How To Hand Over To Yourself
In this, the last decade of a tumultuous century, change, political and
otherwise, seems to be on the agenda in most parts of the world. The
post-Cold-War era sees the reawakening of democracratic sentiments long
suppressed for reasons of political expediency. The consensus seems to
be that governments must perform what they are supposed to, or at least
display a certain measure of respect for the common-folk of their
countries. The West, after looking for so long to containment in the
East, has begun the process of looking inwards. However during this
transition period, donor nations look towards former battlegrounds in
the South with some disquiet. The existence of such a large number of
dictators, plain thugs, and thieves of all sorts, installed, and
sustained by shortsighted foreign policies, is an embarrassment few
leaders can afford at such times. The scrutiny of donor nations,
looking to a normalization of economic and political processes in the
south, will consequently be most severe during the next few years. The
"trustworthy" dictators and strongmen of southern nations have thus
arrived at potentially hazardous crossroads.
African rulers, whose excesses have arguably been the most destructive,
seem to have a restricted number of options at their disposal when
faced with this unusual examination. A possible avenue they may choose,
is simply to ignore the West and carry on plundering, albeit at a more
restrained pace. This, though, is problematic since it leaves open the
door to further tightening of donors' purses. Add to this the very
likely prospect of further riches once this unfortunate period is past,
and one might reasonably predict only a few takers to this proposal.
The other option, though, will tend to be more palatable to the
temperamental and theatrically-minded characters that have governed
African nations for a good number of years. The plan is to generously
allow the good people, on whom you have been trampling for so long, to
consecrate you and ask you to stay on. By handing over to yourself, you
appease the donors and quash the cries of the opposition movements in
the country at one stroke. The fruits of appearing legitimate are
plainly evident. The unspoken plan is, of course, to declare a State of
Emergency in a year's time, and shut down the irritating parliament.
Such an ingenious option will probably be the only conceivable one to
people who have already done the impossible by "conquering" a whole
country. Certainly it does not require a great leap of faith to imagine
Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, Eyadema of Togo and other venerable
old men of the continent proceeding down this avenue. Why, Daniel Arap
Moi of Kenya, and even President (for Life) Banda of Malawi (!!!), have
announced
elections!!! The quest to legitimize oneself will undoubtedly attract
its fair share of harassed leaders. An examination of the tactics of
the pseudo-democratic Paul Biya of Cameroon, and the "mercurial"
Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings of Ghana in their recent elections,
may prove instructive as we await similar events all over the continent.
From the outset, 'leaders' start off with advantages that are nigh
insurmountable. For all, the method is simply to tilt the playing
fields in the desired direction using deceit, intimidation, or any
other
means. Plain intimidation would probably be a thug's instinctive action
and indeed, the nearly-fatal attempt on the life of Silvio Olympio, the
popular Togolese opposition figure, should be seen along the lines of
Eyadema reverting to type. In Ghana, the laws allowing
detention-without-charges on the order of the Executive, were still in
place a month prior to the elections.
Rawlings built on this foundation by simultaneously being a candidate,
judge, as well as the jury of the electoral process. He was able to
force his own timetable on the process, and, like Biya, started his
'campaign' a year before official campaigning was supposed to begin.
Political parties, on the other hand, were given less than six months
to form and were only allowed to start campaigning three months before
the elections. In any case, the Flight Lieutenant was the only one who
knew when the elections would be scheduled, packed the Electoral
Commission with lackeys and, the best stroke, chose to hold
elections on November 3, the day of the American presidential
elections. A strongly-worded condemnation by State Dept officials would
clearly be impossible on that date and therefore suspicious results
could be entered in through the back door. The recent attempt by Moi of
Kenya to hold elections barely months after allowing political parties
to form, is an ominous development along the same lines. Another
possible path might be to cajole some money out of the World Bank
and/or the I.M.F. to help your campaign. It was announced two months
before the Ghanaian elections that all public servants would enjoy a
50(!!!) percent pay rise: the first pay rise in 11 years of military
rule.
If all these gestures fail to bring any tangible popularity, the
obvious thing to do is simply rig the elections. After all, the
intention is to pretend to
submit to the democratic process. For
Rawlings this was in the main achieved by adding almost 2 million
fictitious voters to the electoral register and by denying a large
number of potential voters the chance to register. The use of
pre-marked ballot papers is another option that should not be
discounted and indeed appears to have been used extensively in both the
Cameroonian and Ghanaian elections. In the latter case though, the
level of vote rigging seems to have been a touch unsubtle: in some
parts of the country, fully 100 percent of the votes were supposed to
have been cast in Rawlings' favour; the implication being that even the
opposition candidates voted for him in their wards. Fraud though, could
be conducted with greater subtlety; the sight of 99.99 % election
results might strain donors' credulity too far.
With a little fine-tuning of the above methods and perhaps a little
improvisation, one might expect incumbents to win by relatively
comfortable margins in a number of forthcoming elections. It is not
implausible that many leaders overcome their current difficulties and
live to chuckle even louder at their good sense. Indeed with such
advantages, it is hard to imagine other outcomes.
As for the people? Well Africans have long seen frauds come and go. It
would be almost out of character for them to rise up and put an end to
the plain nonsense played out daily by many of their 'leaders'. Still,
the continent-wide apathy towards politics and central authority gives
cause for concern becaause it goes against the grain of traditional
African life. Community government has always been an integral part of
African culture, and it should continue to be important to all in the
new Africa. Reassuringly though, there are signs that the slumbering
African giant is being awoken, more angry than ever. The spontaneous
rioting in many parts of Ghana after the extent of Rawlings'
vote-rigging became apparent is probably an indicator of things to
come. Similarly in Cameroon, the shock and immediate anger at the
announcement of the 'official' results might indicate that an unspoken
line has been crossed. Handing over to onself might well break the
camel's back.
Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah
Harvard College
Taken from Root & Culture
magazine, Spring 1993. Vol. 1 No.2
A publication of the Harvard-Radcliffe Carribbean Club and the Harvard African Students
Association
(Roots & Culture was a precursor to the latest publication from
HASA, The Harvard African)
[Home]