By Fatou Sillah
The spokesman for Coalition 2026, lawyer Assan Martin, said this week that the multi-party initiative taking shape ahead of the country’s next presidential election is being built in the interest of ordinary Gambians—not to serve the ambitions of any single party or political movement.
Speaking in an interview with West Coast Radio, Mr. Martin acknowledged that assembling such a coalition in The Gambia is among the most difficult undertakings in the country’s political life. The talks have now stretched to eleven sessions, he said, a reflection of the complexity involved in aligning more than twenty political entities with differing ideologies, priorities, and policy positions.
“We are not building for a party or a movement; we are building for the Gambians,” he said. “So nobody is going to take ownership—it’s the Gambian people.”
Mr. Martin said negotiators are currently working to consolidate the coalition’s foundational documents, including its terms of reference, a code of conduct, eligibility criteria for candidates, and the structure of the coalition’s governing council. He said he hopes the process will reach a meaningful milestone by the end of July, though consultations among the participating groups are still ongoing.
Responding to concerns about public trust — a raw nerve in a country whose last major coalition fractured acrimoniously after the 2016 election that ended two decades of authoritarian rule—Mr. Martin sought to distinguish this effort from its predecessors. He said Coalition 2026 would require all participating groups to sign binding written agreements and participate in formal signing and swearing-in ceremonies before any candidate is presented to the public.
“This time around, it’s not like the previous coalition where you ask, ‘Is there any document?’ No,” he said. “We are trying to put the house in order. Every document will be there, every signature will be there—and finally, there will not only be signatures, there will be signing and swearing ceremonies over these documents.”
The insistence on formal, documented commitments, Mr. Martin suggested, is meant to close the loopholes that allowed earlier coalitions to unravel once the pressure of governing set in.
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