By Kebeli Demba Nyima
One must marvel at the confidence with which Mr. Fadera wields surveys as if they were stone tablets brought down from Sinai. He parrots CepRass numbers with the air of a man convinced that political destiny can be foretold by a handful of respondents cornered in a marketplace. But politics, dear Hatab, is not a game of arithmetic alone; it is a science of structures, institutions, legitimacy, and above all, perception filtered through history.
To present a survey as gospel truth without interrogating its methodology is the height of amateurism. Political science, as even the most junior undergraduate will tell you, demands rigour. Sampling error, response bias, framing effects, all these determine whether a poll is social research or mere numerology. You speak of “accuracy” because CepRass has on occasion approximated results. That is not science; that is happenstance. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
And what is a survey, if not a snapshot of fleeting sentiments? Today’s mood is tomorrow’s mulch. Serious scholars employ triangulation, mixing historical voting behaviour, structural conditions, demographic shifts, and elite bargaining to build empirical arguments. Without such method, your commentary is not analysis but gossip, flattering to Barrow’s camp and frivolous to the reader’s intelligence.
Elections in The Gambia, Mr Fadera, are shaped less by sterile polling charts and more by ground mobilisation, patron-client networks, the institutional weaknesses of the Independent Electoral Commission, and the ever-present spectre of state capture. To ignore these factors is to confuse weather forecasts for climate science.
So, if you wish to lecture Ousainu Darboe on “introspection,” first learn to lecture yourself on methodological seriousness. Otherwise, your columns remain little more than parroted talking points, flattering to Barrow’s camp and frivolous to the reader’s intelligence.
The UDP’s turmoil is real, yes, but it will not be measured by CepRass’ clipboards. It will be measured on the streets, in the diaspora remittances that oil campaigns, in the fragile alliances between old guards and youth leaders, and in whether the opposition can turn grievance into governance. That is the political science of it.
Until you grasp that, Hatab, you may continue to write surveys of surveys, but do not mistake them for scholarship.
