page_title: Ousainou Darboe
section_title: Major opposition politician
hierarchical_section_title: Ousainou Darboe / Political career / Major opposition politician
caption_attribution_description: Group photo from the Commonwealth Foreign Ministers meeting in London, 18 April 2018.
context_page_description: Ousainou Darboe is a Gambian politician and lawyer who served as Vice-President of the Gambia and Minister of Women's Affairs from June 2018 to March 2019, under President Adama Barrow. Darboe formerly served as Barrow's Minister of Foreign Affairs from February 2017 to June 2018.
  Darboe is a human rights lawyer, and worked for the Attorney General's Chambers before entering private practice. He has served as advisor to several companies and government agencies, and was also for a time the vice president of the Gambia Bar Association. He founded the United Democratic Party in 1996. It was the main opposition party under the rule of Yahya Jammeh, and Darboe himself stood in the 1996, 2001, and 2006 presidential elections. He was imprisoned in 2016, but released after Barrow's victory.
context_section_description: 1994 in the Gambia saw a military coup, propelling Yahya Jammeh into the role of head of state. In August 1996, Darboe founded the United Democratic Party based on "democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law", and became its first leader. He first ran for president in the 1996 presidential election, where he came second to Jammeh, winning 35.84% of the vote to Jammeh's 55.77%. However, the election was widely criticised by observers for its flaws.
  In June 2000, while on the campaign trail for the 2001 election, his convoy was ambushed by supporters of the Jammeh regime. One attacker, Alieu Njie, was killed in the process. Darboe and 20 others were arrested and held in Basse police station before being transferred to the high court in Banjul and being granted bail.
  He ran again in the 2001 election, representing a three-way coalition of the UDP, the People's Progressive Party (PPP), and the Gambian People's Party (GPP). He again finished second behind Jammeh, winning 32.59% of the vote. In 2005, the UDP joined with four other opposition parties to form the National Alliance for Democracy and Development (NADD), in preparation for elections in late 2006 and early 2007. The alliance, however, disintegrated after the UDP and the National Reconciliation Party (NRP) withdrew in early 2006.
  By the time the presidential election was held in September 2006, Darboe's UDP had formed another coalition with the NRP and the Gambia Party for Democracy and Progress (GPDP) called the 'Alliance for Regime Change'. In the election, Darboe's running mate was Hamat Bah. A United States diplomatic cable describing the election candidates called Darboe the "perennial candidate". It speculated by his opponent that Darboe seemed "to be relying on tribal loyalties to secure victory at the polls", and also noted that "it is not clear whether he would be a reliable ally for the U.S.". Jammeh won the election with 67.33% of the vote followed by Darboe, who won 26.69%. A third candidate representing the remaining NADD parties, Halifa Sallah, finished a distant third with 5.98% of the vote. Darboe rejected the official results of the election, saying that the election was not free and fair and that there was widespread voter intimidation.
  Darboe was arrested in April 2016 for participating in protests demanding the body (dead or alive) of his party's Youth Leader, Ebrima Solo Sandeng, who was arrested by the state security agents, tortured and eventually died in custody, a day after his arrest. Darboe remained in jail, during the period leading up the December 2016 presidential election, and in his absence, Adama Barrow, a businessman without political experience, was designated as the party's presidential candidate( with Darboe's endorsement). In a shock result, Barrow, as the joint opposition candidate leading Coalition 2016, defeated Jammeh in the election. A few days after the election, Darboe was among 19 members of the opposition released from prison.
caption: Darboe (second row, far right) at a meeting of Commonwealth foreign ministers in 2018.
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