The end has arrived for Halifa Sallah – he has announced he is retiring from representation. The PDOIS leader will not seek political office ever again.
It’s actually strange that Halifa had a troubled career as a politician. It’s said a man must have a sinless character for him to be able to achieve certain things in life. That simply is not true with Halifa. His perfect character trait has cost him.
Halifa voted on Saturday and cried while talking to reporters. There’s only one thing that made him cry: Gambians are going to miss an opportunity to put the best man in office. He knew he wasn’t going to win and that broke his heart.
This election was important in many ways. It’s the election that will finally set Gambia on true democracy. Anyone who won must spearhead this. That person must also deliver a Gambia where the economy is thriving and citizens have decent jobs to be able to take care of themselves and their families.
If Halifa would have made a good choice? I believe so. He surely has the competence and ideas to run a government that would live up to expectation. But Halifa scoring just a little over 30,000 votes in the election shows just how far this man has continued to fall as a politician. Halifa is really not meant to be president.
But Halifa has done his part. He has lived a life of dignity as politician. He is not greedy and has been ruled by his conscience in the over 30 years he has been a politician. We will not have his sort again.
And before I go, I want to say if politics is religion where the first rule is to have the best of characters, Halifa would actually be the first person from Gambia to enter heaven. But politics is not religion after all.
