WHY WE KEEP ELECTING THE WRONG LEADERS: THE MIRROR WE REFUSE TO LOOK AT

By Baboucarr Mboge

Every election in The Gambia ends the same way. We complain. We say: “This MP is useless. This President is corrupt.” But after 5 years of complaining, we elect him, his brother or sister.

The painful truth is this: Our leaders are not wrong. They are CORRECT. They correctly reflect who WE are as voters.

1. THE LEADER IS A MIRROR OF THE VOTER

A corrupt leader cannot win in a corruption-free society. He can only win in a society where voters themselves are corrupt in small ways.

In Gambia, we don’t elect the best man. We elect the man who paid our child’s school fees last week. We elect the man who gave us D500 on Tobaski. We elect the man from our tribe, even when we know he cannot read or write.

If you take D500 to vote, how can you complain that your MP voted for a D54 million loan? You taught him the price. You sold your vote for D500; he sold his vote for D54 million. Same business, bigger amount.

We say we want honest leaders, but when an honest man comes – Halifa Sallah style – who says, “I will not give you money; I will give you policy” – we say: “He doesn’t give bribes.” And we vote for the one who shares cash

So yes, the elected are the problem, but the electors are the bigger problem. We get what we worked for.

2. THE GOOD PEOPLE RAN AWAY AND LEFT THE STAGE TO THE GREEDY SELF SERVING

This is the second tragedy. Most of the best Gambians are NOT in politics.

Go to our universities, our hospitals, our best businesses. You will find honest, educated, hard-working Gambians. Ask them: “Why don’t you run for National Assembly or the Presidency?” They will say: “Politics is dirty. I don’t want insult. I don’t want my family embarrassed. I cannot lie.”

So who is left to contest?

– The certificated, not educated – the man with a diploma mill certificate but cannot write or read a policy paper.

– The morally bankrupt – the man who failed in business and sees politics as the only business where you can get a PRADO and land without working for it.

– The greedy – the man who has 3 wives and 12 kids to feed and sees public funds as family income.

– The self-serving – the man who was rejected everywhere and says, “Let me go to politics.”

This is Gambia’s curse. The good ones say, “Politics is dirty; let me avoid it.” But if the clean man avoids the bathroom, the bathroom will never get clean. It will stay dirty.

In Senegal, the professor do politics. In Gambia, the professor says, “I don’t do politics.”

So the political arena is like an empty football field where only the greedy, the self serving and the thieves are playing because the real footballers refused to play.

3. WE HAVE NO CIVIC EDUCATION, ONLY PARTY CHANTING

What do we teach our children about politics?

We don’t teach them that an MP’s job is to make laws and check the budget and hold the executive accountable, the presidents job is to make our lives better. We teach them that an MP or a Presidents job is to bring rice and bribe us with money.

In Gambian civic education, we memorise “Executive, Legislature, Judiciary” for exams, but we never learn HOW to hold them accountable.

We don’t know:

– That the Appropriation Bill must be debated – so when NAMs vote NOT to debate, we keep quiet.

– That CDF is D500,000 per year and must be public.

– That we have the RIGHT to recall an MP.

Instead, what we know is: “UDP is Mandinka, NPP is Fula, APRC is Jola and APP fana fana” Tribal education replaced civic education.

And politicians LOVE this ignorance. Because if you don’t know what an MP or president should do, you will never know he failed.

When a voter thinks an MP’s or presidents job is to pay for a funeral, then the MP or president who steals D10 million and gives you D10,000 for a funeral looks like a good man.

Bad civic education makes good theft look like good leadership.

4. POVERTY MAKES US SHORT-SIGHTED

A hungry man cannot think about a 5-year constitution. He thinks about today’s rice.

Barrow and NAMs know this. So they don’t bring policy. They bring 50 kg of rice in the last month. And we forget 5 years of suffering for one bag of rice.

This is not because we are stupid. It is because we are poor. And poverty is a weapon used by the elite to keep us voting wrong.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

The solution is not to find a perfect leader. The solution is to make perfect VOTERS.

Solution 1: Educate the voter before you educate the leader

We need street civic education, not school civic education. Every Friday at mosque, every Sunday at church, every bantaba – teach one lesson: What is the job of an MP or president? What is the budget? What is debt? TEAM GAMBIA 2026 style movements must go to villages with a blackboard, not with T-shirts.

Solution 2: Force good people to contest

We must shame good people into politics. Tell the doctor, the teacher, the engineer: If you don’t run, the thief and the greedy will run. And your hospital will have no medicine because of the thief you allowed to win. We must create a fund – like diaspora fund – to support honest candidates so they don’t need to be rich to run.

Solution 3: Change the reward system

Stop clapping for MPs who donate jerseys. Start clapping for MPs who is serving you.

Solution 4: Make voting a community duty, not tribal duty

Before the election, every community must hold a “candidate exam”. Bring all candidates, ask them: What is your plan for minimum wage, education, and health? If he cannot answer, don’t vote for him even if he is your uncle.

Final Word:

We will keep electing wrong leaders until we become right voters.

Leaders are not from the moon. They are from our homes. They are our brothers, our cousins who learned from us that to win, you must lie, you must give little money, you must play tribe.

If we want different leaders, we must be different people. When the voter changes, the leader will change the next morning.

Until then, we will vote wrong, cry for 5 years, and vote wrong again.

Walo walo

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