The rumours that President Adama Barrow is grooming Muhammed Jah, CEO of the QGroup to succeed him as the flag bearer of the National People’s Party (NPP) in the 2026 presidential election, had been making the rounds in this country for quite a while now; therefore, its publication by The Voice did not come out of the blue. While it makes very little sense to any reasonable person that Muhammed Jah, who has never been known in active politics, would suddenly accept being proposed as a presidential candidate for any party, but it also makes little sense for President Barrow to get not only so infuriated by such a publication of the rumours but that he would threaten to go to court over it. Of course, we expect The Voice or any other serious media house not to have stooped so low by publishing such baseless rumours as a news item, even though, by contacting members of the NPP, they did the right thing by getting both sides of the story. Therefore, it certainly does not warrant any court action as being contemplated by President Barrow. As head of state and father of the nation, we expect him to be more tolerant of criticism, and certainly, speculating about his possible successor as the next presidential candidate for the NPP should not definitely have led him to contemplate going to court over the matter. This is an everyday occurrence in politics all over the world and there is absolutely no justification for anyone to make a case out of it. Indeed, if anyone were to get angry over the publication, I think it should have been Muhammed Jah instead of President Barrow, because as a businessman, associating him with such partisan politics should not be in his interest. Virtually on a daily basis, for instance, we are hearing about Mayor Talib Ahmed Bensouda of the Kanifing Municipal Council (KMC) planning to run as the United Democratic Party (UDP) presidential candidate in 2026, but despite all the denials, he has never threatened any court action over it. He simply treats it as part of realpolitik. Therefore, it is quite hard to understand why President Barrow would get so crossed over the rumours that he would contemplate taking legal action. What is even more annoying is why the police should also get involved in the matter when President Barrow has already contacted his lawyer, treating it as a civil matter. Why should the same case be treated both as a civil and criminal matter? This police involvement in the matter smacks of the Yahya Jammeh era behavior of the police when they had allowed themselves to be used as mere puppets of the executive. Where does that leave the TRRC mantra; ‘Never Again’? President Barrow had been known to be quite tolerant of media criticism, especially compared to his predecessor, Yahya Jammeh. One would therefore wonder whether anything has changed. We just heard him at the UN General Assembly in New York bragging about his government’s respect for media freedom and not having a single journalist or human rights activist in detention. “I am happy to report that, since 2017, the Gambia has neither recorded a single political prisoner, nor has any journalist or human rights activist been jailed,” he said. He however seems to have forgotten the arrest and detention of Madi Jobarteh, Bora Sissawo, Bakary Mankajang and a few others, simply for expressing their opinions about issues of national concern. In fact, while he was addressing the General Assembly, both the author of the contentious article in The Voice, and its proprietor, Justice Darboe and Musa Sheriff respectively were in police custody and Justice Darboe was subsequently charged with publishing false information, thus contradicting most of what he said there. This decision by President Barrow to go to court over the publication of such a mere rumour has rekindled questions about whether his advisers are really worth their salt. Obviously, any seasoned adviser would have pointed out to him that going to court over such a trivial matter was neither in his personal interest nor that of his regime. In fact, by taking such an action over this trivial matter, he is not only raising the profile of The Voice newspaper but he is also causing great damage to the reputation of his government. This is no doubt going to be negatively reflected in the next World Press Freedom Index in which the Gambia had not been doing badly. Sometimes it takes a little ill-advised action to cause damage to a leader’s reputation, and President Barrow should be weary of such a possibility in this instance.
