By Tabora Bojang
As opposition parties struggle to form a single united front in this year’s presidential elections, the secretary general of the opposition People’s Democratic Organisation for Independence and Socialism, PDOIS, Suwaibou Touray, has warned that the only sure way the opposition can defeat President Barrow is to come together and put up a single candidate.
Speaking to The Standard on the ongoing opposition talks, Touray stressed that anything short of a single opposition candidate will likely avail Barrow a third term presidency, as there is no absolute majority system in Gambian elections.
PDOIS’s position
According to Touray, his party is involved in only the process called Team- Gambia coalition initiative, spearheaded by PDOIS veterans Halifa Sallah and Sidia Jatta.
He said this initiative is active and heading to the concluding stages of consultations.
Touray revealed that negotiators in this initiative consulted a variety of political parties, stakeholders and individuals and “we expect a stakeholders convergence to be called as soon as possible.”
He said the outcome of this initiative will determine what PDOIS will do going into the elections.
“So we are waiting for the conclusion of this Team- Gambia initiative. We cannot suspend that to go into any other discussion,” Touray said, when asked about PDOIS absence in the CMC and APeX coalition talks.
Asked whether the party’s absence in those talks may not hamper its own initiative to bring other parties on board Team –Gambia, since most of those parties have already forged alliances or coalitions, Touray argued that people are free to lobby, or talk to each other on forming alliances or coalitions,
“For us that is not a problem. Whatever alliances they have cannot change the fact that only a grand alliance of all alliances can bring about change. One or two parties allying may not likely bring about a change. It should be a grand alliance and the only way to have a grand alliance is to have future talks,” Touray said.
He noted that whatever alliances are built among parties, they can still come to the negotiating table to see how best they can bring all those alliances in to a single alliance and candidate.
“What we should all realise is that it will not be the interest, desire or even benefit for any entity to have two or three small groups thinking that they can achieve a victory. Such a thing will bring us all back to the same thing we are trying to avoid, which is putting so many candidates against the incumbent. So the ideal thing is to have a single opposition alliance against the ruling party. In my assessment, I am not hopeful of opposition victory without a single united opposition coalition. I am just coming from the provinces and the feedback I got from people is that there should be a single opposition candidate against the incumbent,” Touray said.
The PDOIS leader reminded the opposition that the ruling NPP has always been avoiding the absolute majority system knowing that would not favour it.
“So the strategy to beat them is for all the opposition parties to come together and put up one candidate against the single candidate of the ruling NPP. If that happens, people can easily bring about change. But having many opposition parties against the incumbent, will enable the incumbent to have his way, which has always been our experience since independence,” Touray concluded.