Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh leaves the African Union summit held in Addis Ababa on Jan. 30, 2012
National Assembly elections March 29 in Gambia, a sliver of a nation sandwiched within Senegal, will see President Yahya Jammeh and his ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction party (APRC) further consolidate power. The opposition holds just five of the 53 seats in the parliament, and APRC is expected to claim all the seats this time. The toothless chamber simply rubber-stamps the President’s decision while he hires and fires speakers at will, according to Lamin Jahateh, the editor of Gambia News Online. Jammeh won the presidential election last November — boycotted by the Economic Community of West African States because of the country’s lack of political freedom — with 72% of the vote. That suspiciously emphatic victory came despite the number of Gambians living in poverty nearly doubling since he seized power in a coup in 1992.