Yaya Menteng Sanyang Says UNITE Has Outgrown Rivals, Emerged as Gambia’s Biggest Political Force

By Makutu Manneh

Yaya Menteng Sanyang, vice chairman for finance and administration of the UNITE Party, has described the party as the largest political formation in The Gambia, claiming it has surpassed its rivals ahead of the December presidential election.

Speaking on Kerr Fatou Sanyang, who is also the National Assembly member for Latrikunda Sabiji, said UNITE had established a nationwide presence that he argued distinguished it from other political parties.

“All the other political formations, the UDP and NPP, it is like they have forgotten themselves now,” Sanyang said. “Everybody is now descending on UNITE. UNITE has centrally positioned itself as the clear front-runner for this upcoming December election.”

His characterization of UNITE as the country’s largest political formation and the election’s front-runner was a political claim; he did not cite polling or other independent data to support it.

Sanyang said UNITE considered every part of the country a potential constituency, contrasting the party with older political organizations that, he argued, remain unable to claim broad support in some areas.

For UNITE, he said, communities across the country are its “strongholds” and “fixed deposits.”

Sanyang also accused the governing National People’s Party of seeking to portray the election as a contest primarily between President Adama Barrow and longtime opposition leader Ousainu Darboe. He suggested that the strategy was intended to recreate the political dynamics of the 2021 presidential election.

He further claimed that NPP officials had begun paying greater attention to UNITE and its leader, Talib Ahmed Bensouda, because they increasingly viewed the party as a political threat.

“They have now woken up to the reality that they will be in trouble if they do not start talking about UNITE and Talib,” Sanyang said.

Despite his confidence in UNITE’s standing, Sanyang said the party had not ruled out joining an alliance or coalition ahead of the election.

He said UNITE remained open to discussions with other political groups while maintaining his assertion that it had become the country’s largest political formation.