BANJUL – Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh, who once vowed to rule the tiny West African nation for “a billion years”, said he had accepted his shock election defeat on Friday, 22 years after seizing power in a coup.
Voting on Thursday against Jammeh was a rare show of defiance against a leader who has ruled by decree and who rights groups say crushes dissent by imprisoning and torturing opponents.
In an address broadcast by Gambian state-owned radio on Thursday evening, Jammeh said he would not contest the poll results showing opposition candidate Adama Barrow had won, which had been announced earlier in the day.
“If (Barrow) wants to work with us also, I have no problem with that. I will help him work towards the transition,” Jammeh said, before later saying that he planned to move to his farm after leaving office following a handover in January.
Celebrations erupted in the streets of Banjul, a normally sleepy seaside capital whose white beaches lined with palm trees are a draw for European tourists, when the results were announced.
Official results from the electoral commission head gave Barrow, a real estate developer who once worked as a security guard at retailer Argos in London, 45.5 per cent of the vote against Jammeh’s 36.7 per cent.
A peaceful handover of power in Gambia would be a welcome surprise for African democracy at a time when many of the continent’s leaders have been rigging polls, fiddling with constitutions to extend their terms in office and cracking down on peaceful protest.
But his concession is unlikely to have a ripple effect across Africa since Gambia, a sliver of land along the banks of a river on its west coast with few natural resources and little trade or diplomatic presence, has always been an outlier.
Jammeh only this week said that his “presidency and power are in the hands of Allah and only Allah can take it from me”.
Jammeh’s eccentricities have often made headlines. He once said he had invented a herbal cure for AIDS that only works on Thursdays. Once every year he also invited a few hundred women to the grounds of State House, where he personally administered another herbal cure he had concocted for infertility.
He arrested hundreds on suspicion of being witches or wizards and threatened to decapitate gay people.
Jammeh’s supporters deny abuses and he has often criticised Western powers for meddling in African affairs.
The vote was marked by a blackout of the internet and international calls. Land borders were sealed. European Union observers were barred, though some African Union observers came.
Barrow somehow managed to unite and galvanise Gambia’s opposition for the first time since Jammeh took power in the country of 1.8 million people.
He has promised to revive the economy, one of the region’s poorest performers that pushes thousands of Gambians to flee to Europe in search of a better life. (Reuters)
