Dear Colleagues:
Please find attached a statement (OpEd) from the R2K-Gambia on the recent political merger of the APRC and NPP. Key messages in the statement include:
– A call on all the opposition parties to form a grand coalition to oppose the Jammeh-Barrow candidacy.
– A shared victory will unite the country, reduce the polarization in our politics and the possibility of a contested election result. More importantly, it will also prevent the culture of impunity now being entrenched by a Jammeh-Barrow alliance and instead promote transparency, accountability, justice, and good governance.
– A fractured opposition plays into a Jammeh-Barrow strategy, elevating their chances for re-election and ushering in a full circle and a return to autocracy, tyranny, kleptocracy, and impunity (as uncovered by the Janneh Commission and the TRRC). Gambians rejected these unacceptable traits in December 2016, only to see a total reversal under an APRC-NPP alliance five years later.
– The logical and moral response must surely be a united opposition. – – By failing to unify and have multiple candidates corral vigorously behind one presidential candidate, we risk handing victory to president Barrow, and by extension, to Yahya Jammeh under the current first-past-the post-elections rule; something that the CRC 2020 draft constitution would have addressed.
– We have reached that moment when the national interest must take precedence over each party’s interest and each party leader’s ambition.
– On the ballot on December 4 is the choice between the restoration and merger of a corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent regime that Gambians rejected on the one hand; and, on the other, the forces of democracy, pluralism, and progress that the opposition parties represent. The stakes could not be higher for The Gambia in the near term and for generations unborn.
-R2K is willing to establish a working group to engage the political parties to convene an exploratory meeting to discuss the conditions under which they could form a coalition.
Sincerely,
R2K.
