Even though Adama Barrow defeated the longtime president of
Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, in the state’s presidential election in December, 2016,
Barrow was rushed to the state of Senegal for security reasons when Jammeh
refused to relinquish the power of the presidency. Jammeh had led a successful coup
in coming to power in 1994. So it is no surprise that days after accepting the
election result, he “changed his mind, declared the election results invalid
and vowed to use the power of his military to stay in charge.”[1]
This attests to the allure of power and how difficult it is to give up. In the
E.U. and U.S., the protocols and institutional procedures are so well
established that the nature of power is eclipsed from view as one political
party assumes power previously held by another party. The reality of power as
it lives in human nature is much more raw in the case of Gambia’s transition of
presidents in 2016. I submit that federalism at the empire level was too lax to
bracket the true nature of power at the state level.
Gambia's new president, Adama Barrow, returning to the state after the previous president agreed to leave office. (Jerome Delay/AP)
