By Fatou Sillah
Amadou Sanneh, the national treasurer of the United Democratic Party, has described Ousainou Darboe as the opposition’s strongest potential candidate for the 2026 presidential election, citing his electoral record, political experience, and nationwide support.
Speaking in an interview with Eye Africa TV, Mr. Sanneh said Mr. Darboe had been tested at the polls more extensively than any other prospective opposition candidate.
“Compared to all the existing potential candidates, none has been so tested as Ousainu,” Mr. Sanneh said. “Somebody who has gone to the level of two hundred and forty thousand votes, which we even dispute, and has been above that mark all the time, with a strong base. How would you compare him with somebody who’s got less than twenty thousand votes?”
Mr. Sanneh argued that Mr. Darboe’s established political base and history of contesting presidential elections made him the opposition figure best positioned to challenge President Adama Barrow.
Turning to continuing coalition negotiations, Mr. Sanneh said opposition parties should pursue a party-led alliance rather than organize the coalition around an individual candidate. He argued that it would be unrealistic to expect established parties with nationwide structures to rally behind a newly registered organization with a limited political base.
Mr. Sanneh said efforts to develop a new coalition model appeared to be driven largely by concerns about a repeat of the aftermath of the 2016 election. Mr. Barrow, who ran as the candidate of an opposition coalition that year, later fell out with several of the political leaders who had supported him.
“A lot of people are afraid of the Barrow syndrome,” Mr. Sanneh said. But he argued that the breakdown of the 2016 coalition did not justify abandoning established approaches to opposition alliances.
“That is not the reason why you should reinvent the wheel or start a new concept of coalition,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”
Mr. Sanneh also noted that the Constitution grants executive authority to an elected president and that the terms of a coalition agreement cannot supersede those powers.
Rather than attempting to restrict a future president through a new political arrangement, he said, opposition parties should build their coalition on trust, good faith, and a shared commitment to governing together.
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