In December 2026, Gambians will return to the polls to decide who leads the country for the next five years. President Adama Barrow will be seeking another term. The question before the opposition is not whether they have grievances. The question is whether they will face him together, or divided. If history has taught us anything, it is this: a fractured opposition in The Gambia guarantees the status quo. A united opposition gives voters a real choice. The math is simple. No single opposition party, on its own, has the national spread to defeat an incumbent with state resources, incumbency advantage, and a ruling coalition behind him. In 2016, it took Coalition 2016 — UDP, PDOIS, PPP, NRP, GPDP, GMC, and independents — to unseat 22 years of Jammeh rule. It was not perfect. But it worked because the parties agreed on one candidate, one message, and one goal: restore constitutional order.
Ten years later, the issues have changed but the logic has not. The NPP is organised, it controls government machinery, and President Barrow has name recognition in every region. For the opposition to compete, it must aggregate votes. Splitting into five, six or even three separate campaigns only helps the incumbent. If you go to any lumo, any attaya vous, any WhatsApp group, you hear the same three concerns: cost of living, jobs for the youth, and the slow pace of constitutional, security and justice sector reform. The majority of ordinary Gambians are not arguing about party colours. They are asking: “Who can actually win and deliver?”
A united coalition answers that question. It tells the voter: “We have put ego aside. We have agreed on a program and a leader. Vote for us, and we will govern together.” A divided field tells the voter: “We could not agree. Choose one of us and hope for the best.” That is not a serious offer to a country facing hard economic choices. Ideally, the opposition parties should agree early — by September at the latest — on a single flag bearer through transparent primaries or consensus. And publish a manifesto on how they could fix the things the Barrow government has been grappling with over the past decade: the economy and how to cut the national debt stock; how to create jobs for the young people so that they will not think the only way to make it is to go to Europe through the perilous ‘back way’; institute constitutional reform ensuring term limits and purging out bad laws; empower agriculture, health and education; and fully empanel and empower the anti-corruption and fight corruption which poses the biggest threat to the country’s development. Voters deserve to know what they are voting for, not just who they are voting against.
That is the ideal. But the reality given what has transpired in the past few weeks is that there will be no united opposition against the incumbent on 5th December. The UDP, the biggest opposition party will attract a good number of parties and movements in an alliance. The new kids on the block, the Unite Party will attract a handful of movements. And several other parties will contest on their own. We must respect the right of every party to contest. After all, they say democracy thrives on choice. But we also have a responsibility to be honest: running separately in December 2026 is likely to hand President Barrow easy. To the leaders of these parties, the country is watching. It is time to look choose The Gambia. If need be, sacrifice your egos, sacrifice your personal ambitions and sacrifice your party’s interests for the sake of The Gambia.