Beitrag vom 02.12.2011

New Democrat, Monrovia/Liberia

Necessary Evil

by Tom Kamara

Voting in Liberia

Elections held in sub-Saharan African countries, are now easily predictable in one basic respect, and that this is the end in chaos, with results rejected, as the pillars of democracy remain fragile.

Now that military coups and armed rebellions have become anathema for regime change, elections along the western model have become the one respectable and acceptable formula for political change and therefore stability.

But the ballot, on multi-party basis, as change formula is basically a new phenomenon in most parts of the continent. One-party political machines, through which elites simply ‘elected' one another to determine the distribution of privilege, did not prepare the population for the kinds of electoral systems now imposed as preconditions for belonging to the ‘democratic club' and its expected benefits within the international community. Without regular elections, even if in name only as Gambia and others show, a country is damned, cursed with the accompanying punishment as Muammer Gaddafi's Libya received.

Here in Liberia, the curse of elections can be understood best by understanding that it was not until 2005 that real competitive elections were held with the UN system in command. For a country independent in 1847, this represents 164 years interval for largely transparent electoral system to be introduced with open campaigns and international observers.

Most other sub-Saharan countries, independent in the 1950s or ‘60s, found themselves under the boots of one-party political machines as Liberia claiming panaceas to all problems and severely punishing those who claimed other solutions.

While it is easy and now convenient to demonize men like Laurent Gbagbo, now to face trial for rejecting elections that led to the deaths of over 3000 people, Cote d'Ivoire, independent in 1960, had its first multi-party elections in 1990, with Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) as the main opposition. Thus it took 30 years for Ivorians to be introduced to the concept of competitive western politics, and when the country blew up after controversial results, the European colonial master, France, intervened to pronounce its influence.

The result is a humiliating trial in an international court for the country's first elected president after independent fatherFélix Houphouët-Boigny, with prospects of heightened national divisions that make reconciliation difficult. Thus elections have exacerbated tension and ethnic suspicions instead of reducing them. National cohesion, necessary for a national identity and nation building, remains bleak.

Sierra Leone, Ghana, Togo, and nearly all African states, were placed under one-party rule until recently, with the belief that elections as now known were foreign concepts dangerous for the national agenda. The ‘great leader' knew best.

In DR Congo, even before the results of last week's poll could be counted, opposition parties called for their annulment.

But one opposition leader, Etienne Tshisekedi, said despite the fraud, the elections should go ahead because, he added, he could win, benefiting from the fraud.

DR Congo finds itself in the same clutches as Cote d'Ivoire. Independent in 1960, it degenerated into civil war, with its charismatic first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, arrested and executed. The country's colonial masters, the Belgians, were accused, while a corrupt military dictatorship was implanted.

Last week's elections, condemned as being plagued with widespread fraud', were the second multi-party polls in the country since 1960. An interval of 51 years.

Since he or she who commands political power commands all things else, losers accepting defeat are rare, if at all they exist.

With the controversies arising from elections that leave losers scarred, the question now asked is whether western-style elections provide the framework stability out of it economic progress? Do they not entrench a small sector of society, as is the case in countries like Angola, Gambia, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, etc., where elections remain a farce, held only to satisfy donors' appetite for form and not substance.

In most cases, elections are more a contest of personalities and not platforms. Voters, unable to grasp concepts and scrutinize candidates, are less interested in integrity of candidates and their ability to deliver promises.

This poses another question, whether millions wasted on elections could not be saved by political elites simply getting together and agreeing to share jobs, the real locomotive driving elections and the desire for advancing different models of dealing with socio-economic problems?

Losers' desire for jobs after elections provides little or no room for building their political parties to prepare for the next contest. Because such losers see the state and its resources as the only means of livelihood, alternative ideas for democratic regime change are in shortage.

Liberia since the advent of multi-party elections again provides a classic example. The ruling party is not challenged on the basis of its agenda for national development, but rather on the basis of not including the opposition, after losing, in the government for jobs and jobs only. Now leaked US embassy cables here give even more detail of how opposition politicians become crybabies for jobs. In 2005, according to the Wikileak cables, Congress for Democratic Change defeated presidential candidate George Weah complained that his party officials were left out of the government's jobs dish-out.

Elections may provide the legitimacy needed to govern. But it is increasingly becoming questionable whether they provide the platform for development and therefore stability.