Even before the final proclamation, his opponents said contest the results and reserve “all means of action”.
Le Monde with AFP
It was a crucial vote for this young democracy. The outgoing president, Adama Barrow, was declared the winner of the presidential election in The Gambia, Sunday, December 5th. Even before the final proclamation, his opponents said to contest the results and reserve “all means of action”.
“At this point we reject the results announced so far” by the Commission, had said before the press Ousainu Darbo, along with two others of the six competitors, before the proclamation of the final results. “All means of action are on the table,” he added by calling “all Gbbians to stay calm and peaceful” the time that investigations are conducted. The representatives of these candidates present during the counting operations found “a number of problems,” he said.
Adama Barrow, whose accession to the Presidency, five years ago, had ended more than 20 years of dictatorship, then prevailed his main competitor, Ousainu Darbo, in almost all the 50 constituencies (on 53) whose electoral commission had communicated the results. The election, which took place on Saturday, is played on a single tower.
“Capital moment”
about one million Gambians, on a population of two million, were expected to choose from six candidates, all men, who will lead for five years the smallest country in continental Africa, which is also one of the poorer in the world. Saturday, the gambians have hurry in mass in the isolation.
Five years after the end of the dictatorship, democratic consolidation is one of the major challenges of the election, just like the fate of the former dictator, Yahya Jammeh, and the economic crisis.
The international community will be attentive to acceptance or contestation by the losers of the results formalized by the Commission, said a high international diplomat speaking of “capital moment”. The Community of West African States (Cédéao), a major player in the post-election crisis of 2015 and the compelled departure of the dictator Jammeh, called in a statement “all candidates to accept in good faith the outcome of this election which will not win, or lose, but a single winner, the Gambian people “.
Promises unwanted
Five years ago, Mr. Barrow, a former 56-year-old real estate developer, had foiled the predictions and beaten the dictator Jammeh. His election had thus put an end to more than twenty years of a regime characterized by a multitude of atrocities committed by the State and its agents: assassinations, enforced disappearances, rape, torture …
m. Jammeh, who refused to recognize his defeat, was forced to exile into equatorial Guinea under the pressure of a West African military intervention. The presidential election of 2021 is the first without it since 1996.
Ousainu Darbo, 73, a lawyer, four times second behind Yahya Jammeh in the presidential elevation, accuses his opponent Adama Barrow for missing all his commitments to stay in power.
m. Barrow has returned to his original promise to stay only three years in power. It also has significantly mitigated its commitments on its willingness to report to the crime officials of the Jammeh years. His party, newly created, on the contrary, knotted an alliance with that of the former autocrat. If it is re-elected, it will have to decide whether or not it follows the recommendations of a commission responsible for investigating the JAMMEH period, which requested that the crimes officers committed at that time be judged.
