Dear Editor,
The CMC coalition was supposed to settle one fundamental question: Should the opposition alliance be party-led or candidate-led?
Yet with Talib Ahmed Bensouda now emerging as the coalition’s flag bearer, that very question has returned with even greater force.
The public deserves to know: Has Talib stepped down from his leadership role in Unite before taking up the mantle of the coalition flag bearer? Or is Unite still sitting at the centre of the political machinery behind his candidacy?
This is no minor technicality. It goes to the heart of the credibility of the entire coalition process.
Initially, Talib and his now-rival, APP-Sobeya leader Essa Faal, appeared to share the candidate-led vision. But they found themselves facing five registered political parties that had insisted on a party-led arrangement.
Then the numbers began to shift. The position of the majority of registered parties was gradually overwhelmed by two parties and a growing collection of political movements. Several of the parties that had participated in the CMC process eventually withdrew, choosing instead to prepare for an alliance with the UDP. That exodus dramatically changed the battlefield. What remained was essentially Unite and Sobeya, alongside a collection of political movements. And when Essa Faal sensationally withdrew, citing alleged irregularities and inducement, the balance tilted even further in Talib’s favour. Suddenly, the man associated with Unite was no longer simply another contender in a crowded field. He had become the dominant candidate among the political movements left standing. And therein lies the contradiction.
If the argument was genuinely about building a candidate-led coalition, then Unite’s political identity should arguably take a back seat to the broader coalition. But if Unite remains the organisational and political engine behind Talib’s candidacy, critics may reasonably ask whether the candidate-led principle was ever completely separate from the interests of the party. Was the candidate-led model a genuine ideological commitment? Or was it, in the end, a clever political route through which Unite could secure the commanding position within the coalition?
That is the question now hanging over the CMC.
The withdrawal of several registered parties, the departure of Essa Faal and the emergence of Talib as flag bearer have fundamentally altered the coalition’s original architecture. What was once presented as a broad contest between parties and candidates now risks being interpreted as a struggle over who controls the opposition vehicle and who ultimately gets to drive it.
And the public is entitled to ask:
If Talib is now the coalition’s candidate, where does Unite end and Talib’s CMC candidacy begin? Until that question is answered clearly and transparently the debate over whether the CMC is truly candidate-led or Unite-led is unlikely to disappear.
Ebrima Jarr
The Gambia