You may win a contract, but you may be unsuccessful in the execution of the project. You can also win an election, but fail in governance. Both of them are common. So winning is not everything. You’d still have to deliver to be successful.

Selfishness, greed, thirst for power and sycophancy have saturated our politics, so I am not really convinced that anyone who wins the elections will be able to govern the country successfully. We have succeeded in creating a poisonous environment of insults, attacks, intimidation, misinformation and false accusations. We have virtually normalized those behaviors, and most of our leaders are also complicit in them – implicitly and explicitly. The mentality of winning at all costs will push our society to the brink, if we are not very careful.

With such culture, it will be extremely difficult for any government to be able to successfully rule the country, and it will have much to do with the corrosive toxic culture we have created for ourselves. A toxic culture creates unnecessary conflict, excessive tension, abusive behavior, and mistrust. We see those things happening on a daily basis. The most toxic among us are celebrated and rewarded, and that says a lot about our new values.

This focus on victory at the expense of our society is about to sink us, and our leaders are an integral part of the destruction movement. At this critical moment, The Gambia needs a progressive and inclusive leader who can bring us together. We are deeply divided on many lines, and the country will not move forward if these divisions persist. If we don’t improve, we could end up with our own January 6th insurrection, just like the US, or even worse. And with our limited resources and weak institutions, we may never be able to recover from it.