By Dr Lamin K Janneh
Last year, and again in early 2026, I argued that the Gambian opposition was unlikely to establish a genuinely unified and sustainable electoral coalition against President Adama Barrow. That assessment did not arise from partisan preference, personal relationships or speculative political commentary. It followed an examination of party structures, institutional incentives, leadership interests, electoral asymmetries and the historical relationships among the organisations expected to participate.
Developments during the past week have renewed the relevance of that analysis. Following weeks of negotiations, the United Democratic Party withdrew from the Coalition 2026 process. On 29 July 2026, the Gambia Democratic Congress formally signed an agreement with the National People’s Party-led alliance.
These are not routine changes in party positioning. The withdrawal of the UDP, combined with the GDC’s formal alignment with the governing political bloc, has substantially weakened the prospect of bringing the principal political forces outside government together under one electoral platform.
Yet these developments should not be reduced to personal betrayal, deficient patriotism or the ambitions of leaders. Such explanations may carry emotional or partisan appeal, but they do not adequately account for the institutional forces shaping political behaviour.
The fragmentation of Coalition 2026 is better understood as the consequence of unresolved differences in political weight, leadership expectations, organisational interests, candidate-selection preferences and post-election calculations. The proposed United Front attracted considerable public support as an aspiration. However, the publicly visible process did not demonstrate that it had developed an institutional framework capable of reconciling these competing interests.
Misdiagnosing the political problem
An illness that has been incorrectly diagnosed is unlikely to be treated effectively based on that diagnosis. The same principle applies to political strategy. When the nature of a political problem is misunderstood, the proposed solution may address its visible symptoms while leaving its underlying causes intact.
Much of the public discourse surrounding Coalition 2026 began from a preferred conclusion: opposition parties should unite because unity would increase their prospects of defeating President Barrow.
As an electoral aspiration, this proposition was understandable. As an institutional assessment, it was incomplete.
The desirability of cooperation does not establish the existence of the conditions required to produce it. Public appeals to unity cannot, by themselves, reconcile competing leadership ambitions, incompatible organisational interests, historical mistrust, unequal electoral strength or disagreements over the selection of a common candidate.
The central analytical error was therefore not the desire for a coalition. It was the assumption that, because a coalition appeared electorally advantageous, the participating organisations would necessarily consider it institutionally and strategically advantageous on identical terms.
Political parties do not enter coalitions as abstract representatives of national unity. They enter as organisations with constituencies, leaders, histories, bargaining positions and expectations concerning their future relevance. A viable coalition must translate these competing interests into an arrangement that participants regard as legitimate, proportionate and sufficiently credible.
Coalition 2026 faced this challenge from the outset. Its participants differed significantly in electoral support, organisational reach, political history, leadership structure and strategic objectives. These differences did not make cooperation impossible. They made institutional design indispensable.
A durable electoral coalition required agreement on candidate selection, campaign governance, financing, political authority, policy priorities and dispute resolution. It also needed to address the position of parties and leaders expected to suspend their immediate presidential ambitions in favour of a common candidate.
Beyond the election itself, a credible arrangement required an understanding of post-election governance. Participating organisations needed to know what programme would guide a coalition administration, how responsibilities would be allocated, how disagreements would be resolved and how pre-election commitments would be protected after presidential power had been secured.
Without credible and mutually accepted arrangements on these questions, declarations of unity could remain rhetorically compelling while institutionally fragile.
Formal equality and substantive political weight
One of the most difficult problems concerned the relationship between formal equality and substantive political weight.
Participating parties and political movements could reasonably expect an equal right to be heard and to contribute to the design of the coalition. No organisation should automatically control a collective process merely by declaring itself the largest or most important participant.
However, formal participation does not erase material differences. Political organisations do not necessarily possess equal electoral support, national reach, parliamentary representation, administrative capacity or bargaining power.
The coalition process, therefore, had to reconcile two valid but competing principles.
The first was participatory equality. Smaller parties and movements were entitled to meaningful involvement in the development of rules, the selection of a candidate and the formulation of a common programme.
The second was representational proportionality. Larger parties could reasonably expect their demonstrated electoral support and organisational capacity to receive some institutional recognition.
If political weight determined every decision, the coalition could become little more than an endorsement mechanism for its largest participant. If all organisations exercised identical influence regardless of public support, coalition decision-making could become detached from electoral representation.
This was not merely a contest among personalities. It was a foundational governance question within the proposed coalition: how should authority be distributed among organisations that were formally equal as participants but materially unequal as political forces?
Coalitions in different political systems have attempted to manage this tension through weighted voting, delegate allocation, negotiated consensus, primary elections, independent selection bodies or predetermined eligibility criteria. No mechanism is inherently neutral. Each allocates influence differently and must therefore be agreed before the identities and likely advantages of prospective candidates become decisive.
A credible Coalition 2026 process required an explicit and accepted method for reconciling equality of participation with inequality of political weight. Without such a mechanism, disputes over candidate selection, representation and procedural legitimacy were foreseeable.
The significance of the UDP’s withdrawal
Any rigorous assessment of Coalition 2026 had to recognise the UDP’s position within the opposition landscape. Its organisational reach, electoral history and national presence made its participation consequential to any arrangement presented as a broadly representative opposition coalition.
Recognising that reality does not require accepting the UDP’s claims without scrutiny. Electoral strength does not confer an automatic entitlement to control a coalition. Nor does it exempt a party from compromise, procedural restraint or accountability to other participants.
Equally, the UDP could not realistically be treated as institutionally indistinguishable from organisations with considerably smaller electoral constituencies and organisational structures.
The party’s withdrawal changed the political character of Coalition 2026. It raised questions about whether the rules developed through the process were sufficiently clear, legitimate and acceptable to organisations with materially different political weight.
Responsibility for the outcome should not be assigned automatically to one actor. Coalition-building is a collective institutional exercise. Its success depends upon the quality of the framework, the credibility of mediation, the conduct of all participants and the willingness of political leaders to accept outcomes that may not fully correspond with their preferences.
The UDP had a responsibility to negotiate constructively, clarify its preferred alternative and explain its objections transparently. Coalition organisers had a responsibility to establish procedures that participants could regard as legitimate and proportionate. Smaller parties had a responsibility to pursue meaningful participation without using procedural equality to deny observable electoral differences.
The inability to reconcile these obligations was institutional as well as political. It cannot be explained adequately as the misconduct, entitlement or ambition of one party alone.
The GDC-NPP agreement and the fluidity of political alignment
The GDC’s formal agreement with the NPP-led alliance illustrates another important feature of Gambian politics: the boundary between government and opposition is not always defined by stable ideological or programmatic divisions.
Political parties may alter their alliances in response to electoral calculations, leadership interests, policy negotiations or assessments of their future institutional position. Such realignments are not unique to The Gambia and should not automatically be characterised as either betrayal or political wisdom.
The appropriate analytical questions are more demanding.
What are the terms of the agreement? What policy commitments bind the parties? What obligations has each organisation accepted? How will the alliance remain accountable to party members and the wider public? Does the agreement represent substantive programme-based cooperation, or is it principally an instrument of electoral aggregation?
These questions cannot be answered from the signing ceremony alone. They require publication of the agreement, or at least disclosure of its principal provisions, governance arrangements and policy foundations.
The GDC and NPP therefore have a responsibility to explain not only that an agreement exists, but also the public-interest rationale upon which it rests. Electoral alliances are legitimate instruments of democratic competition, but their legitimacy is strengthened when their purposes and commitments are open to public scrutiny.
Following its agreement with the NPP-led alliance, the GDC is no longer situated within an electoral platform organised to challenge President Barrow’s candidacy.
This confirms that the organisations initially regarded as potential components of a united opposition did not share a common strategic destination.
Some sought a common candidate against President Barrow. Others preferred party-led or candidate-led arrangements. Some pursued alternative coalition structures. The GDC ultimately chose formal cooperation with the governing alliance.
These differences concerned more than the method of selecting a presidential candidate. They concerned the fundamental purpose and direction of political cooperation.
A single electoral coalition cannot be coherently constituted while its prospective participants pursue mutually incompatible objectives, including replacing the incumbent, negotiating accommodation with the incumbent, contesting independently or entering the incumbent’s alliance.
Electoral coalitions and governing coalitions
A further conceptual distinction is necessary. An electoral coalition and a governing coalition are related, but they are not identical.
An electoral coalition is formed principally to coordinate candidacies, campaign resources, political messaging and efforts to mobilise electoral support before an election. Its immediate purpose is to improve the participants’ prospects of electoral success.
A governing coalition must do considerably more. It must distribute authority, formulate policy, manage disagreements, sustain legislative cooperation and establish procedures through which participating organisations remain accountable after entering government.
The experience of Coalition 2016 demonstrates that an electoral compact can succeed at removing an incumbent while remaining insufficiently institutionalised as a governing arrangement.
This distinction matters because many coalition debates concentrate almost entirely on selecting a common presidential candidate. Candidate selection is essential, but it is only the first stage. A coalition that agrees on who should win but not on how power should subsequently be exercised merely postpones its most difficult disagreements.
The viability of Coalition 2026, therefore, depended not only on whether the participating parties could select a candidate, but also on whether they could establish a credible governing compact.
Without such a compact, unity before an election could give way to fragmentation after victory.
Why 2016 is not a transferable formula
Much of the argument for Coalition 2026 relied upon the precedent of Coalition 2016. The comparison carries considerable historical and emotional force, but its analytical value depends upon recognising the differences between the two periods.
Coalition 2016 emerged under exceptional circumstances. Yahya Jammeh had governed The Gambia for more than two decades following the military takeover of 1994. His administration became associated with political repression, restrictions on the media, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and serious human rights violations.
The opposition, therefore, confronted more than an ordinary incumbent seeking another electoral mandate. It confronted a deeply entrenched authoritarian order. Removing that order became an overriding objective capable of temporarily subordinating important differences among parties and leaders.
Adama Barrow was selected as the coalition candidate and defeated Jammeh in the presidential election of 1 December 2016. The transfer of power was subsequently threatened when Jammeh rejected the result. It was ultimately secured through domestic resistance, sustained regional diplomacy, international pressure and Ecowas-backed military deployment.
The political environment of 2026 is materially different.
President Barrow is the principal political beneficiary of the 2016 coalition and now leads the governing alliance. His administration operates within a multiparty electoral environment, although important concerns remain regarding constitutional reform, institutional independence, governance performance, incumbency advantage and the relationship between state resources and partisan competition.
The political actors seeking an alternative in 2026 are not united by the same overriding historical objective that shaped the 2016 arrangement.
In 2016, the dominant question was whether competing political actors could cooperate to end an entrenched authoritarian presidency. In 2026, the questions are more dispersed.
Who should lead an alternative government? Which party or candidate possesses the strongest representative claim? How should a common candidate be selected? What programme would govern the alliance? How would authority be distributed after an electoral victory? What safeguards would ensure compliance with the coalition agreement?
These questions require agreement not only on replacing an incumbent, but also on the exercise of power after replacement.
Coalition 2016 should therefore be understood as a historically specific political compact, not as a universal formula that can be reproduced whenever opposition parties confront an incumbent government.
Its success did not arise because political differences ceased to exist. It arose because exceptional circumstances temporarily reordered the incentives of competing actors.
The conditions produced the coalition. The coalition did not produce the conditions.
The unresolved legacy of Coalition 2016
The legacy of Coalition 2016 is more complicated than narratives of successful unity sometimes acknowledge.
It includes the defeat of an entrenched government and the opening of a new political period. It also includes disagreements over the proposed transition, the fragmentation of the governing partnership and President Barrow’s eventual establishment of the NPP.
For contemporary political actors, 2016 therefore represents both the possibility of successful pre-election cooperation and the risks associated with weak post-election enforcement.
Parties considering another coalition must assess not only whether they can agree on a candidate, but whether commitments made before an election would remain credible after presidential authority had been secured.
Where coalition commitments depend mainly upon political goodwill rather than credible monitoring, disclosure and sanctioning mechanisms, participants may fear that a successful candidate could later reinterpret, postpone or abandon the agreed terms.
Any credible coalition in 2026 consequently required stronger institutional safeguards. These needed to address the status of the coalition, the mandate of its candidate, the programme and duration of government, the position of constituent parties, the allocation of responsibilities, public reporting obligations and procedures for resolving disputes.
Some coalition commitments may not be directly enforceable in court. Institutional credibility can nevertheless be strengthened through published agreements, internal oversight bodies, clear reporting obligations, agreed decision-making procedures and political consequences for non-compliance.
Without such safeguards, parties would be asked to transfer substantial authority to a common candidate while retaining limited protection against the later concentration of power.
This is not principally a matter of personal trust. It is a problem of institutional design.
Personalised parties and collective-action failure
The deeper challenge extends beyond the actions of the UDP, GDC, NPP or any individual leader. It concerns the institutional character of Gambian party politics.
Political organisations remain closely associated with prominent personalities. Party identity, leadership continuity and electoral strategy are frequently connected to individual figures rather than to impersonal procedures, competitive internal systems or clearly differentiated policy programmes.
Under these conditions, coalition negotiations can become bargaining processes among leaders rather than agreements among durable institutions.
Where a party is strongly identified with its principal leader, the selection of another person as coalition candidate may be interpreted as more than a temporary electoral compromise. It may be regarded as a judgment on the leader’s future, the party’s relevance and its capacity to retain supporters.
This produces a collective-action problem.
Opposition parties may recognise that cooperation could improve their combined electoral competitiveness. At the same time, each major organisation may conclude that accepting another party’s candidate would weaken its own long-term position.
What appears rational for the opposition collectively may therefore conflict with what individual parties consider rational for themselves.