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Are elections in Africa really
necessary or a waste of time?
Commentary by ALPHAYO OTIENO
Publication Date: 1/4/2008
ELECTIONS, IF MERELY FOR their own sake, are a waste of time in
Africa, and nowhere else has this been demonstrated more than in
Kenya.
The recent polls have been roundly condemned by
election-monitoring bodies. Observers from the European Union said
that the whole process was “not credible” and the report they
issued on the exercise was the most damning it had ever issued
anywhere in the world.
As Kenyans and the international community grapple with the crisis,
the question they should now be asking themselves with some
urgency is: “What now?”
The elections represented a big step backwards in the Government’s
ostensible efforts to match economic reforms with democratic
openness and respect for basic rights.
Kenya’s Western partners should not be idle bystanders. Instead
they should be willing to condition non-humanitarian aid and
security co-operation on clear evidence of reform, including the
impartial investigation and prosecution of politicians suspected
of subsidising recent election and post-election violence, and
committed serious electoral malpractices.
From the polls, we now know that democracy is not a panacea. Some
elements of the deficit of democracy should have been put to the
test long ago.
Democracy is just a governing system. It might be one of the best,
but it does not automatically solve all problems. In fact it
probably does the opposite; most major problems must be solved
before democracy can work.
From the polls, we have learnt that there is yet to be fair, free
and transparent elections in Africa; it is just a waste of money
and other resources.
African leaders hate to be called “former head of state”, and once
they taste power, they think the country belongs to them. Then
arrogance, disdain and authoritarianism take their course as the
means to hanging on to power.
But what is the root cause of the problem? Prof Donald Kagan in
Pericles of Athens and The Birth of Democracy, says that a
successful democracy is based on more than elections.
He maintains that an examination of the few successful democracies
in history suggests that they need to meet three conditions if
they are to flourish.
The first is to have a good set of institutions.
The second is to have a body of citizens who possess a good
understanding of the principles of democracy, and who have
developed a character consistent with the democratic way of life.
The third is to have a high quality of leadership, at least in
critical moments. Until the above has been fulfilled, the struggle
for democracy will continue.
TWENTIETH CENTURY HISTORY IS littered with the remains of
elections that brought forth neither democracy nor the rule of law.
The entire Soviet empire was enamoured of show elections in which
every citizen was given the privilege of voting for the winner —
and only the winner.
Fascist and corporatist regimes would routinely invoke the
plebiscite to crown the claimed rule of the people, a tool used by
Hitler to consolidate power in the 1930s.
Post-colonial regimes in countries such as the Central African
Republic, or more recently, Zimbabwe, would hold elections only to
see the victors proclaim themselves rulers for life.
Before any election is held, there must be ground rules that
determine what elections are for, and formal institutional
structures that will be filled by the elections.
But what justifies those rules? The answer can only be given
retrospectively, based on the success of the democratic experiment
itself.
All democracies enter this world with this so-called democratic
deficit — a system preordained by no particular democratic process.
British philosopher John Stuart Mill may have had a case like
Kenya in mind when he wrote that political liberalism was
impossible in a country with ethnic or national divisions.
He wrote: “Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if
they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion,
necessary to the working of representative government, cannot
exist.”
Over the past years, the need to secure democratic order in
countries fractured by racial, ethnic or religious cleavages like
Kenya has robbed us of the easy assumption that democracy can take
hold in raven societies.
Democracy, then, is ultimately not about the ability to elect
rulers; it is about the ability to send them packing. The
political tragedy of post-colonial Africa is not the absence of
elections; it is the inability to vote rulers out of office.
Whether an election is a harbinger of democracy is best addressed
in hindsight once the security of the minorities is assessed and
once the first elected rulers face retrospective accountability
before the electorate.
Mr Otieno is a journalist based in the US.
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