Africa-Press – Gambia. The widening of The Gambia’s political space since the end of authoritarian rule has strengthened civil liberties and encouraged participation, but it has also made it harder to mount a credible challenge to the government, according to Essa Njie, a political analyst.
In an interview with Kerr Fatou, Mr. Njie said the proliferation of political parties, while a sign of political freedom, has raised concerns about the quality and effectiveness of the country’s democracy.
“Democracy is not only about having many political parties; the quality matters,” he said. “The liberation is good for our democracy, but in another way, it is bringing about difficulty in terms of putting up a serious challenge to the government.”
Mr. Njie argued that the fragmentation of the opposition tends to favor incumbents, especially under Gambia’s electoral system, in which a candidate can win with a simple majority. With votes spread across numerous parties, he said, the ruling party often gains a structural advantage.
“So, having many political parties, one, the incumbent will not have a serious challenge because votes will be divided between political parties, and the incumbent will have an advantage over that,” he said.
He was particularly critical of what he described as the weak institutional foundations of some political parties, noting that several lack clear or credible manifestos. Some, he claimed, rely on copied material from other parties—domestic or foreign—or generate platforms using artificial intelligence, with little regard for whether the proposals reflect Gambian realities.
Mr. Njie also questioned whether all registered parties comply with the legal and administrative requirements set by the Independent Electoral Commission, including the establishment of functional offices across regions and the submission of proper policy documents.
“I can tell you this confidently: a credible source told me this, if IEC is to follow the law, many political parties will not be in existence, and this is what should be happening, like bureaus in every region and proper manifestos,” he added. “So our political space has been reduced to anybody can get up and say they want to be a politician or want to be president.”
The result, he added, is a political environment in which virtually anyone can declare presidential ambitions, often without a coherent program or sustained grassroots presence.
He traced this trend back to 2017, when a number of new parties emerged promising alternatives to the ruling establishment, only to later align themselves with the government. According to Mr. Njie, some opposition figures use elections as leverage to secure appointments once the incumbent prevails.
To illustrate his point, he offered a local analogy: contributing to the development of a village does not require abandoning one’s own compound to live in the Alkalo’s residence. In political terms, he said, meaningful national development does not require joining the ruling party.
Mr. Njie linked the problem to a persistent public perception—rooted, he said, in the era of former President Yahya Jammeh—that opposition politics is synonymous with obstruction rather than nation-building. That narrative, he argued, has continued under President Adama Barrow’s administration.
“This is what was peddled during Jammeh’s time, and the same thing is continuing in Barrow’s time, saying that oppositions do not bring about development.”
Mr. Njie dismissed that view as misguided, arguing that opposition politics can itself be a force for development, particularly through the work of holding the government to account.
“So the oppositions coming in and saying that they come to change the country but at the end of the day join the incumbent is taking our democracy backwards,” he said.
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