By Tabora Bojang
The leader of PROGRESS political movement, Amadou Jaiteh, has said his movement will not support a party-led coalition ahead of this year’s presidential elections. He warned that a party-led coalition when elected into government creates entrenchment of the party whose leader serves as president.
As the opposition parties struggle to form a single united front, Jaiteh said PROGRESS has not taken part in the CMC or APeX coalition talks but they are part of the coalition initiative being spearheaded by PDOIS whose agenda he said aligns with PROGRESS.
“A party-led coalition agenda is not aligned with our principle. We do not want to support a party to come and entrench themselves. What we want is an independent model that will come and give us a transitional government and then allow other parties to go and contest on a very free and fair level playing field and whoever emerges there can come up with their own party’s policies and programmes. That is what we believe. A transitional government should not be a nation building government but one that will come and give Gambians a restart and give political parties the opportunity to start on their own so that there are no blame games,” Jaiteh, a lawyer and former diplomat told The Standard.
Asked if UDP leader Ousainu Darboe’s call for opposition to back him to serve only one term does not appeal to him, Jaiteh dismissed this position as “unpragmatic”.
“If we support Darboe for one term, we are guaranteed that the candidate for the next election of 2031 will also be UDP. There cannot be an election in 2031 to replace the UDP candidate without a UDP incumbent influencing it in favour of the party. Look, we don’t need another party domination. The whole purpose of avoiding incumbency is so that other parties can also have a fair shot at the presidency. This is why we are trying to form a coalition to remove Barrow because he has the incumbency advantage,” he said.
Jaiteh argued that the ideal way to avoid this incumbency problem is to have a “completely neutral person” to serve as a transitional president and that he or she be barred from contesting 2031 elections and primarily focus on building structures for all parties to have a fair shot at presidency. “If that person is going to come from a party or a movement, both the candidate and the party or the movement where he or she comes from should not participate in 2031. If we cannot get that, the least we can have is for the person to resign from their party and become an independent under a candidate-led coalition. This is the surest way to get rid of incumbency advantage. But we cannot support a party-led coalition. If we give Darboe a five-year mandate, if he goes after five years, UDP will continue for another five years. And if his age or health does not allow him to continue, his vice president will take over. So there is no guarantee in that for others,” Jaiteh warned.