In December 2016, the people of Gambia elected an opposition presidential candidate for the first time in the country’s history. The outcome caught virtually everyone by surprise, including the incumbent, Yahya Jammeh, who had brutally ruled the small West African nation as a veritable mafia state for more than two decades. Despite initially conceding defeat on national television, Jammeh reversed his position a few days later, declaring the election null and void after claiming he had personally discovered “voting irregularities” in the final results. Jammeh’s attempt to defy the will of the Gambian people sparked a two-month-long crisis, provoking an […]
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The political opposition in Zimbabwe to President Robert Mugabe is about to test the old adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. On April 19, two opposition leaders—former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and former Vice President Joice Mujuru—announced that they would seek to create a coalition in an effort to deny Mugabe another five-year term in 2018. But will it succeed where successive efforts have failed? In theory, defeating Mugabe should not be terribly difficult. He has led Zimbabwe as president or prime minister since 1980. Under his watch, the country has gone from being one of […]