The Gambia’s Democratic Crossroads: How Barrow Squandered The Authority That Made Him – Analysis
Mandinkas have a concept for the kind of authority Adama Barrow once had: fang majiyo aniƞ horromo niƞ boo-ñaa: the quiet legitimacy that accrues to someone humble, respectful, sociable. This is not the theatrical magnetism that Western political theory calls charisma. It is authority grounded in character rather than spectacle, earned through conduct rather than claimed through rhetoric.
Understanding how Barrow squandered this legitimacy requires attention to its cultural foundations. The German sociologist Max Weber, writing in 1919, offers complementary insights into the ethical deterioration of political leaders, insights that transcend their European origins. His distinction between politicians who live “for” politics versus those who live “off” it, his analysis of how conviction without responsibility corrodes democratic institutions, his warning about leaders who believe rules do not apply to them; these illuminate Barrow’s trajectory without reducing it to Western categories. His presidency now offers a definitive case study for these century-old warnings.
When President-elect Barrow took the oath of office at The Gambian embassy in Dakar on Jan. 19, 2017, he could not set foot on Gambian soil because his predecessor refused to leave. Millions across West Africa witnessed what seemed like democracy’s triumph over dictatorship. Yahya Jammeh’s 22-year reign of terror was ending. The humble estate agent and broker who had led seven opposition parties behind an impossible dream was finally home.
Eight years later, as Barrow bids for a third term in the 2026 presidential election, Weber’s century-old lecture “Politics as a Vocation” reads like prophecy. Writing amid Germany’s post-war chaos in 1919, Weber warned of leaders who, drunk on their own success, abandon the patient work of building institutions for the intoxicating pursuit of personal power. Today, The Gambia stands at exactly the crossroads Weber described: between democratic consolidation and the slow decay of institutional constraint.
From Liberation Hero to Power Broker
Barrow did not emerge as opposition leader through personal ambition or magnetic appeal. The coalition parties strategically selected him precisely because he was a political unknown, running a modest estate business. The coalition’s realpolitik was shrewd: Jammeh might feel less threatened by this unassuming figure than by established opposition heavyweights. When Jammeh finally fled to Equatorial Guinea, Barrow returned to crowds who saw him less as a liberator-hero than as the humble vessel who had carried them to liberation.
The signs of dangerous drift are everywhere. Rather than spending political capital on constitutional reform that could cement democratic gains, Barrow has focused on building personal networks and opportunistic alliances. His partnership with Jammeh’s Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), the very party that enabled decades of repression, admits a charitable reading: neutralizing a potential spoiler, integrating Jammeh-era constituencies into democratic participation, forestalling unrest from hardline loyalists.
But the cost has been high: the mainstreaming of figures from the former regime and the effective stalling of transitional justice. Pragmatic reconciliation does not require appointing former enforcers to cabinet, nor does it explain placing former APRC members into the legislature's most powerful offices (the Speaker and Deputy Speaker), where they now oversee the legislative agenda. This was what Weber called the pursuit of "booty and spoils," trading democratic principles for parliamentary control.
This transactional logic corrodes foundational state institutions by fueling elite capture, which converts political access into private gain. The erosion shows most clearly in the enduring crisis of land governance, a primary metric of state integrity. The failure is concrete: across Kombo, questionable Tourism Development Area leases remain unresolved, and the government has never restituted ancestral lands appropriated under the State Lands Act 1991. This leaves communities dispossessed and the core expectations of democratic transition unfulfilled.
This pattern of subordinating rules to utility defines Barrow’s government's approach, from land law to the supreme law itself. Most tellingly, he increasingly speaks like a man who believes rules do not apply to him. He announced his bid for a third term in the 2026 presidential election, despite constitutional term limits. During his 2021 campaign, he suggested the constitutional two-term limit should not count his first term since he initially served under a coalition agreement. This is not legal interpretation but the kind of constitutional creativity that Weber saw as dangerous excess, where leaders believe their personal mission transcends institutional constraints.
The Gambian public’s response reveals the political cost of such constitutional manipulation. A July 2025 survey by Gambia Participates and CepRass shows that a majority of survey respondents (55 percent) believe Barrow should not contest for a third term on principle. (1) Even more damningly, 60 percent say they will not vote for him if he does. His core support has shrunk to 19 percent, with 20 percent undecided. These numbers suggest that Barrow’s pursuit of extended power has damaged precisely the quiet authority that Gambians once respected in him.
The Temptation of “Just One More Term”
Weber distinguished between politicians who live “for” politics versus those who live “off” it. Barrow entered politics living “for” it, risking everything to challenge Jammeh. But his evolution suggests a leader increasingly living “off” politics. The machinery of appointment has expanded: ministries split to create new portfolios, absorbing opposition figures into cabinet. The government has presided over a substantial, multi-phase increase in civil service compensation since 2017, using salary increases and allowances as a key form of political patronage.
This matters because, as Weber observed, when leaders lose sight of their democratic calling, they stop seeing citizens as sovereign and start seeing them as subjects. The subtle signs are already visible: increased sensitivity to criticism, strategic use of colonial-era laws to restrict assembly. Authorities arrested civil society activists under the 1961 Public Order Act for a sit-down protest in 2024 and the 2025 GALA demonstrations. Concurrently, Barrow’s circle dismisses constitutional constraints as technicalities and audit reports as subjective opinions. This pattern explains the mounting public opposition to his third term bid, revealed again in that Gambia Participates-CepRass survey, which suggests Gambians increasingly view him as prioritizing personal ambition over democratic norms.
When Democratic Rules Become Suggestions
Weber’s most profound insight concerned political ethics. He contrasted the “ethic of conviction” (acting on absolute principles regardless of consequences) with the “ethic of responsibility” (accepting accountability for the results of one’s actions). Democratic leadership requires both: maintaining principles while considering real-world impacts.
Barrow’s early presidency showed this balance. He chose reconciliation over revenge, maintained stability during a fragile transition, and worked within democratic constraints even when frustrating. But his recent approach tilts dangerously toward conviction without responsibility.
Consider the constitutional reform saga. The 2020 draft failed because it would have applied term limits retroactively, making Barrow ineligible for 2026. His own allies voted it down to protect his candidacy. The 2025 draft failed for the opposite reason: an executive-led process that weakened parliamentary oversight and alienated the opposition. Two failures, inverse causes, identical outcome: no term limits. The problem is not which constitution The Gambia operates under, but that Barrow has twice instrumentalized the reform process to preserve his eligibility. What looks like political incompetence reveals a consistent logic.
This reflects what Weber called the “ethic of ultimate ends”: believing good intentions justify any means. But in fragile democracies, leaders must consider consequences. What precedent does constitutional manipulation set? How will opposition groups respond? What signals does this send to ambitious generals or future autocrats?
Weber warned that politics involves “a strong and slow boring of hard boards”: patient institutional work that outlasts individual leaders. By this measure, Barrow’s record reveals troubling impatience with democracy’s constraints.
The Price of Institutional Decay
Eight years after Jammeh’s fall, The Gambia still operates under a constitution lacking the democratic safeguards (including term limits) that reform efforts sought to introduce. Key Truth Commission recommendations languish. The commission documented widespread human rights abuses under Jammeh, including killings, torture, and enforced disappearances, and called for prosecutions and reforms. The government accepted 263 of 265 recommendations, published a White Paper, and enacted enabling legislation including a Special Tribunal mechanism. Yet as of May 2025, the National Human Rights Commission reports only 60 of 304 planned implementation activities fully completed, with over 100 not yet started. This is not neglect through inaction but the appearance of compliance without substance. The institutional architecture exists; the political will to activate it does not. Land governance failures, resource mismanagement, and state assets underselling persist because political will consistently fails to reinforce accountability. Security sector reform remains stalled. The same forces that served a dictator still guard the republic.
Political space, while vastly improved, shows concerning signs of constriction around government criticism. Most dangerously, the government has shifted focus toward securing political control, not strengthening institutions.
This pattern of constricting political norms finds its ultimate, and most dangerous, expression in the assault on constitutional term limits, a move with profound real-world consequences. In countries transitioning from authoritarian rule, respect for term limits functions as a critical democratic norm. When leaders find creative reasons why limits should not apply to them, however legally sophisticated, they legitimize future power grabs by less benevolent successors. The damage affects not just current governance but democratic culture itself.
Weber understood that democracy’s deepest foundation is not laws but habits: shared expectations about how power should work. When leaders casually dismiss constitutional constraints, they erode these habits, making authoritarianism seem normal again.
The Opposition and Civil Society
Barrow's pronounced weakness, however, has not produced a strong political alternative. Ousainou Darboe remains the most prominent voice against the third-term bid, but the same Gambia Participates-CepRass survey reveals his own vulnerability: 59 percent of respondents do not want him to contest in 2026, and 63 percent say they would not vote for him. This weakness complicates any unified anti-Barrow front. The void has amplified speculation around cross-party figures, particularly KMC Mayor Talib Bensouda, whom 50 percent of respondents believe should run regardless of party affiliation. More striking still, 55 percent believe a coalition featuring Bensouda, Essa Faal, and Mama Kandeh could defeat the incumbent. This figure suggests the appetite for a 2016-style grand coalition remains high, even if its architecture remains uncertain.
Civil society provides the most consistent pressure. Organizations like Gambia Participates, Edward Francis Small Centre for Rights and Justice, and the National Human Rights Commission have maintained public education on constitutional reform. Authorities suppressed the “Three Years Jotna” movement in 2020 through arrests and intimidation. This action has curtailed mass mobilization since. The protesters were demanding that Barrow honor his original promise to serve only three years. Nevertheless, civil society continues to anchor public debate in democratic principle, ensuring that the term-limits question, which over 85 percent of respondents supported in the failed 2020 draft, remains central to the national conversation.
The Die Is Cast: What 2026 Now Holds
With Barrow’s formal announcement of his third term candidacy, the theoretical has become real. He has made the choice Weber warned about, and now The Gambia faces the consequences of a leader who has chosen personal ambition over constitutional restraint.
The polling data reveals the political landscape Barrow has created for himself: 60 percent of Gambians say they will not vote for him, with only 19 percent expressing support. This represents a dramatic collapse in fang majiyo aniƞ horromo niƞ boo-ñaa, the affability and respectability that once made him politically viable. Weber would recognize this pattern: when leaders abandon democratic vocation for power retention, they often discover that legitimacy, once lost, proves nearly impossible to recover.
The 2026 election now poses fundamental questions about Gambian democracy itself. Can a leader with such low public support win legitimately? If Barrow wins despite the polling, what does that say about electoral integrity? If he loses, will he accept the result, or will The Gambia face another constitutional crisis?
The Courage Not to Rule
Weber concluded his famous lecture with words that ring across centuries: politics demands passion balanced by perspective, the ability to maintain hope “in spite of all” while accepting responsibility for consequences. True political vocation, he argued, requires reaching for the impossible while remaining grounded in reality.
For Barrow, the impossible was once within reach: securing his place in history as the leader who truly liberated The Gambia. But this required the hardest political act of all, voluntarily relinquishing power. It meant choosing institutional legacy over personal ambition, democratic precedent over constitutional creativity.
The tragic irony is that Barrow’s greatest achievements (ending Jammeh’s rule, maintaining stability, allowing unprecedented freedom) provide the very foundation for democratic consolidation he now seems determined to abandon. He succeeded as a liberator precisely because Gambians trusted his democratic promises. The Gambia Participates-CepRass survey reveals his actions have now severely damaged this trust, with only 35 percent of respondents supporting his third term candidacy. Betraying that trust further would not just damage his legacy; it would vindicate every cynic who claims African democracy is impossible.
The question for 2026 is no longer just about constitutional manipulation. It is about what follows: a continued erosion that enables elite resource capture and state asset underselling, or a return to accountability. Barrow’s choice tests whether liberation can secure not just political freedom, but economic justice.
Weber wrote that the “polar night of icy darkness” awaits societies where leaders abandon democratic vocation for personal power. But he also believed in politics as calling: the possibility that leaders might choose institutional responsibility over individual ambition.
The question is no longer whether Barrow can extend his presidency through constitutional manipulation. He has already chosen to do so. The real failure is not legal but moral: a leader Gambians once hailed as a democratic savior has abandoned the very norms that brought him to power. His truest victory would have been to resist the temptations and trappings of power, proving that in at least one corner of Africa, democracy could survive not just tyranny, but the triumph of its own savior. Instead, he has chosen to test its limits.
The Gambia, and the watching continent, now witness the consequences of that choice. Whether Barrow survives the election he has forced upon the country matters less than what his candidacy has already cost: the proof that liberation, by itself, does not guarantee democratic commitment.
Weber’s century-old warning no longer hangs in the balance. History is answering it.
Footnotes:
- THE GAMBIA ELECTION OPINION POLL SURVEY: Public Perceptions and Leadership Prospects Ahead of The Gambia's 2026 Presidential Election. Gambia Participates and CepRass, 19 August 2025 (Unpublished Technical Report). A direct public download link is unavailable; the survey's key findings were widely disseminated by major news outlets and analysed here:
- Kerr Fatou: "Opinion Poll Reveals Gambians Divided Ahead of 2026 Presidential Election," 22 August 2025, available at: https://www.kerrfatou.com/opinion-poll-reveals-gambians-divided-ahead-of-2026-presidential-election/
- QTV Gambia (Video Analysis): "2026 ELECTION POLLS ANALYSIS," YouTube, 25 August 2025, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvsHGZGURcA