Store guard in stunning victory over strongman
A FORMER security guard in a London shop has defeated one of Africa’s most feared strongmen to become the new president of Gambia.
Adama Barrow, 51, who spent his early years tackling shoplifters in London, staged a shock victory over President Yahya Jammeh, who had vowed to rule “for a billion years if necessary”.
Jammeh styled himself “Excellency Sheikh Professor Doctor President”. He had been in office since a coup 22 years ago, ruling through a cult of fear that fused witchcraft with oppression. He claimed to have invented his own herbal cure for HIV, and once “exorcised” an entire village of 1 000 people by force-feeding them hallucinogenic potions.
Such was his grip on power that many Gambians thought that even if Barrow did well in the election, the contest would be rigged to deny him victory. But on Friday night Gambia’s electoral commission declared Barrow president with 45.5% of the vote to Jammeh’s 36.7%.
A third-party candidate, Mama Kandeh, won 17.80%.
Barrow, who headed a coalition of seven opposition parties, said: “It’s time for work. It’s a new Gambia.”
Jammeh, who has been accused of suppressing his opponents, conceded defeat on TV, accepting that Gambians had “decided that I should take the back seat”.
The result astonished Gambian exiles in London. They had been planning a protest outside the Gambian embassy in expectation of yet another Jammeh victory. NEW LEADER: Adama Barrow on a triumphal ride through Banjul after winning the Gambian presidential election
Jammeh, 51, had triumphed in four previous elections, most of them marred by accusations that he had rigged votes or intimidated local media.
A self-declared “dictator of development and progress”, he did enjoy some popular support, mainly for developing Gambia’s infrastructure and tourism trade. But he was also accused of jailing and torturing thousands of critics, some of whom did not leave prison alive.
Earlier this year he put several leading opposition figures in jail after an unauthorised street protest was violently broken up.
The tactic — believed to be an attempt to cow the opposition ahead of the elections — backfired by uniting the normally faction-riven opposition behind Barrow.
Barrow, who is married with two wives and five children, lived in London between around 1998 and 2002, studying and working in a variety of security jobs. While a shop guard, he once tackled a shoplifter who was jailed for six months.
Jammeh’s ministers tried to make fun of his past, but Barrow said his time in Britain helped his political career by teaching him the importance of time-keeping and working long hours.
He has promised to reverse many of the controversial measures taken by his predecessor, who tried to take Gambia down a radically anti-Western path. Jammeh pulled Gambia out of the Commonwealth in 2013, saying it was a “neocolonial institution”.
In the last two years alone, nearly 20 000 people have left Gambia to cross the Sahara and take peoplesmuggling boats to Europe. That makes the tiny nation of 1.9 million one of Africa’s biggest exporters of migrants. Some fled the violence, but many were economic migrants too.