© KEYSTONE/AP/JEROME DELAY
Gambians voted on Saturday to choose their MPs. These elections might give the parliamentary majority to President Adama Barrow, re-elected in December for five years.
Like the presidential election in December, these legislative elections are a new opportunity to consolidate the democratic transition in a small country that emerged five years ago, with the election of Mr. Barrow as president, from 20 years of fierce dictatorship under Yahya Jammeh.
These legislative elections take place while democracy has been abused in West Africa, with four military coups in less than two years (Mali twice, Guinea, Burkina Faso). The African Union and the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have dispatched observers to the scene.
Low turnout
Despite this issue and other more daily ones, the Gambians do not seem to have mobilized as massively as in the presidential election to go and deposit, not a ballot, but a marble in one of the cans bearing the colors and the effigy of their candidate, a process instituted under colonization because of illiteracy.
The Gambians were called upon to choose 53 MPs from among 245 candidates. The results might be known on Sunday. The President will also appoint more than five deputies, including the President of the Assembly.
The outgoing chamber of the unicameral Parliament is dominated by the Unified Democratic Party (UDP) of opponent Ousainou Darboe, the head of state’s unfortunate rival in December. A poll released on April 6 predicted 30% of the vote for the president’s National People’s Party (NPP) and 24% for the UDP.
The smallest state in continental Africa, The Gambia, an English-speaking country of two million inhabitants, is a narrow strip of land enclosed in Senegalese territory. It is one of the 20 least developed countries in the world, according to the UN.