‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical anger

Jessica Glenza
Sat, December 4, 2021

Public opinion on abortion in the US has changed little since 1973, when the supreme court in effect legalized the procedure nationally in its ruling on the case Roe v Wade. According to Gallup, which has the longest-running poll on the issue, about four in five Americans believe abortion should be legal, at least in some circumstances.

Yet the politics of abortion have opened deep divisions in the last five decades, which have only grown more profound in recent years of polarization. In 2021, state legislators have passed dozens of restrictions to abortion access, making it the most hostile year to abortion rights on record.

This schism played out in the US supreme court on Wednesday, when the new conservative-dominated bench heard oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the most important abortion rights case since Roe.

In somber arguments, justices questioned whether the state of Mississippi should be allowed to ban nearly all abortions at 15 weeks gestation, nine weeks earlier than the current accepted limit. While the ruling, expected by the end of June next year, is far from a foregone conclusion, justices in the conservative majority appeared to signal their support for severely restricting abortion access, a right Americans have exercised for two generations.

The divisive question among the conservative majority appeared to be whether abortion should be restricted to earlier than 15 weeks, weakening Roe, or if the precedent set in Roe should be overturned entirely.

Summarizing Mississippi’s argument, the conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was controversially nominated to the court by Donald Trump in 2018, said “the constitution is neither pro-life nor pro-choice … and leaves the issue to the people to resolve in the democratic process.” If the issue is returned to the states, 26 states would be “certain or likely” to ban or severely restrict abortion access.

***

The religious right in the US has been laying the foundations of this decisive challenge to abortion rights for years. According to historians and researchers, it has taken decades of political machinations for the campaign to reach this zenith. The movement has intersected with nearly every major issue in American politics for the last five decades, from segregation to welfare reform to campaign finance.

The conservative anti-abortion movement “was a kind of historical accident”, said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Dartmouth University and author of the recently released book Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.

It wasn’t until Republican strategists sought to “deflect attention away from the real narrative”, which Balmer argues was racial integration, “and to advocate on behalf of the fetus”, that largely apolitical evangelical Christians and Catholics would be united within the Republican party. Balmer argues that advocacy was nascent in 1969.

Although the supreme court decision in Brown v Board of Education called for an end to racial segregation in schools in 1954, many schools continued de facto segregation 14 years later.

Then, the supreme court weighed in again, and ordered schools to integrate “immediately”. This prompted white southerners to form “segregation academies”, whites-only private Christian schools which registered as tax-exempt non-profit charities. African American parents in Mississippi sued, arguing this was taxpayer-subsidized discrimination. They won, and in 1971, tax authorities revoked the non-profit status of 111 segregated private schools.

Marchers in St Paul, Minnesota, protested against the supreme court’s Roe decision, January 1973. Photograph: AP

In Balmer’s view, revoking the non-profit status of segregated private schools catalyzed evangelical Christian leaders, but even in the early 1970s defense of racial segregation was not a populist message. However, defense of the fetus could be.

Republican operations began to test abortion as a vessel for the collective anxieties of evangelical Christians, and Roe as a shorthand for government intrusion into the family after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Eventually, abortion became the reason for evangelicals to deny the Democratic president Jimmy Carter, himself an evangelical Christian, a second term.

Evangelical opposition to abortion “wasn’t an anti-abortion movement per se”, said Elmer L Rumminger, an administrator at the then whites-only Christian college Bob Jones University, said in Balmer’s book. “For me it was government intrusion into private education.”

At the same time, the anti-feminist Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly was connecting anxiety about women’s changing roles in society with abortion. In a 1972 essay, she described the feminist movement as “anti-family, anti-children, and pro-abortion,” and the writing of contemporaneous feminists as “a series of sharp-tongued, high-pitched whining complaints by unmarried women”.

Phyllis Schlafly opposed abortion as part of her anti-feminist agenda. 

Photograph: Anonymous/AP

By the 1978 midterm congressional elections, Paul Weyrich, one of the architects of modern conservatism, was testing abortion as a campaign issue with evangelical Christians with a small fund from the Republican National Committee. Roman Catholic volunteers distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets in church parking lots in Iowa, New Hampshire and Minnesota, and their efforts prevailed. Four anti-abortion Republicans ousted Democrats.

The groundwork laid by Schlafly and Weyrich made “Roe shorthand for a host of worries about sex equality and sexuality”, wrote Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and author of After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate.

“Even as late as August 1980, the Reagan-Bush campaign wasn’t certain abortion would work for them as a political issue,” said Balmer. However, as Reagan sailed to victory, he was carried in part by religious voters hooked on the promise of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. When a constitutional amendment failed, a new strategy took hold: control the supreme court.

An anti-abortion demonstration in Boston, January 1981.

 Photograph: Boston Globe/Getty Images

Historians said segregation was only one part of a complex and multifaceted movement, which has long seen itself as a human rights campaign. By the 1970s, “there was an anti-abortion movement which was influential and pretty effective in the states that was ready for the new right to work with,” said Ziegler.

In the coming years, Reagan would recast the politics of reproduction through a new racist prism, as he introduced the mythical stereotype of the “welfare queen”. The image allowed politicians to portray “all single mothers as persons of color and all persons of color as dependent on public assistance”, wrote the reproductive rights activists Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger in their 2017 book Reproductive Justice: An Introduction.

The image divorced family wellbeing and welfare support from abortion access and rights. Thus, the “broad middle ground” of issues that anti-abortion and pro-choice voters agreed on became “firmly partisan”, said Julia Briggs, author of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics, and professor and chair of women, gender and sexuality studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

***

By the 1990s, anti-abortion activists had professionalized. So called “right to life” organizations rallied the base, and religious law firms dedicated themselves to fighting abortion in courts. The supreme court weighed in on abortion again in 1992, in another watershed case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey. The case allowed states to restrict abortion, as long as such restrictions did not create an “undue burden” on the right to abortion and served the purpose of either protecting the woman’s health or unborn life.

States hostile to abortion passed “Trap” laws, or targeted regulations of abortion providers, which required abortion clinics to become the “functional equivalents of hospitals”, according to legal scholars. States instituted 24-hour waiting periods for abortion, state-mandated inaccurate information and invasive sonograms.

Many clinics went out of business as they struggled to meet the expensive new requirements, and pregnant people struggled to obtain abortions as they had to travel further and spend more to find a provider.

These laws would also play an outsized role in the Dobbs hearing. Conservative justices debated whether they could keep the “undue burden” standard while jettisoning a central tenet of Roe, that women can terminate a pregnancy until a fetus can survive outside the womb, or “viability”.

“Why is 15 weeks not enough time?” asked Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, in the hearings.

The politics of reproduction spurred new debates on acceptable restrictions on birth control, stem cell research and sex education during the George W Bush administration. But it was the election of Barack Obama, America’s first Black president, that supercharged Republican opposition.

In 2010, the Tea Party swept the midterm elections. More extreme candidates entered Congress and statehouses through the practice of challenging incumbents in districts gerrymandered to be reliably Republican. And, in a decision not typically thought of as an anti-abortion victory, the chief counsel for National Right to Life successfully argued a supreme court case that would unleash vast sums of dark money into American elections – Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.

“The anti-abortion movement, over time with other conservative allies, worked to change things like the rules of campaign finance for the conservative movement,” said Ziegler. “Anti-abortion lawyers played an integral part in cases like Citizens United.”

By the time Donald Trump ran for president, evangelical Protestants had become more anti-abortion than the Catholic voters who were once the bedrock of anti-abortion advocacy. Seventy-seven per cent of white evangelical Christians say the procedure should be illegal, compared with just 43% of Catholics, according to the Pew Research Center.

A Trump supporter with an anti-abortion T-shirt at a September 2020 rally. 

Photograph: Amy Harris/REX/Shutterstock

Trump harnessed the anger of white evangelicals for a victory in 2016, with a mix of hardline anti-abortion politicsand xenophobic nativism. Trump abandoned his 1999 stance as “very pro-choice”, saying there should be “punishment” for women who have abortions, and promised to nominate conservative supreme court justices who would “automatically” overturn Roe v Wade.

Today, overwhelmingly white “Christian nationalist” voters believe their religion should be privileged in public life, a goal to be attained “by any means necessary”, according to social researchers such as Indiana University associate professor Andrew Whitehead.

***

Supreme court decisions are notoriously difficult to predict, but abortion rights activists believe Wednesday’s hearing shows that conservative justices are ready to significantly weaken or perhaps overturn Roe v Wade.

If that happens, young, poor people of color will disproportionately suffer, forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Such an outcome is so severe human rights advocates have said state abortion bans would violate United Nations conventions against torture and place the US in the company of a shrinking number of countries with abortion bans.

On Wednesday, the court’s three outnumbered liberal justices argued neither the science, the enormous consequences of pregnancy nor the American polity had changed since the court last decided a watershed abortion rights case. But, because of the work of anti-abortion politicians, the makeup of the court’s bench had.

“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?” asked the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “I don’t see how it is possible.”

We The People: What triggered the U.S. entry into World War II


Rob Kauder, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
Sun, December 5, 2021

Dec. 5—Each week, The Spokesman-Review examines one question from the Naturalization Test immigrants must pass to become United States citizens.

Today's question: Why did the United States enter World War II?

Eighty years ago this week, on a sleepy Sunday morning over Oahu, Hawaii, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was flying his Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bomber, leading the first wave of raiders from the Kidō Butai — an armada of six Imperial Japanese Navy carriers — toward his target when Pearl Harbor came into view.

There were no planes in the air to greet him; no anti-aircraft fire to challenge him. He ordered his radio operator to send word back to the fleet they had achieved complete surprise: "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

Moments later, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Logan Ramsey watched as a dive bomber flew low over Ford Island. He was trying to get a look at the aircraft tail number to report it to his command when it completed its dive and pulled up. Seconds later, a bomb detonated.

Ramsey, realizing it wasn't an American pilot hotdogging over the airfield, rushed into the command center to send the most important message of his and millions of Americans lives: "Air Raid Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill."

The United States had fought hard to stay out of the resurgence of entangled alliances that thrust the world into the last war back in August 1914, isolating itself behind its giant moat — the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — to shield itself from the rising tide of fascism and ultranationalism in the Far East and Europe.

In the early 1920s, Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy, seeking to reclaim the former glory of the Roman Empire by seizing colonies across the Mediterranean in Africa. To his north, Adolf Hitler completed his ascendancy to power in 1933 and began a crash program to jumpstart German industry to arm and equip his "Thousand Year Reich." In the Far East, Army leaders with extremist views of continental expansion through the subjugation of Korea, Manchuria and China pushed the government in Tokyo toward a more militarist Japan and its vision of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The dominoes fell one by one: The Italians seized Libya and Ethiopia in Africa, while the Germans remilitarized the Rhineland, completed the Anschluss (political union) with Austria and demanded the return of Sudetenland — a province of the newly formed, post-World War I Czechoslovakia — to German control. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931. In the summer of 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge incident — in which reports of a single missing Japanese soldier led to shooting between the Chinese and Japanese armies encamped near each other — signaled the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Despite many in the United States holding on to an isolationist worldview, the signs World War II was on the horizon were as big as any billboard you'll see driving north up Division Street.

Between 1935 and 1937, Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts drafted to keep the country out of another European war, but the country's leaders realized they weren't going to be able to stay out of the coming conflict.

In October 1937, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to invoke the Neutrality Act against the belligerents fighting in Asia; he wanted to support the Chinese in their fight against the Japanese, but could not do so outright. During a visit to Chicago that month, Roosevelt gave his famous Quarantine Speech, in which he shifted American foreign policy away from neutrality.

"It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease," Roosevelt said.

One more Neutrality Act was passed in November 1939, two months after the Germans invaded Poland, but this time most pretenses of American neutrality were gone.

Congress added a "cash and carry" clause to the act, saying foreign powers could purchase arms from the United States as long as they paid with cash and carried the materials on their own ships. This allowed British ships to keep the Chinese supplied in their fight against Japan and the Allied forces supplied in their fight against the other two Axis powers — Germany and Italy — in Europe.

The following year, with France fallen and the Battle of Britain raging in the skies above London, new Prime Minister Winston Churchill hammered out a deal with Roosevelt to trade 50 U.S. destroyers in exchange for rent-free rights to a number of British bases in the West Indies for 99 years. The trade was lopsided in America's favor as the destroyers were antiques by the time they were pressed into Royal Navy service, but the deal's significance was in the beginning of the Anglo-American "special relationship" between London and Washington.

The Japanese naval fleet maneuvers of 1939-40 included a simulated attack by torpedo planes on ships anchored in a harbor. The head of the Combined Fleet — Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto — was impressed by the results and was convinced just such an attack would be successful if the raiding force maintained the element of surprise.

Thus the genesis of Yamamoto's plan for the raid on Pearl Harbor was born. Yamamoto was not a proponent of attacking the United States; he'd attended Harvard University, served as a naval attache in Washington, D.C., and also participated in the London Naval Conferences of 1930 and 1935. He knew what Japan would be facing if it attacked the United States: "In the first six to 12 months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

With General Hideki Tojo installed as prime minister, however, the country demanded resources like oil and rubber to fuel its Army and Navy's expansionist plans. Those resources could be seized from places like the Dutch East Indies, which would mean taking on Great Britain and the United States, delivering a killing blow to the American Navy at anchor in Pearl Harbor and forcing it to sue for peace.

The only problem for the Japanese was that the United States didn't sue for peace.

"I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

"Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

"With confidence in our armed forces — with the unbounded determination of our people — we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God," President Roosevelt said in an address to a Joint Session of Congress on Dec. 8, 1941.

With that speech, the United States was marching toward the sound of distant guns again. Unfortunately for the Japanese, Yamamoto predicted its outcome with reasonable accuracy. Nearly six months to the day after Pearl Harbor, four of the six carriers involved in the strike on Pearl Harbor were lost at the Battle of Midway. For the next three years, the Japanese were on the defensive and losing ground.

Azzi: Ink flows most easily in pursuit of truth

Robert Azzi
Sun, December 5, 2021

“Read in the name of thy Sustainer, who has created created man out of a germ-cell. Read - for thy Sustainer is the Most Bountiful One who has taught [man] the use of the pen taught man what he did not know.” Qur’an 96:1-5 (Asad)

That revelation, transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel, is believed by Muslims to be God’s first revealed words of the Qur’an.

Robert Azzi

Revealed by God for people who read, who know the use of the pen.

Revealed by God, as Qur’an translator Muhammad Asad says, “For people who think.”

While humankind was taught the use of the pen, was taught what they did not know, it didn’t mean people would always use it well, or think clearly.

While scripture inspires and guides us, how we use our knowledge in the secular world reflects upon us as a nation, as a people who know the use of the pen.

For example, from NH’s steadfastly conservative Manchester Union Leader, which considered Senator Joseph McCarthy a hero, to the New York Times, for whom Daniel Ellsberg was a true patriot, there has always been a tension between publishers and consumers: publishers who wanted large audiences and readers who often consumed several points-of-view in order to form their own informed opinions - readers publishers competed over.

Sadly, today, circumstances have devolved, particularly on the right, to the point where too many Americans are choosing to source their information based only on whether it conforms to their preexisting biases and prejudices.

From QAnon to OAN many are choosing not to look for news - or truth - at all.

As a Muslim I’ve been following recent public discourse with some concern, believing that it has been heralding the rise of a fourth stage of Islamophobia in America in this century.

The first was post 9/11, where American Muslims and non-Muslims were full of fear and suspicion of each other after a terrorist arrack on America by a group of Muslim terrorists. For many Americans, whose knowledge of Islam was limited, fear of Islam was understandable and many Muslims worked tirelessly in interfaith communities to dispel fears and suspicion.

Phase two erupted in 2008 when a Black American was presumptuous enough to run for president. No longer able to address him by the usual racist epithets they branded him Kenyan, Muslim, Other.

The third began with the rise of Donald Trump who told Bill O’Reilly in 2011, “… There is a Muslim problem in the world, and you know it and I know it,” and in 2016, in his first paid campaign ad Trump called “for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what is going on.”

Today, a fourth phase has erupted, fueled not by ignorance or fear but by a deliberate exercise of political power to exploit right-wing racism and prejudice.

In Congress it manifested itself when Congresswoman Lauren Boebert suggested that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who wears a hijab - one of only two Muslim members of the House of Representatives -could be mistaken for a terrorist.

After nearly universal criticism erupted Boebert offered an anodyne apology to "anyone in the Muslim community" she offended but refused to apologize to Omar.

"Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny & shouldn’t be normalized,” Congresswoman Omar said. “Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslim tropes get no condemnation.”

"These pathetic racist lies will not only endanger the life of @IlhanMN, but will increase hate crimes towards Muslims," tweeted Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. "The continued silence & inaction towards this hate-filled colleague and others is enabling violence. It must stop."

The response from many Republicans was predictable: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was silent over Boebert's Islamophobic smears and incitement and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted "@IlhanMN and the Jihad Squad are all three and are undeserving of an apology.”

Silence from Republican leadership over Islamophobia is not confined to Washington: in New Hampshire it takes the form of a candidate for United States Senator, Retired General Don Bolduc of Stratham, inviting two well-known Islamophobes to the Granite State to endorse his campaign.

Retired General William V. Boykin, an outspoken evangelical Christian, who once suggested that he was successful in Somalia because, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol,” has said that radical Islamists hated the United States “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan.”

Retired General and QAnon supporter Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to a felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI,” has said “Islam is a political ideology…it definitely hides behind this notion of it being a religion” … “It’s like cancer…a malignant cancer in this case,” and states that Muslims have “banned the search for truth” because they believe the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, is infallible.

Their words reveal them for what they are - they are revealed by they who know the use of the pen for who they are - and with whom they choose to associate.

Read, we are instructed. Think, we are guided.

"If all the sea were ink for my Sustainer's words, the sea would indeed be exhausted ere my Sustainer's words are exhausted!” we are assured in Qur’an 18:109.

Ink flows most freely in pursuit of truth.

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: Ink flows most easily in pursuit of truth

We need to make a difference in climate change


Don Underwood, Springfield
Sun, December 5, 2021

Climate change is starting to feel personal. As I pass my 71st birthday, I’ve become much more concerned about the legacy I’m leaving to my three grandsons.

I find it difficult to imagine what the Ozarks will be like when my oldest grandson, now 11, reaches my age. What challenges will my youngest grandsons (both 5) be facing in their lives? The evidence is that our local, national and world climate is going to be worse for the boys and their families. My legacy is going to contribute to that future situation. And I feel that I’m failing them.

The Environmental Protection Agency predicts changes to Missouri in coming decades. These changes include more days of 95 degrees Fahrenheit and above, wetter springs with more flooding and drier summers. Missouri generations to come will see changes in our forests and reductions in crop production. They will suffer from longer allergy seasons, increased health risks from ozone pollution and heat stress on those most vulnerable in our population.

Of course, our families could consider migrating northward to find a more comfortable Ozarks-like environment that we enjoy today. Will they be competing with climate refugees from the sea coasts and Deep South for housing and jobs? Or will they stay here and endure the consequences for our continued use of fuels which cause heat-trapping carbon pollution?

It is past time for me to make and promote the necessary changes to deal with climate change. I know I can do some things that will make small changes. But I also believe “we” can make the big changes. We must come together. We can take the actions needed.

My thoughts turn to my parents, part of the “Greatest Generation.” That generation grew up in the Great Depression, fought and won World War II, and brought us through the Cold War. They didn’t shirk the challenges they faced. They stood up, hardened up, and did what was needed. And they knew it wasn’t just for themselves but for future generations, too. Their resolve is to be emulated.

Our decisions today make a difference. Some of our choices will be difficult. There will be expenses. Lifestyles will be changed. These things are disturbing. But what is most disturbing to me is that these changes will be forced on us. The evolving climate crisis will dictate our common future rather than us stepping up and dealing with the issue now. We can mitigate the impact to our climate if we take action now. We can be proud of our legacy rather than having future generations asking, “Why didn’t you do something while there was time?”

I don’t want my legacy to my grandsons to be one of apathy and failure. What legacy will we choose?

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: We need to make a difference in climate change

Guess who pays for all those millions of COVID-19 vaccines

Andy Serwer with Max Zahn
Sat, December 4, 2021

Licensed practical nurse Yokasta Castro, of Warwick, R.I., draws a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine into a syringe at a mass vaccination clinic, May 19, 2021, at Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

Omicron happened this week. (You think?)

And with the arrival of this new variant all the depressingly familiar potential pain points come tumbling back — along with some brand-spanking new ones.

On Thanksgiving (just nine days ago) we could really believe that COVID was winding down. Yes there was Delta and hot spots, but we were on a path. Then on Black Friday, (giving new meaning to the day) Omicron hit, and soon after cases all over the U.S.

We don’t know what Omicron means for us yet — other than maybe cancelling a holiday trip to Europe, (as my family is contemplating right now). The ambiguity is excruciating: How fatal is Omicron? How contagious? How resistant to vaccines? We’re even uncertain how to pronounce it, (either way: “OH-mee-kraan” or “AH-muh-kraan”). For millions around the world the stakes could be deadly.

Consider too, the people in the business of making COVID-19 vaccines. Talk about going into scramble-the-jets mode. Like us, these scientists and executives were beginning to get into a routine. Only instead of settling into a back-to-work cadence and taking real vacations again, they were finding a rhythm of rollout and deployment for their COVID fighting medicines.

Now they may have to reconfigure everything to fight Omicron. Fortunately, when it comes to Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines at least, (such those from Pfizer and Moderna), adaptability is at the very core of the science. Still it will be a pretty major pivot.

Just to give you an idea, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel predicted existing vaccines will struggle with Omicron. “There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level ... we had with [the] Delta [variant],” Bancel said. “I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to ... are like, ‘This is not going to be good.’”

On the other hand, Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani, (who’s been doing an awesome job covering all things COVID-19 for us), points out here that Pfizer (PFE) CEO Albert Bourla and partner BioNTech (BNTX) CEO Uğur Şahin both expressed confidence in their vaccine against Omicron.

(Andrew Romano and Sam Mathews at Yahoo News put together excellent explainers here and here laying out how Omicron could unfold over the coming months.)

And so as the medical world shifts to a yet-to-be-determined degree, a question comes to mind: Who will pay for all this? In fact, who’s paid for all the COVID-19 fighting to date? As I’m sure you’ve noticed, vaccines are 100% free. But nothing’s really free, right?

The simple answer is that mostly we pay, or rather, the government does through our tax dollars, (though insurance companies and hospitals have also been assuming some costs). Following that money as it wends its way through the system is far less simple though, and it also raises the question of who owns the rights to the vaccines and what’s a fair rate of return for a product that was funded to a large degree by public dollars. Then there’s the matter of what the obligations these companies have when it comes to providing vaccines not only to U.S. citizens but to the rest of the world.

Note that the fight against COVID-19 also entails tests and medicine, but I’m just going to focus on vaccines, as it's a critical and deep topic that also happens to be rich with drama.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel speaks at a meeting with President Donald Trump, members of the Coronavirus Task Force, and pharmaceutical executives in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, March 2, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)More

First you should know that the U.S. government has been in the business of funding vaccines long before COVID-19. Yes there have been ups and downs here, and if you ask scientists there’s never enough money, but no one can deny its significance.

“We’ve had a large public health infrastructure that does vaccination forever and ever,” says Sherry A. Glied, an economist and the dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. “A lot of vaccines are provided for free by public health departments and a lot of vaccines are provided with no out-of-pocket cost because insurers are required to cover them. For the most transmissible, communicable diseases that are vaccine preventable, people should be able to get them at no cost either through public health or by insurance. It’s true of most childhood vaccines as well. Even the flu vaccine — most people are getting it for free one way or another. The COVID vaccine falls into that bucket.”

Vaccine funding takes several forms. For instance, there’s BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority), an office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which “works with the biomedical industry, using grants and other assistance, to promote advanced research, innovation and the development of medical devices, tests, vaccines and therapeutics.”

BARDA has given U.S. medical companies billions of dollars for vaccine research (such as for a HIV vaccine) well before COVID, including hundreds of millions to help create “the mRNA platform ... to produce vaccines in response to the threat of pandemic flu,” according to this Health Affairs Blog.

Once COVID-19 hit however, government spending went into overdrive. This BARDA website maps out the vast sums the government has put out to fight the pandemic. Focus on just the vaccine efforts page and you can see that billions went to seven companies; Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen (part of Johnson & Johnson), Sanofi, AstraZeneca, Novavax and Merck — the latter of which is “no longer supported,” after Merck failed to produce a vaccine.

(Sidebar here: Merck has been focusing instead on a therapeutic oral medicine (aka pill) that won preliminary approval this week and could be available as early as next month. There have been questions however about the efficacy and safety of the pill. “In the coming weeks, the FDA may also authorize a similar pill from Pfizer that appears to be significantly more effective than Merck’s,” according to The New York Times.)

The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that BARDA alone has spent over $19 billion on vaccines, (there are other agencies like the Defense Department that have provided funding too, see below), at least half of that spend was buying vaccines for the American public from Pfizer, Moderna and J&J (from biggest to smallest). Overall, Moderna has received some $9 billion from the government while Pfizer has received over $10 billion from the government, but with important differences.

Unlike Moderna, Pfizer took no money from the government to develop the vaccine, as “Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, said he didn’t want any government interference,” according to the Boston Globe.

The Globe story also notes that “in exchange for assuming the risk of developing the vaccine, Pfizer charged the government more for each dose in its initial contract, about $19.50, compared with $15 a dose on average charged by Moderna. Moderna’s vaccine also has had a far bigger impact on the biotech [company] than Pfizer’s vaccine has had on the pharmaceutical giant. Moderna, an 11-year-old company, had never gotten a product to market before the FDA cleared the vaccine. In contrast, the 172-year-old Pfizer is one of the world’s biggest drugmakers, with dozens of products on the market.”

Got that right, and the proof is in the stock chart. Since March 1, 2020, Pfizer is up a tidy 70%, but that pales compared to Moderna (MRNA), which is up over 1100%. Moderna CEO Bancel’s 7.9% stake in the company is now worth $11.2 billion. Whoa.

Vials containing Moderna vaccines are pictured during the administration of a third shot of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine, in Jenin, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, September 15, 2021. REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta

Let’s drill down into Cambridge Mass.-based Moderna a bit more, because it’s the purest-play (now major) pharma-biotech COVID company and because many in the scientific community were skeptical of the company as it hadn’t produced a product and because it had what some called a secretive culture. The company proved the skeptics wrong and succeeded wildly, but now finds itself embroiled in battles on a number of fronts, which I’ll get to below.

Moderna makes money from three buckets; the smallest it calls collaboration revenue, which is money it garners from licensing fees and royalties, The second bucket is grant revenue from BARDA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

But the real action has been in bucket No. 3 or product sales or sales of the COVID vaccine. Revenue there was $10.7 billion over the past nine months through September, up from zero the prior year. Much of that money as we’ve seen came from BARDA — as well as DOD and other agencies — and from foreign governments as well. “Investment in the research was basically done by pre-purchasing doses of vaccines,” says Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Generally speaking that’s the way that governments tend to finance it.”

As noted the $15 a dose for each vaccine the U.S. has reportedly been paying Moderna is an average. For instance, here’s a DOD contract that seems to suggest it paid $16.50 per dose. In fact prices for vaccines are all over the map (literally), based on efficacy, dosage (for instance the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose) or whether a country or the EU contributed to the funding of the vaccine’s development. For instance this BMJ article reports that the EU, which did not subsidize the Moderna vaccine, pays $18 per dose.

If you assume that most of Moderna’s sales were to the U.S. government at that $15 per dose rate and go back to that $10.7 billion in revenue, the math works out to 713 million doses, which directionally matches the number, 770 million, the company says it has made (see chart below.) Bloomberg notes that Moderna would have sold more if not for logistical problems, which it conveyed to Wall Street early last month, with its stock tanking on the news.

Moderna COVID vaccine shipments. Chart via Bloomberg.

Earlier this year, BMJ reported that “Israel ... acknowledged paying $23.50 per dose on average to Pfizer and Moderna to obtain early shipments. Uniquely, Israel agreed to give Pfizer anonymised health data from all of its citizens as part of the deal.”

Another interesting note from BMJ is that “AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have committed to not making a profit from the pandemic, while Moderna and Pfizer did not. AstraZeneca reserved the right, however, to declare the pandemic phase over and take profits from later vaccine sales.”

Why do governments pay for vaccines anyway? Presumably there are altruistic reasons, i.e., saving lives, but also to be honest, paying for vaccines is cheaper than the alternative. For example, even at that high price Israel paid for its vaccines ($23.50 per dose) BMJ says that vaccinating that country’s entire population costs the economy only as much as two days of lockdown.

And of course there’s the huge cost of an unvaccinated populace. “It’s costing Americans billions of dollars over the last several months to hospitalize people who could've had their hospitalization prevented if they had gotten the vaccine,” says Cynthia Cox. Cox looked at the cost of “people hospitalized after June, when they would've been able to be fully vaccinated. We accounted for the fact that vaccines are not able to prevent all hospitalizations. Even after accounting for that and lowballing the cost of hospitalization, it still adds up to a few billion dollars over the last few months.”

Cox also points out there are inevitable incremental costs even with vaccinated populations that are less recognized. “There’s the cost of administering the vaccine. It’s not just about producing the vials — you also have to get the shots into arms. Through [recently passed] legislation, insurance companies are required to cover the cost of administering the drug.”

In fact, iShares U.S. Healthcare Providers ETF (IHF) has underperformed the market a bit since March 2020, suggesting that COVID (the dominant health care event of this time) has not been a net positive for that business.

Dr. Gerard Brogan, chief revenue officer for Northwell Health and professor of emergency medicine at Zucker School of Medicine in New York, adds more color here: “Reimbursement for vaccines were roughly $30 for the material, and the cost was another roughly $60 to administer the vaccine,” he says. “A portion of the staff, syringes, needles, alcohol wipes, all of those things are needed to administer the vaccine safely. For us as a health system, it was roughly $2 million to $3 million per month we were spending unreimbursed to perform this public health function.”

At the core of all this though are the vaccines. And as such you can see how critical a company like Moderna has become not only to the United States, but to the world. It’s in a complicated position and the sailing is not so smooth. Besides its aforementioned growing pains, the company must compete against industry behemoth Pfizer.

In an interview with Anjalee Khemlani, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla noted that “we changed, dramatically, our strategy. We had invested to produce 1.3 billion doses for 2021, when we realized the situation, we put way more investments into the system and we were able to raise the volumes to 3 billion for this year, and 4 billion for next year.” Bloomberg reports that Pfizer recently raised its 2021 forecast for vaccine sales to $36 billion.”




Moderna, on the other hand, expects 2021 sales of $15 billion to $18 billion from the COVID-19 vaccines and up to $22 billion next year. Why the difference?

First of all big companies like Pfizer have factories already in place, plus existing relationships with suppliers and seasoned supply-chain experts. Also Pfizer’s vaccine for children has been approved in the U.S., while Moderna’s higher-dose vaccine still awaits approval. (And unlike Moderna, Pfizer has tThat COVID-19 pill in its pipeline which could reduce demand for vaccines.)

Then there’s Moderna’s nasty little tiff with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which The New York Times first reported early last month. In a nutshell, Moderna is saying that NIH scientists who worked on developing the mRNA vaccine early on shouldn’t be credited with inventing the vaccine, because Moderna says, “only Moderna’s scientists designed” the actual vaccine. The Times notes:

“​​The dispute is about much more than scientific accolades or ego. If the three [NIH] scientists are named on the patent along with the Moderna employees, the federal government could have more of a say in which companies manufacture the vaccine, which in turn could influence which countries get access. It would also secure a nearly unfettered right to license the technology, which could bring millions into the federal Treasury.” Watch this space. It could get ugly.

Another bugaboo for Moderna is that some medical experts take issue with the company's plan to distribute vaccines to the rest of the world. Doctors Without Borders has called for Moderna to immediately share its vaccine technology and know-how with the World Health Organization. Ditto for the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

“The four-year timeline proposed by Moderna to bring vaccines to low- and middle-income countries is unconscionable,” writes Carrie Teicher, a physician, epidemiologist and director of programs at Doctors Without Borders in an opinion piece in STAT. “It means that Moderna and the world’s governments are choosing to let countless people die preventable deaths ... it’s the responsibility of the U.S. government to force Moderna to share its technology immediately.”

Maybe. That issue is obviously all tied up with the $10 billion Moderna received from the Feds — and its incipient patent dispute with NIH.

Moderna may have sound business and legal cases in all this — and a bright future as well. But executives there may discover that optics, never mind humanity, matter even more. And that maybe they aren’t mutually exclusive either.

This article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on December 4, 2021. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe

Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @serwer

Opinion: Aung San Suu Kyi's plan for Myanmar has failed

Hopes were high in 2015 after Aung San Suu Kyi and her party gained power. However, her attempt to lead the country into a better future with nonviolent means has been unsuccessful, says DW's Rodion Ebbighausen.

    

Many thought that Aung San Suu Kyi was on the right path to change the country's fortunes

When the court in Myanmar's capital, Naypyitaw, hands down the first verdict in the trial against Nobel Peace Prize laureate and de facto head of government Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday, the military government will draw a legal line as well under the country's political awakening embodied by Suu Kyi.

To be clear: The expected verdict is not based on the rule of law — the court is merely enforcing what the military junta has decreed. Among other charges, Suu Kyi is on trial for incitement against the military and corruption.

Since entering politics in 1988, Suu Kyi — inspired by India's Mahatma Gandhi — has symbolized the pursuit of achieving political aims with nonviolent means.

She wanted to break the vicious cycle of confrontation and retaliation that characterizes the country and its endless civil war to this day. In 2015, it seemed the time had finally come. Suu Kyi and her party won a majority in largely free elections. Six years later, the bloody coup in early February has rendered those achievements null and void.

Return to nonviolence ruled out

DW editor Rodion Ebbighausen

The military junta wants to criminalize Suu Kyi. The trial is further evidence that the military rulers have no interest at all in reaching a political solution. Instead, to prop up their authoritarian rule, they resort to even more intimidation and violence. The facts speak for themselves: Approximately 1,300 civilians have been killed so far this year by security forces; opposition members have been abused and tortured — their haunting images posted on social media by soldiers.

What shouldn't be forgotten, however, is that a substantial segment of the opposition that used to rally behind Suu Kyi has also rejected a nonviolent approach. They argue that the junta's brutality leaves them with no other choice.

Bombings and arson attacks on military installations and police stations, on civil servants and also on infrastructure such as electricity and water supplies are commonplace. Supposed or actual informers are murdered and sometimes their children, too — tragic, but unavoidable collateral damage, says the opposition.

A missed opportunity

The military is waging an all-out, brutal war. International conventions are ignored, appeals for peace brushed aside. The military leadership's strategy is to completely destroy the enemy — and the opposition is making it easy for them. There's no intact chain of command to speak of, let alone a strategy to rally the many and disparate resistance cells around a common goal and a code of conduct. Making it even more complicated are the countless armed ethnic groups pursuing their own goals. As a result, the spiral of violence is increasing.

Many in the country today view Aung San Suu Kyi's ideas of pursuing nonviolent politics as anachronistic, even absurd.

This is all the more tragic because Suu Kyi's perseverance and doggedness in trying to achieve change through nonviolent means helped the country live through a decade of relative openness from 2011-2021.

In hindsight, it will be viewed as a missed opportunity — but it was the best one the country has had since it gained independence in 1948.

This article has been translated from the original German

 

Soil — dull and dirty? Think again …

To mark World Soil Day, we’re taking a look at the humble resource beneath our feet that nourishes entire ecosystems and keeps the world fed.

    

Soil: Time to take a closer look

"A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself." Such were the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt back in 1937 when the United States was in the midst of its dust bowl years. Overplowing and the displacement of prairie grasslands that anchored the topsoil had reduced once-fertile plains to a parched, barren wasteland swept by dust storms. 

We still use the word "dirt" to mean soil. But there is a world of difference between the rich, fertile earth that nourishes ecosystems and the desiccated ground that gave the US depression — compounded by crop failures — the nickname the "dirty thirties."

A teeming microcosm of biodiversity 

Soils are the living, breathing surface of our planet. A mix of mineral and organic matter, they are among the most species-rich habitats in the world, teeming with worms, insects, bacteria and fungi. A square meter of soil can contain up to 10,000 different species, and a single gram can be home to a billion bacteria. 

The humble earthworm: making our soils rich and fertile

These organisms decompose leaf litter, dead plants and animals, recycling precious nutrients back into the soil to feed new generations of plants.

Earthworms, ants and other creepy crawlies further enrich the soil as they burrow, mixing the rich debris of the topsoil into the layers below. At the same time, they help give soil its structure, ensuring it's well aerated and can absorb and drain water. 

Intensive agriculture drains soils of life

Only a fraction of the organisms living in our ground have been properly studied. But what scientists do know is that our soils are in bad shape and their biodiversity is fast declining.

Over 50% of the world's arable land is devoted exclusively to rice, maize, soy and wheat. Planting huge expanses of a single crop can boost yield — at least in the short term — and makes mechanized harvesting easier. 

But as the same crop draws the nutrients it needs from the soil year after year, that soil becomes depleted. This means that farmers have to rely on artificial fertilizers, which pollute water sources and disrupt the natural balance of ecosystems. Synthetic pesticides and fertilizers also kill off vital microbes in the soil.

Industrial argriculture boosts yield in the short term, but saps the soil of nutrients

Plowing takes a toll, too. It destroys natural networks of fungi and microorganisms while breaking up the resilient structure of soil, leaving it more prone to flooding and drought, and vulnerable to erosion.

In 2015, a study from England's University of Sheffield found that 33% of the world's arable land had been lost to pollution and erosion over the previous 40 years. "This is catastrophic when you think that it takes about 500 years to form 2.5 cm (1 inch) of topsoil," the authors of the study said.

Brazil, as well as some countries in the Caribbean, Central Africa and Southeast Asia, have lost 70% of their agricultural land to erosion, and around the world an estimated 3.2 billion people — particularly rural communities in the Global South — are already suffering from failing or reduced harvests as a result of land degradation.

Fertilizers are also problematic because they require a lot of energy to produce. More than 40% of the carbon footprint of an ordinary loaf of bread is down to the fertilizer used to grow the grain it's made from. 

Carbon sinks at risk 

While artificially enriching depleted soils means more emissions from fertilizers, healthy soils actually sequester greenhouse gases, helping protect us against climate change. 

Not all emissions from human activities end up in the atmosphere. They are absorbed by plants, forests and the oceans. When plants die and decompose, much of the carbon they have captured from the atmosphere is absorbed by the soil. This process takes time, but cumulatively, it makes soils a major carbon sink — sequestering twice as much CO2 as all the world's flora and our atmosphere combined.

For the sake of our climate, scientists say we have to preserve and restore the world's wetlands

 The most carbon-rich soils of all are found in wetlands, where plant debris sinks into shallow, acidic water. In this oxygen-poor environment, the plant matter doesn't decompose and instead turns into carbon-storing peat.

Peatlands make up just 3% of land on our planet, but account for about a third of the total CO2 stored in soils. 

That is all well and good as long as the carbon remains locked in, but it becomes dangerous if we let it out — which is why land-use change is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Plowing up soils or draining wetlands for agriculture or construction releases the stored carbon into the atmosphere, heating up the planet. This is also true of permafrost soils in Antarctica and Canada, which are melting as temperatures rise. 

Siberia is laced with carbon-storing wetlands

Authors of a 2019 study published in the journal Nature say that without large-scale restoration of these habitats, up to 40% of the greenhouse gas budget still available to meet the Paris climate change targets could be used up by these areas alone.

Traditional farming practices used in subsistence agriculture and some organic farming, could also contribute to recovery of our soils — or at least slow their decline. Rotating crops, mixing different plant species together, sowing without tilling and allowing crop waste to decay where it's grown all help keep soils healthy. 

These practices are more labor-intensive and less profitable in the short term. But according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, increasing soil biodiversity could yield up to 2.3 billion metric tons (25.4 US tons) of additional crop yields per year, worth $1.4 trillion (€1.24 trillion).

Translated from German by Ruby Russell

Pakistan: Zoo animals suffer from continued neglect

The death of a rare breed of lion at a Pakistani zoo has drawn outrage after poor conditions were revealed on social media. Now advocates are concerned about the health of other animals at the country's zoos.

   

A white lion, similar to the one seen here, died at a Karachi Zoo last month

On November 24, a 15-year-old white lion died at a zoo in the Pakistani city of Karachi after succumbing to a tuberculosis infection.

After the lion's death, Pakistani animal rights activists said the lion died due to negligence from zookeepers. Soon after, the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC), which runs the Karachi Zoo, dismissed its director.

Conditions at the zoo had already drawn negative attention a week before the lion died, when videos of what looked like an underfed lion living in unhygienic conditions circulated on social media.

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Pakistan's senior director, Rab Nawaz, said the lion's death appeared to be a case of negligence. He told DW the sick lion should have been kept in quarantine, adding that the zoo lacked resources, veterinarians and trained staff to care for it.  

Isma Gheewala, a Karachi-based vet, told DW the medical needs of animals at the zoo are not being met. She said the zoo does not receive enough funding, with 70 to 80% of their budget going to salaries and food.

"They have to rely on donations and cannot hire more staff, which is very important," she said.

The Karachi Zoo did not respond to DW's repeated requests for comment.

Karachi Zoo short on staff, feed and vets

Covering 33 acres, the Karachi Zoo is one of the largest in Pakistan. However, it suffers from staff shortages. It can take more than an hour to clean a large animal, and with hundreds living at the zoo, the skeleton staff struggles to keep up.

A tiger at Karachi Zoo licks an ice block during a heat wave

Amjad Mehboob, a contractor who supplies animal feed to the zoo, told DW he has not been paid since February, and has threatened to discontinue supplying the zoo if payments continue to be delayed. He said the zoo has promised to pay the money this month.

Despite the lack of payment, Mehboob has yet to discontinue supplying feed to the zoo, because he does not want the animals to suffer. However, he admitted that it was hard for him to keep the supplies steady.

Animal rights activists have been concerned about the well-being of animals at Karachi Zoo for some time.

Owais Awan, an Islamabad-based animal activist and lawyer, told DW that a top concern is the lack of veterinarian checkups being done at Karachi Zoo.  

During a visit earlier this year, he noticed some of the elephants behaving strangely. He asked zoo officials to carry out an examination of the animals, but said those requests were ignored.

Awan said he had to approach the local high court, which then ordered a veterinary examination of four African elephants at the zoo, and at the nearby Safari Park.

One of the elephants being examined by a vet at the Safari Park in Karachi

At-risk elephants

The zoo insisted on bringing in a local vet for the examination, but the court appointed a foreign organization. On Sunday, a team of experts arrived. Among them was Frank Göritz, lead veterinarian at Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, who made the trip on behalf of the Austria-based animal protection organization Four Paws.

He told DW the purpose of the visit was to examine and potentially diagnose the four elephants.

Thomas Hildebrandt, from the veterinary medicine department at the Freie Universität in Berlin, told DW that some of the elephants the team examined had signs of edema on their bellies.  He said the animals need better food and care.

Following their visit to the Karachi Zoo and Safari Park, the expert team submitted a report with the Sindh High Court on Tuesday. It said both elephants living at Safari Park suffer from severe food problems while elephants at the Karachi Zoo have dental issues that require attention.

The experts recommended that better conditions and regular checkups be provided to the animals. However, with funding unlikely to come from Pakistan's cash-strapped coffers, it is unclear where the zoos will find resources for improved conditions.

Shah Fahad contributed to this report.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn

Incumbent Barrow declared winner of Gambia's presidential vote as opposition cries foul

Issued on: 05/12/2021

Supporters of Gambian president and presidential candidate Adama Barrow celebrated after partial results of the presidential elections showed Barrow leading in Banjul, Gambia, on December 5, 2021.

 © Zohra Bensemra, Reuters

Adama Barrow was on Sunday declared the victor of The Gambia's presidential election by the electoral commission, winning a second term in office in the tiny West African nation.

Commission chairman Alieu Momarr Njai declared Barrow the winner, announcing the final results to journalists hours after rival candidates had challenged partial results that gave him a commanding lead.

Saturday's election, the first since former dictator Yahya Jammeh fled into exile, is seen as crucial for the young democracy.

Earlier Sunday, Ernest Bai Koroma, head of an election observation mission from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), appealed to all the candidates "to accept the outcome of the election in good faith.

"There will be no winner or loser but only one winner, The Gambian people," he said in his statement.

Before the full results were announced, three of Barrow's rival candidates had rejected partial results that gave the incumbent president an early lead.

"At this stage we reject the results announced so far" by the electoral commission, his main rival Ousainou Darboe and two other candidates said in a joint statement. "All actions are on table."

Some of Barrow's supporters, however, were already beginning to celebrate victory in the streets of the capital Banjul.

Test of democracy

It was Barrow who defeated Jammeh five years ago. This election is being closely watched as a test of the democratic transition in The Gambia, where Jammeh ruled for 22 years after seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1994.

Jammeh was forced into exile in Equatorial Guinea in January 2017 after Barrow, then a relative unknown, defeated him at the ballot box.

Barrow, 56, faced five challengers in his re-election bid, and the vote count was slow in part because of the country's unusual voting system.

Illiteracy is widespread in The Gambia, so voters cast their ballot by dropping a marble into a tub marked with their candidate's colour and photo -- a practice dating back to the country's past as a British colony.

Many of the roughly one million eligible voters in the nation of more than two million people are hoping for an improvement in their living standards.

The Gambia, a sliver of land about 480 kilometres (300 miles) long surrounded by Senegal, is one of the poorest countries in the world.

About half of the population lives on less than $1.90 per day, the World Bank says.

The tourism-dependent economy was dealt a severe blow by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Barrow ran on a continuity ticket, pointing to infrastructure projects completed under his watch, as well as increased civil liberties.

His main rival Darboe is a political veteran, a lawyer who has represented opponents of Jammeh, and who ran for president against the former dictator several times.

He served as foreign minister and then vice president under Barrow before stepping down in 2019.

Jammeh legacy

Jammeh lost to Barrow in the 2016 election, but had to be removed by a military intervention from other west African states.

Barrow himself has already gone back on a promise to remain in power for only three years, and has weakened rhetoric about prosecutions for crimes committed under Jammeh.

Questions over Jammeh's continuing role in politics, and his possible return from exile, were central themes in the run-up to the election.

In September, Barrow's NPP party announced a pact with Jammeh's APRC -- a controversial move that was viewed as an electoral ploy.

Jammeh said the decision had been taken without his knowledge, and his supporters formed a rival party. But rights groups fear the pact will diminish chances of a trial.

The former dictator retains significant political support in The Gambia and has sought to influence the vote, remotely addressing rallies of supporters during the campaign period.

A truth commission Barrow set up to probe alleged abuses under Jammeh's rule heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses about state-sanctioned death squads, witch hunts and forcing bogus cures on AIDS patients.

The commission recommended in November the government pursue criminal charges, in a final report delivered to Barrow but not released to the public.

(AFP)