. Parliament sits, but debate often sinks to invective. Social media amplifies the loudest, not the wisest. We have built a political culture where humiliation passes for strategy and outrage substitutes for policy. This is unsustainable.
Political decency is not about being nice. It is about preserving the minimum conditions for a country to govern itself. Without it, nothing else works. Courts lose credibility. Elections become flashpoints. Young Gambians look at public life and choose exile over engagement.
Decency has three non-negotiables. We should enforce them now.
1. Separate the person from the policy. You can call a tax plan reckless but you cannot call the person who proposed it a traitor. Attack ideas, not ancestry, tribe, or faith. Once you dehumanise your opponent, you licence every abuse that follows.
2. Compete within the rules you swear to uphold. If you lose in court, accept it. If you win at the polls, govern for all regions, not just your strongholds. Democracy is not a game where the winner burns the field so no one else can play.
3. Tell the truth, especially when it’s inconvenient. Fabrication is the fastest route to indecency. When leaders spread deliberate lies about the economy, security, or each other, they make it impossible for citizens to make rational choices. A lie that wins a news cycle poisons a generation.
Last Saturday in Upper Niumi, a football final showed what this looks like in practice. Hon Omar Darboe sponsored the tournament. NPP NBR officials attended. Jays of Albreda won. The losing side collected their prize and went home. The referee’s whistle was final. No press conference accused him of bias. No supporters claimed the pitch was rigged. For two hours, Upper Niumi had what national politics lacks: clear rules, mutual respect, and results that stood.
If a District tournament can model that, what prevents the National Assembly, party headquarters, and cabinet from doing the same?
The stakes are not abstract. Indecent politics drove this country to the brink before. It filled prisons, forced citizens into exile, and left institutions hollowed out. We are still rebuilding. We cannot afford to relapse.
The Gambia’s problems — jobs, migration, drug abuse, a health system under strain — require hard bargaining and unpopular choices. Those choices will never be made if every disagreement becomes warfare.
So we say this to every party, every activist, every official: Your first duty is not to your base. It is to the space where your base and your opponents can coexist. Defend that space.
Decency is the discipline that keeps a small nation from tearing itself apart. Practice it. Demand it. And punish, at the ballot box, those who refuse.
Because a country without decency has no politics. It only has sides. And sides, eventually, go to war.
