Demba Ali Jawo, who served as a minister of information and communication under president-elect Adama Barrow’s first five-year term, has said the main opposition United Democratic Party is the biggest loser in the December 4 presidential election which saw the incumbent Barrow’s reelection with 53% of the votes.

United Democratic Party has however filed a petition to the Supreme Court in Banjul seeking the Court to overturn Barrow’s election victory, citing election fraud which include bribing electorates and insertion of non-Gambians.

But in an opinion piece, DA Jawo said: “Even though there were five candidates who lost against Barrow, but the biggest losers were the UDP and their presidential candidate, Ousainou Darboe. 

“No doubt most UDP supporters were quite devastated by the results because most of them were quite confident of victory.”

“Therefore, for not only losing but Darboe scoring less than half of what Barrow scored, came as a big shock and disappointment for them. Most of them are no doubt still wondering what may have gone wrong with their campaign strategy.

“Of course, several things may have gone wrong with their campaign, which of course included over-confidence as well as failure to have an effective campaign strategy, as opposed to the NPP, who no doubt ran a very effective campaign, which eventually paid dividends for them,” he added.

“Where has the UDP strategy faltered, one may wonder. UDP is a well-structured party which was expected to perform much better in the elections. 

“However, the very fact that they performed well below everyone’s expectations shows that something was fundamentally wrong with their approach to the elections,” he said.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba