Dear editor,
There is a great deal of goodness in this country. The men of goodwill abound. One can find them everywhere. But the question that comes to their lips is ever the same. What shall we do? How does one go about solving the problem? The men of good will have formed and should continue to strengthen this mighty legion, known as the Coalition. But they need direction.
Someone must inject into them the germs of enterprise and democratic service, to start the epidemic of progress. A truly great country awaits a leader.
Adama Barrow was a United Democratic Party (UDP) member and the party’s candidate to the Coalition’s Primaries, which he won. In fact, some delegates of other parties voted for him because of his UDPness. One of the Coalition’s important requirements was that, the winning candidate must resign from his party to be eligible for the Coalition’s candidacy and eventual sponsorship. This is how the Adama Barrow story unfolded to become an accidental, questionably lettered President of the sovereign Republic of The Gambia.
We would be contradicting ourselves if we are to lay the blame for the state of the country and the ungrateful acts of the President on any single individual or party. If the country is not moving and the President is allowed to go on chest-beating (claiming that it took him only three months to become President as against 22 years of others – is plain child talk and should not be condoned), degrading and insulting, it is largely the coalition fault. Furthermore, Adama Barrow must be made to understand that, if symbols and/or animals were allowed to contest elections, Ousainu Darboe’s Professional WIG, GOWN or house DOG would have defeated Yahya Jammeh in the 2016 Presidential Election.
Adama Barrow MUST further be reminded that, he was a Coalition candidate and won the Presidential election on a Coalition ticket, for a transition period. The coalition must therefore be in a position to have a solid say in what Adama Barrow does. If the Coalition is to survive and remain relevant, it must assume this leadership role through a new leader who must come from the Party with the highest number of Representatives/Councillors in the National Assembly and Area Council level. In our specific case, we have to acknowledge that the UDP is the most significant party in the country as well in the Coalition and, therefore, it must be assigned this leadership role.
Whilst we have a President of the Republic without a political base, there is, in deed, a President without a governing party. What is evident in the country is that, the UDP has the highest number of Representatives in the National Assembly as well as Councillors in the Area/Regional Councils.
Furthermore, UDP has the capacity to make this country governable or ungovernable. For the Coalition to be relevant, effective and worth listening to, it must function through UDP leadership to be able to effectively TAME the national leadership and provide us some achievable/accountable sense of direction. Greed and spite will not help.
And until we are convinced that the country’s present situation is the Coalition’s fault and its responsibility, nothing will improve. There is no better way to keep an organisation stagnant than by ignoring numbers and spending one’s time blaming others.
A concerned citizen.
