Dear Editor,
The brouhaha of the Kololi hotels must now end. The recriminations must stop. The Gambia is bigger than any party, any personality, any pride.
We have said what needed to be said. The opposition circus has disappointed us. Now we must offer a way forward.
I listened to Hilltop Radio broadcast today, Tuesday August 11, where Lawyer Ousainu Darboe pledged to donate 30 percent of his salary to support Gambian farmers if elected. With due respect, this is paltry. It is an infinitesimal sum. It is gaslighting, not a serious assertion by a leader of conscience. From a presidential salary of half a million dalasi a month, what will 30 percent do to salvage the entire farming community of The Gambia? Our farmers need tractors, fertiliser, guaranteed prices, storage, and irrigation, not tokens.
The hour demands statecraft, not symbolism.
The only path to victory
Let me be blunt. From all assessments and accounts, UDP does not have the numbers to win this election alone. The numbers are simply not there. Running under the UDP flag alone will split the vote and guarantee the continuity of the incumbent. That is not opposition, that is assisted suicide.
The only path to unseating President Adama Barrow on December 5 is a united front. UDP, Coalition 2026, and the National Democratic Party (NDP) of Kebba Madi Bojang must come together, unite, and form one invincible team.
And that unity requires one supreme act of statesmanship: Lawyer Darboe must exercise statecraft, let go of every conceivable personal pride and history, and get behind Talib Ahmed Bensouda as the head of Coalition 2026.
Darboe is the father of modern multiparty democracy in this country. His sacrifice is in history books. No one can erase it. But fatherhood also means knowing when to let the son carry the family forward. Supporting Talib is not a defeat for Darboe, it is the crowning of his legacy.
My pledge, my expertise, and the narrow window
There is a narrow window, and it must be seized now without delay.
If they agree to unite under one team and face the incumbent as one, I, Musa Bassadi Jawara, from my personal perspective, pledge to write pro bono, an original economic and security platform for the campaign. A serious, costed, world class program that speaks to electricity, jobs, floods, and security.
Why do I make this pledge with such confidence? For two decades I have been involved with U.S. foreign policy assessments all across Africa. Writing policy programmes with world class standard would be routine and a familiar terrain for me. This is what I do. This is what I have done for governments and institutions far larger than ours.
The Gambian people are not asking for miracles. They are asking for affordability. The cost of living has become daily torture. A bag of rice, a liter of oil, school fees, house rent, everything has doubled while wages have stood still. Our economic platform must have one supreme objective: cost of living reduction and life affordability. We must crush the taxes on basic food, slash import duties on essentials, and put money back into the pockets of the market woman, the taxi driver, and the civil servant. That is poverty alleviation in action, not rhetoric.
But no economy can grow when blood flows on the streets. The killings, the murders, the stabbings, the sheer breakdown of law and order, this is no longer petty crime. This is a national security collapse. We must challenge the heart of crime, not its shadow. Our security program will put an immediate halt to insecurity by sealing the security lapses that have turned our neighborhoods into hunting grounds for criminals.
And we shall solve two crises with one stroke. We have thousands of able-bodied youths without jobs, roaming the streets with diplomas but no hope. We shall recruit them, train them, uniform them, and deploy them as trained community security personnel on every street, every market, every junction. They will earn a dignified salary, protect their own communities, and restore order. From jobless to protector, from frustration to service, that is how we end both unemployment and insecurity at once.
The timeline is non-negotiable
Time is not on our side. The economic and security policy program must be completed before August 31. The campaign to sell it to voters must begin the first week of September. Effectively, September and October are for grassroots campaign. November is administrative: polling agents training, voter sensitization, and all administrative work geared toward securing election integrity.
We cannot waste another day in hotel meetings.
My Conclusion to Fellow Citizens
I conclude, my fellow citizens. I do not take pleasure in writing this piece readily, but the country deserves better. I cannot be silent when the nation bleeds. As Dr Martin Luther King Jr. taught us: *“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
And as Albert Einstein warned us: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
Let me be clear to all. I have never met Talib Bensouda in person. I knew his late father, who is a cousin, and I share a very cordial relationship with him. I know his mother from my relations with her late husband. But relations aside, bloodline aside, this country needs a shepherd who will steer this country from hardship and misrule, a leader with clean hands, modern vision, and the energy to carry The Gambia from survival to prosperity.
To all UDP ardent supporters and illustrious sons and daughters of the homeland, please, please calm down and give this proposal a chance to pass. The disappointments you felt and suffered after 2016, and the barbarism, torture, and injustice you endured in the 22 years of iron-fist dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh is beyond comprehension. I know your pain. I feel your pain. I lived it with you. But please give me a reason. Do not let the pain of yesterday blind us to the victory of tomorrow. Let us not win the argument and lose The Gambia.
Put Gambia first. Support Talib Bensouda. Let us win.
Musa Bassadi Jawara
Economist and Author
Bintou’s Point, Kerewan