In Gambia, the shadow of the Yahya Jammeh years hangs over the presidential election

It is already late in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia, but there are still a few hundred sympathizers dressed in yellow, gathered on dusty ground, to support Ousainu Darbo, a historical figure of the opposition. “At the time of the former dictator [Yahya] Jammeh, we didn’t stay long at meetings, we were too afraid of being arrested ”, remembers Mohamed Sowe, 41, relieved to be able to express himself freely on the eve of the presidential election to be held on Saturday, December 4 in The Gambia.

This tiny country of just over two million inhabitants, landlocked inside Senegal, is preparing to experience its first democratic election since the departure of Yahya Jammeh in early 2017. The despot, now in exile in Equatorial Guinea, had left power following regional military intervention and mediation, after twenty-two years of an authoritarian regime marked by assassinations, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and rapes. But its shadow still hangs over the political scene.

Six candidates are in the running for this election with a very uncertain outcome, including the current incumbent, Adama Barrow, unexpected winner against Yahya Jammeh, at the end of 2016. Since then, the former property developer, aged 56, has disappointed a lot of Gambians. First, by not keeping his promise to leave power after three years of transition. Then by announcing, in September, wanting to ally with the Patriotic Alliance for Reorientation and Reconstruction (APRC), the party of Yahya Jammeh. An agreement rejected by the deposed dictator who declared, from a distance, to support one of his former lieutenants, Mammah Kandeh. “Jammeh still has influence and relays, but not enough to win an election because his party is divided”, analysis Sait Matty Jaw, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of The Gambia.

“Murderers” in the streets

For many Gambians, the page of the Jammeh years is not completely turned. “We must still deal with the past, and that the culprits are tried in court”, claims Baba Hydara, director of the newspaper The Point, and whose father, Deyda Hydara, was assassinated in 2004, when he was one of its editors. “Murderers still walk freely in the streets”, he denounces, recalling that Adama Barrow counts, among his advisers, close relations of Yahya Jammeh. He says he expects a lot from the implementation of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to build a new Gambia.

The report of this body has just been submitted on November 25, the result of two years of hearings of 370 witnesses, victims and perpetrators of crimes of the Jammeh era. The winner of the ballot will have six months to decide the delicate question of the follow-up to be given to it. “But if Adama Barrow or Mammah Kandeh win, the recommendations will never be implemented”, fears Sirra Ndow, local representative of the African Network against Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances (Aneked).

Baba Jallow, the commission’s executive secretary, is also skeptical of the real political will to prosecute those responsible for the crimes. He still says he is proud of the work accomplished. “With all these testimonies, vsit cannot be the same Gambia anymore, because the population now knows what really happened, indicates the former journalist, who lived seventeen years in exile in the United States. Our aim was at least to change the political culture, especially among young people, so that the past does not happen again. ” The main question concerns the judicial fate of Yahya Jammeh. Some are asking for his amnesty in the name of reconciliation and peace. Others demand to see him brought to justice in a special tribunal that could meet in Ghana or Senegal.

“Write our story”

Five years after the fall of the autocrat, “The democratic transition is not complete”, says Gaye Sowe, executive director of the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA), an NGO based in Banjul. The activist nonetheless observes progress in terms of civil rights and freedom of expression. The fear of seeing loved ones suddenly disappear, of being killed or tortured oneself, has faded. Corn “Many repressive laws still exist despite the president’s promises”, notes Michèle Eken, West Africa specialist at Amnesty International.

For example, legislation gives authorities the power to intercept and store communications for surveillance purposes, without real judicial oversight. The penal code reform project is stuck in the National Assembly, which rejected the draft new Constitution in 2020. “To build a true democracy, the institutions, the political environment and the state system must completely change, but we are still far from it”, also considers human rights activist Madi Jobarteh, who was arrested a few hours in June 2020 and accused of “spreading false information”, after criticizing the lack of investigations into police violence. Amnesty International and other Gambian civil society organizations have called on political parties to commit to seven human rights issues. Only four candidates signed them.

In a quiet alley, a villa with colored walls hosts the Memory House (the “house of memory”), opened in October 2021 at the initiative of Aneked, to maintain the memory of the victims of the Yayah Jammeh regime. Large black and white photos are exhibited, accompanied by testimonies and objects that belonged to those who disappeared: belts, shirts, identity papers or caps. Among them, the white hat of Siaka Fatajo, the last victim of Yahya Jammeh’s regime, who disappeared in 2017, a month after the dictator’s departure into exile. “I am proud to be part of an initiative which participates in documenting and writing our history”, says Lisa Camara, head of human rights advocacy at Aneked. No member of the government has ever visited them. The sign that the road is still long.