Post-Coup Politics in the Gambia

Abstract

Four years ago in these pages, following the disputed 1996 presidential election in the Gambia, the late John Wiseman characterized the "democratization process" in that small West African country as a "moldy loaf." 1 Soldier-turned-civilian president Colonel Yahya Jammeh, who had taken power in a bloodless 1994 coup, engineered the 1996 election to ensure himself victory. Jammeh's decision to stand again for the presidency in 2001, the kind of campaign that he ran, and the type of elections that he conducted form a backdrop against which we can assess the prospects for a return to free government in what was once one of Africa's oldest continuously surviving multiparty democracies.