This is culled from the Independent. Its an interesting read.

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The bye-elections in Kiang East and Central Baddibu are now history, but
their impact and repercussions are still lingering. There is no doubt that a
lot of lessons have been learnt in the process by everyone, most
particularly by the politicians and their supporters as well as the people
of the two constituencies. One of those lessons is no doubt the volatility
of allegiance in Gambian politics and the crucial role that money plays in
that.

While the APRC are congratulating themselves and no doubt bragging about
their success in Kiang East and their excellent performance in Central
Baddibu, the UDP, on the other hand must be at pains to explain their dismal
performance in both constituencies, inspite of all their predictions of easy
victory in both places.

However, looking at the results in both constituencies, one would not fail
to see that while the APRC had indeed made some significant gains,
particularly in Kiang East, but it was the UDP which lost a lot of ground as
opposed to the APRC making gains. One interesting phenomenon in both
constituencies was the unusually large number of people who did not vote,
over 2000 in Central Baddibu and about 1000 in Kiang East, which represents
almost 30 percent of the registered voters in each constituency.

It is quite hard to explain what may have been responsible for that,
considering the vigorous campaign mounted by both parties and the interest
that everyone seems to have shown in the elections. It would not certainly
be attributed to voter apathy because that has never been a factor in both
places. Therefore, we seem to be left with only one other possibility for
the low turn out, which is vote buying, which was attributed mostly to the
APRC. It was alleged that they had hundreds of thousands of Dalasis, which
they allegedly used to pay to take possession of the voter's cards of those
they suspected of supporting the UDP, thus preventing them from voting.

That is definitely a very credible explanation for the large number of
people who failed to cast their votes in both constituencies. If that
allegation is true, then another credible explanation for the easier APRC
victory in Kiang East could be attributed to the fact that it is a much
poorer place than Central Baddibu and therefore a much easier prey for the
briefcase politicians.

One other thing, which seems to have favoured the APRC, was the incumbency
factor. While the UDP depended entirely on their meagre resources to carry
out their campaign, the APRC on the other hand had access to government
vehicles and the use of other state resources to carry out their campaign.
They also did not hesitate to employ the services of the divisional
commissioners, the chiefs and other local government officials and
facilities as well as other civil servants to campaign for them.

Do not however ask me where they got all those huge sums of money they were
allegedly using during the campaign. If their party leader, President Jammeh
can afford to get his own aeroplane, purchase 39 tractors and their
ancillaries, send so many people to perform the Hajj, occasionally dish out
so much money and several brand new four-wheel drive vehicles, then we can
easily assume that those huge sums came from the same bottomless pit. It no
doubt explains why on a daily basis, several groups and organizations of all
shapes and sizes make "courtesy calls" on President Jammeh, apparently
because they all want to get a slice of the big cake on his table. That
reminds me of the legendary 'operation green medicine', if anyone knows what
I mean.

While both the APRC and the UDP have shown a high degree of restraint and
discipline throughout the campaign, which may be a symptom of the maturity
of Gambian politics, the IEC no doubt deserves the most commendation and
praise in the way they handled the campaign and the elections. Apart from
the generally incident-free campaign, their experiment to count the votes on
the spot has also worked very well. Therefore, the bye-elections in both
constituencies have generally been billed as both free and fair, at least on
the surface, thus giving Gabriel Roberts and his team a clean bill of health
for their first test.

Another thing worth noting was the fact that both parties were allowed equal
access to both radio and television, which was another lesson to the
authorities that allowing the opposition access to the public media does not
necessarily give them undue advantage over the APRC, which they seem to have
always feared. We should therefore hope and pray that henceforth, they would
open up the public media to all shades of political opinion, instead of
allowing it to be only monopolized by the APRC.

If there was another lesson learnt by the politicians, it was the total
disregard of Decree 89 by certain former ministers of the PPP regime who
were supposed to have been prohibited by the Decree to take active part in
politics. We have seen how Buba Baldeh and Dr. Lamin Saho were openly
campaigning for the APRC in both Kiang East and Central Baddibu. I wonder
whether there is anything left in the Decree that would now stop the other
politicians banned by the Decree from openly manifesting their allegiance
and campaign for any party of their choice, unless the authorities want to
tell us that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander.

While everyone, including the security forces were commended the way they
behaved during the campaign, but it appears that it did not take the police
quite long before they began to display their biases in favour of the APRC.
Shortly after the results in Central Baddibu were announced, they were said
to have pounced on some celebrating UDP supporters and detained them for
several days, and eventually charged them for assault and trespass.

It appears that since the removal of Tamsir Jasseh as Deputy Inspector
General, the neutrality of the police is beginning to slide downwards, and
they are again beginning to behave like a branch of the APRC. Instead of
dealing with issues brought before them on their own merit, they have again
begun to act on "orders from above", making them look more like an appendix
of the APRC than a neutral professional force sustained by public funds to
serve everyone regardless of political affiliation.

It certainly does not make sense that every time there is a clash between
UDP and APRC supporters, it is always the UDP supporters who get arrested,
as if the APRC supporters are angels who do no wrong. Let us hope and pray
that the new team heading the police would begin to restore the neutrality
and professionalism of the force.


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