By Saul Saidykhan
Last week, Joseph Colley, the utterly tainted and discredited Chairman of our deceptively named “independent” Electoral Commission announced the date of the next presidential election.
He also let us know about an impending Supplemental Voter Registration. Given the gravity of the scandals he has been directly linked to in the past 5 years at the commission, the fact that Colley is still on our public payroll speaks volumes about Barrow’s patronage of sleaze and its purveyors.
Essa Faal is thus far, the only opposition leader who has honed on to the biggest problem with our elections in the past 20+ years: the extraordinary number of INELLIGIBLE voters on our Voters’ Register!
Let’s look at some relevant facts. In DK Jawara’s last contest in 1992, there were 400,000 registered voters out of 1.01 million total population; in Jammeh’s first run in 1996, there were 446,541 registered voters out of 1.2 million total population; in Jammeh’s 2nd run in 2001, there were 509,301 registered voters out of 1.4 million total population; in Jammeh’s 3rd run in 2006, there were 670,336 registered voters out of 1.6 million total population; in Jammeh’s 4th run in 2011, there were 796,929 registered voters out of 1.86 million total population and in Jammeh’s 5th run in 2016, there were 886,578 registered voters out of 2.0 million total population.
To my tribe of Number Crunchers, the red flag of fraud has long been obvious. Despite the dip in latter electoral cycles, the in-built fraud in the registration figures from 2001 remained intact to date.
In short, because Jammeh’s rigging operation was not yet in effect in 1996, the increase in registered voters from 1992 to 1996 was only 46,541 (11.6%). This increased to 62,760 (14%) in 2001; 161, 035 (31.6%) in 2006; 126,592 (18.9%) in 2011; and 89,648 (11.8%) in 2016. To understand the gravity of the fraud perpetrated, one must keep two things in mind: 1.) Gambia’s NET population growth rate and 2.) Our Naturalization data.
On December 9th, 2016, Yaya Jakut Jammeh informed the world that he was rejecting his defeat because 300,000 voters were missing/did not vote (which just happens to be the same number of phony voters’ cards burnt by a small group of soldiers, a PATRIOTIC act for which one Ablie Sanyang is currently being unjustly tried. What our dejected tyrant said confirmed what some of us have been saying for two decades now: our Voters Roll contains hundreds of thousands of ineligible voters!
Ignoring the fact that the tyrant in 2016 could not accept that 300K Gambians have the right not to vote – even if his complaint is true, he was in fact telling us that the legitimate number of registered voters was approx. 580K!
As someone whose entire professional career is in figure/number analysis -specifically to spot abnormalities, I am certain that our Voters’ Roll is inflated by somewhere between 350-400,000 phony electors mostly Senegalese and Guineans. Having looked at ALL our total population and Voter registration figures from 1960 to date, I state this with confidence knowing that WHEN Barrow is kicked out, this claim will be vindicated.
See, according to two reliable sources in senior government positions, the total number of foreigners – African or otherwise who have Naturalized to become Gambian citizens in the past 25 years is less than 10,000! Given the fact that we do not have automatic citizenship – FOR VERY GOOD REASONS, how could our Voter registration figures outpace our net population growth rate so disproportionately? Ignorance truly is blissful.
It’s befuddling to watch some of our parties focus mostly on Election Day scams like ballot box tampering, number transposing or Polling Agent phone jamming (all three happened massively in 2021.) It is not just the accuracy of the counting of the votes cast, but WHO voted. If a candidate is allowed to register 300K plus UN-NATURALIZED foreigners, and those ineligible people are allowed to vote and their votes counted, even a perfect “On-the Spot-Counting” under klieg lights will only legitimize the daylight vote heist.
Since Barrow and his thieving clique will not voluntarily clean the Voters Roll, the opposition should coordinate and approach both the Senegalese and Guinean authorities (the biggest violators of our electoral laws) as well as ECOWAS and others for help.
Shutting the Senegalese border for two days before the poll alone will help. As will the supplying of both governments a list of their citizens who have illegally registered as Gambian voters. The opposition and CSOs should also use the FOI law to demand Naturalization data from GIS to expose the criminal foreigners violating our laws.
The gaslighting of people as xenophobic for stating this obvious transgression is both myopic and unpatriotic because when Gambia burns, the first people who will run back home are Guineans and Senegalese!
This we don’t need to speculate about. See, it’s true that during the so-called Impasse in 2021, tens of thousands fled our country. But what most don’t say is that 99% of those people are these two nationalities! So, let’s cool off on this senseless political correctness before destroying what is left of our tiny country. NO Guinean or Senegalese who has not naturalized should be allowed to vote in our elections. Period!
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