By Omar Bah
The ruling NPP-Grand Alliance has branded last weekend’s opposition coalition meeting at The Kairaba Beach Hotel as a “congregation of the desperate few,” arguing that the talks exposed fatal divisions and that President Adama Barrow faces no credible alternative in the December 2026 election.
On Saturday, the main opposition Untied Democratic Party and six other parties held talks on a possible alliance.
But in a statement yesterday, the National Coordinator of the NPP Grand Alliance Mai Ahmad Fatty said the alliance responds “with the composure of an administration that governs with results and not rhetoric.”
For a start, according to Fatty, ten opposition parties boycotted that very meeting at The Kairaba.
“A meeting from which the majority abstained is not a coalition, but a congregation of the desperate few, who gathered more for optics than for governance,” he said.
He said one major participant has already declared that any coalition is acceptable “but only if its candidate is anointed to lead,” which is an ultimatum dressed in the language of unity.
Another party at the same table, Fatty added, “has publicly and vehemently rejected precisely that position.”
“Their mutual antagonism is not a private disagreement. It is a matter of public record, and it renders their coalition talks not merely unconvincing, but also structurally incoherent,” Fatty said.
He argued that the parties are driven by “personal ambition” not national vision.
“Parties that cannot trust each other in a conference room cannot be trusted with the governance of a Republic.”
Mai Fatty added that the Kairaba meeting followed the “spectacular implosion” of an earlier tripartite deal that collapsed the same day it was signed, after members disowned it on WhatsApp.
“The recent Kairaba meeting is therefore not a new beginning. It is an acknowledgement of prior failure. Had the trivergence succeeded, there would have been no rational basis for a new coalition mechanism,” he said.
“This cycle of announcement, collapse, and reconvening confirms the structural incapacity of these actors to build anything enduring together.”
Fatty contrasted the opposition’s disunity with what he called Barrow’s “measurable, transformative achievement.”
He said Mr Barrow has accomplished almost ninety per cent national electricity coverage reaching both banks of the River Gambia and expanded education infrastructure and access.
Fatty also referenced road connectivity that “transforms the nation into a city state.”
“The government’s healthcare infrastructure is also bringing services closer to underserved communities, women and youth empowerment through policy, enterprise support, and institutional inclusion and consistent economic growth generating employment and investment.”
Fatty argued that there is more than sixty-five percent access to safe potable drinking water.
He went on: “President Barrow’s Gambia is a democracy without political prisoners, a rare distinction in this sub-region and beyond. No journalist has been convicted over an entire decade of governance. The press is free. The independence of the Judiciary has been strengthened and is now widely acknowledged. The rule of law is not a campaign slogan. It is the operating principle of this administration.”
“There is no credible alternative to President Adama Barrow for 2026 elections,” Fatty said.
“The opposition offers not any credible programme, but a grievance. They do not present a vision, but an aspiration for power, unaccompanied by the capacity to exercise it responsibly or collectively.”
He said voters in December 2026 will compare “what has been built against what is merely promised” and weigh “a decade of peace, economic prosperity, stability, infrastructure, and democratic consolidation against the spectacle of agreements that collapse before the ink is dry.”
“We are absolutely confident in their total defeat, and very certain about our inevitable victory. Even they admit this is not in doubt,” Fatty said.
He added that President Barrow remains, as the record confirms and the people will affirm the inevitable choice for “our Republic’s continued progress.”
