This phenomenon is by no means modern; yet, modernity may arguably be said to have release it from the esoteric world of academia to the realm of everyday usage and even mass participation. Without checking, one pauses to note such famous one-liners like Lionel Trilling’s quip "we are all liberals" to typify the general sentiment of Americans in the socio-political changes happening in the 60s. Or Nixon’s own proclamation in the 70s that "we are all now Keynesians," to describe the consensus on the revolution of Keynesian macroeconomics; or Fukayama’s "End of History" thesis, which, drawing heavily on the historic events of 1989 and Alexandre Kojeve’s influential 1960s lectures on Hegelian-Marxist idea of universal history, declared in brash Hegelian tenor the end of history as we know it. Contemporary Africa has had its share of buzz phrases/words: one recalls Thabo Mbeki’s use of "African Renaissance" to describe the mass wave of optimism in Africa and the so-called new breed of bold, assertive and visionary leadership that had appeared on the African political scene to replace the old order in the late 1990s. Even little Gambia seems to have it’s own share: shortly after the fraudulent 1996 presidential elections, Fatou Jahumpa Ceesay daftly described Yaya as "Africa’s New Type of Man" – and to show how seriously they’ve taken to this daft slogan, Gambia’s highways were dotted with billboards with pictures of a smiling Yaya with Jahumpa’s daft slogan atop.
Of course the trouble with buzz phrases/words is that not only are they fleeting and gestural, but, most importantly, when their glossy surfaces are chafed, they show the extent to which they are devoid of substance – even truth. Let’s consider the fate of the examples aforementioned: by the late 60s to early 70s, Trilling’s "we are all liberals" quip was turned tposy-turvy by a conservative counter-revolution, which pushed liberals on the defensive; similarly, Nixon’s "we are all now Keynesians" was stopped dead in it’s tracks when Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of brash "monetarism" pushed Keynesian economics to the periphery in the early 80s. Fukuyama hadn’t finished replying to his critics when the Balkans and Central Asia reminded us all that history had not ended in 1989, as Fukuyama immodestly hypothesized. Mbeki had yet to complete his lecture circuit on the theme of the "African Renaissance" when the outbreak of all-out war in the Great Lakes region, and Africa’s disastrous record – in particular, Mbeki’s own – in fighting the AIDS pandemic showed that the optimism behind Mbeki’s "African Renaissance" was, well, misplaced. The trouble with Jahumpa’s daft slogan of "Africa’s New Type of Man" is that by April 2000, Yaya showed himself to be, well, another African messiah-turned-monster.
Following this genre, another attempt was undertaken after the 2001 presidential elections to cast Yaya in the same light. In choreographing the political configurations of the Gambian polity of post- October 2001 presidential elections, Junkunda Daffeh, a journalist of communist persuasion, tendered the following political taxonomy: firstly, a "New Majority" has now taken over from the old order; and a "new minority" – largely a potpourri of the nostalgic and reactionary leftover of the old PPP and a few "new" allies – which fights the corner of an era beyond redeem. Secondly, it is Daffeh’s argument that this "New Majority" "emerged" in the aftermath of the 1996 presidential elections, and was cemented by the 2001 presidential elections. As he commented:
"The new majority emerged in 1996 electing Yahya Jammeh as President and a majority APRC National Assembly. Forged in the crucible of nation building for two years in the areas of health, education, communication and governance, it was crucial for the massive approval of the constitution of the 2nd Republic. The leadership of the new majority and the leaderships of the new minority opposition, are opposed face to face mediated by the binding character of national political identity and the forces that were, before 1996, railed against PPP. When that majority was already tired under its own overgrown weight, and reflecting the end of apologists for colonial legacies."
One notices first-hand the disjointed, fuzzy and tatty nature of Daffeh’s thinking. Anyway, who are the constituents of this "New Majority"? Again, let Daffeh explain:
"…to roundly capture any impression an exhaustive excavation of the structure of the new majority first. That which elected Jammeh to borrow from the hieracly of bees and humans, are workers, guards and their own home makers. Their hands are rough, their minds are not blunted by dope, they can sting as sentinels to the new rewards of their our institutions."
Daffeh went on to liken – even juxtapose – the events of the October 2001 presidential elections with that of the landslide 1945 Labour victory of Clement Attlee over Churchill’s battered Conservatives. For Daffeh, just as that epochal election of post- war Britain laid waste the Tory establishment, and laid down the foundation of a new political order, the Gambia’s presidential elections of October 2001 should be viewed through the same vista. Daffeh then went on to express his voluptuous admiration for this "New Majority":
"…this rabble mass compares better with any previous old social class in power. The rough edge of power, far from being a transgression of democracy, confirms the historical need of establishing order and protecting the machinery against the restoration of the deposed. They demonstrated for acumen years, that they can acquire the competence and intelligence to consolidate their power. This necessarily is not to the liking of the minority opposition, which uses its social connections to entrench itself in its now newly aggressive press. But in this area too the new majority put up a fight. To preen any notions of a monolithic heard, a vibrant debate among itself raged on and had been represented in the new parties of NRP and PDOIS. Not only that these parties represented parliamentary and political party oppositions, they represented dissent within the new majority of the second republic. They voted for that Constitution. These leadership might not always reflect the dialectics of unit y and opposition of any social body but the nationalist character of their disagreements with Jammeh, distinguishes them from the rancous and the retrogressive UDP - (PPP)."
Daffeh is right, of course, to distinguish between, say, the UDP and the NRP/PDOIS: whilst the former is militantly opposed to Yaya, the latter may not like Yaya’s political tactics but coyly and on balance approves of the end results of his farrago of a political agenda, which includes reducing the old order to fringe rabble rousers – an agenda the PDOIS genuinely thinks highly of. Daffeh then ended his essay by appealing for a "cultural and intellectual" alliance with the "New Majority" – specifically he has in mind the growing legions of the Gambia’s socially mobile professional urban middle classes concentrated in the Greater Banjul Area. Coming from a professing communist, one is torn between whether to cry or laugh. But seriously does Daffeh make any sense – even if we granted that his "New Majority" thesis is cute and imaginative? It is to this question we must now turn to.
Daffeh’s disjointed, fuzzy and tatty thinking aside, his definition of the constituents of this "New Majority" is suspect. He takes as a given that the October 2001 presidential elections were a legitimate expression of the will of the Gambian electorate. Furthermore, his calculus is thus that given this will it can only follow that Yaya and this will has formed and cemented a "New Majority". Of course, the premise of this narrative is nonsense: the Yaya who embarked on his nationwide campaign for the presidency in 2001 was not only short on confidence in winning the elections, but was defensive, evasive, edgy, abusive and cagey. He only found himself "winner" of said elections because of an elaborate electoral scam in cahoots with the IEC. To be sure, Darboe’s graceful but politically disastrous acceptance of the "results" as announced by the IEC did place the momentum, even if momentarily, behind Yaya. How long this momentary momentum lasts remains to be seen. It is clear that what Daffeh mistakenly describes as the constituents of this "New Majority" is nothing but an accidental momentary momentum swinging behind Yaya – largely due to the Opposition’s suppositions and miscalculations in both pre- and post- October 2001 presidential elections.
Taking history to be his bearing, especially British political history, Daffeh ignorantly asserted that the October 2001 presidential elections were as epochal as the Attlee landslide victory over Churchill in 1945. Here, Daffeh shows himself to be breathtakingly ignorant of British history – even showing a profound lack of insight in historical inquiry. Likening Britain of that epochal Attlee 1945 landslide victory to that of the Gambia’s October 2001 presidential elections is to indulge in a caricature of British political history. What the Attlee landslide ended was not so much a political establishment: rather, it merely ended one idea and helped ushered in another and made it the new political consensus in Britain. The idea ended was laissez faire free trade; and the new idea was the Keynesian consensus, which laid the foundations of the British welfare state – a consensus even Tories grudgingly accepted as a fait accompli. Contrary to Daffeh’s ignorant claims, the Tories, or the Tory political establishment, weren’t sent packing to the political wilderness by Attlee’s landslide victory of 1945: in fact, by 1951, Churchill was back in power; and the Tories even went on to be in power up till 1964 when Harold Wilson formed the next Labour government. This lasted only six years, and the Tories were back in power again in 1970 under Ted Heath. It is a truism of British political history that the 20th century was a conservative or Tory century.
The most spurrious and naďve of Daffeh’s claims, or suggestions, is the idea that the burgeoning legion of upwardly and socially mobile middle classes of the Greater Banjul Area are allied to this "New Majority". This is nonsense on stilts – nay, Daffeh again betrays his profound lack of insight. Educated middle class families are the exact opposite of those that will share Yaya’s political umbrella. Not only are the middle class types conscious of civil liberties, especially when they are flagrantly encroached upon by the state, but, most importantly, tend to be liberal-minded folks with liberal sensibilities and sentiments; ever eager to improve their material lot. How this class can openly ally itself with an openly authoritarian tinpot dictator like Yaya remains to be seen. Daffeh, however, hasn’t offered any credible explanation why the middle classes will rush to Yaya’s authoritarian fold – perhaps, he realises he is on thin grounds.
In the very end, Daffeh’s "New Majority" thesis falls into the traps of others like it in the same genre. It cutely described a phenomenon but lacked the analytical boldness to go cut through conventional wisdom and explain why this momentary majority - he so pathetically tried to explin - was clearly aligned with Darbo in the run up to the elections but appeared to desert him when he disastrously but gracefully accepted the doctored results the IEC announced the day after the October 2001 presidential elections as the legitimate expression of the will of the Gambia’s electorates? I suspect Daffeh knows the answer to this question pretty well; but letting his prejudices come before principles decided to play to the gallery of pro- Yaya sentiments and thus practicing what Isaiah Berlin called epater journalism: the desire to write for the powers that be what it is they wish to conjure as reality and hear everyone chant on bended-knees. Daffeh’s "New Majority" is a postmodern variation of this deplorable trend of epater journalism.