(Banjul) The outgoing Adama Barrow was declared Sunday overwhelmingly the winner of the presidential election in The Gambia, a proclamation hailed in the streets of Banjul by tens of thousands of supporters, but contested by his opponents.
Adama Barrow, whose assumption of the presidency five years ago ended more than 20 years of dictatorship, garnered more than 53% of the vote, according to the results released by the electoral commission on Sunday, the day after a crucial vote for a young democracy seeking to overcome its dictatorial past.
Its main competitor Ousainou Darboe obtained 27.7% of the vote.
The chairman of the commission, Alieu Momarr Njai, told reporters Adama Barrow “duly elected to serve as President of the Republic of The Gambia”.
Crowds of supporters marched part of the night amid a din of horns and horns in the streets of the capital. They danced on a vast esplanade and gave Adama Barrow a standing ovation when he spoke to them to endorse the victory “with a great sense of joy and humility”, and call on them to “respect” the voters of his competitors.
PHOTO JOHN WESSELS, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Crowds of supporters marched part of the night amid a din
The election, which was played on a round, was “free, fair and transparent,” he said.
But his opponents have said they dispute these results and reserve “all means of action”.
“For the moment, we reject the results so far announced” by the commission, Ousainou Darboe told the press, alongside two other of his competitors.
“All the means of action are on the table,” he added, calling on “all Gambians to remain calm and peaceful” while investigations are carried out. The representatives of these candidates present at the time of the counting operations noted “a number of problems”, he said.
Gambians crowded into voting booths on Saturday, producing a turnout of around 87% according to official results.
About one of the two million Gambians were called upon to choose from among six candidates, all men, the one who will lead for five years the smallest country in mainland Africa, which is also one of the poorest in the world. Almost 860,000 took part in the vote.
Five years after the end of the dictatorship, the consolidation of democracy is one of the challenges of this election. The fate of former dictator Yahya Jammeh and the economic crisis are others.
Almost half of the population lives below the poverty line. The Gambia has been hit hard by COVID-19, which has dried up tourist flows, one of the country’s primary sources of income with agriculture.
The international community will be attentive to the acceptance or the contest by the losers of the results formalized by the commission, said a high-ranking foreign diplomat, speaking of “moment capital”.
The Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a major player in the post-election crisis of 2015 and the forced departure of the dictator Jammeh, had urged in a press release “all the candidates to accept in good faith the outcome of this election which did not ‘will have neither winner nor loser, but only one winner, the Gambian people ”.
Five years ago, Mr Barrow, a former real estate developer now 56 years old and then virtually unknown, defied the odds and beat the dictator Jammeh after more than twenty years of rule characterized by a multitude of atrocities committed by the State and its agents: assassinations, enforced disappearances, rapes, torture, etc.
Economic crisis
Mr. Jammeh, who refused to acknowledge his defeat, was forced into exile in Equatorial Guinea under the pressure of a West African military intervention.
The 2021 presidential election is the first without him since 1996.
Adama Barrow calls for the return of freedoms, the construction of roads and markets and the pacification of relations with the international community.
Ousainou Darboe, a 73-year-old lawyer, four times second behind Yahya Jammeh in the presidential election, accused Mr Barrow of having failed in all his commitments to stay in power.
Mr Barrow reneged on his original promise to only stay in office for three years. He has toned down his previous commitments to prosecute those responsible for crimes committed under Yahya Jammeh.
On the contrary, his newly created party has forged an alliance with that of the former autocrat.
The next president will have to decide whether or not to follow the recommendations of a commission charged with investigating the Jammeh period, which called for those responsible for the crimes committed during that time to be brought to justice.