African leaders once personified unbridled despotism. Now they’re personifying the growing spectacle of leaders refusing to give up power after losing free and fair elections; hence their oxymoronic designation: democratic despots.
This has led to an untenable new norm developing on the Continent where opposition leaders – who win clear and convincing elections – are being forced to either enter into shotgun marriages (i.e., coalition governments) with sore losers or lead civil wars to oust them by force. Here, for example, is how I commented in 2008 when this phenomenon was playing out in Kenya – the putative beacon of democracy in Africa:
Almost four months after contested election results plunged Kenya into tribal warfare that killed 1,500 and left 600,000 displaced, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Opposition Leader Raila Odinga held a joint press conference to announce that they had finally signed a National Accord and Reconciliation Act (NARA) to form a coalition government. Never mind the consensus among international election observers not only that Kibaki’s ruling Party of National Unity (PNU) had lost control of parliament, but also that he had been duly ousted as president…
Which brings me to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe: Because like Kibaki and his ruling party, all indications are that he and his ruling ZANU-PF party lost national elections that were held on March 29. Yet, like Kibaki, Mugabe refused to concede defeat, which also plunged Zimbabwe into post-election violence.
(Kenya forms grand coalition: a model for Zimbabwe? The iPINIONS Journal, April 24, 2008)
Sure enough, though, Mugabe soon emulated Kibaki, compelling me to duly comment as follows:
I predicted that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the undisputed winner in presidential elections last March, would ultimately agree to serve in a coalition government under his perennial oppressor, President Robert Mugabe. This, despite Tsvangirai vowing repeatedly that he would heed the near-universal admonition of world leaders to not only insist that Mugabe must resign but also avoid serving with him like the plague.
(Zimbabwe forms (improbable) coalition government, The iPINIONS Journal, February 12, 2009)
More to the point, I described the marital arrangement between this democratic despot and his democratically elected challenger as follows:
Of course, Mugabe can now afford to be magnanimous. Indeed, I suspect he would be happy to confer the subordinate title of prime minister upon his hapless foe; provided, however, that that title is conferred with all of the political power wielded by a Nubian eunuch.
(Mugabe swears himself in as president for life, The iPINIONS Journal, June 30, 2008)
Now it seems that President Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast is determined to follow suit. Because, like Kibaki and Mugabe and their respective ruling parties, Gbagbo and his ruling party have summarily invalidated election results that gave opposition leader Alassane Ouattara a 10-point victory in last month’s presidential election.
Also, like Kibaki and Mugabe, Gbagbo has given the finger to patently feckless international demands – most notably from United Nations, France, the United States, the European Union, the African Union and regional bloc ECOWAS – for him to step down.
Meanwhile, Ouattara is doing his best to force the issue by forming a separate government and calling for a national “pacifist struggle … to install the legitimate authorities of Ivory Coast.”
Unfortunately, it’s an indication of how little influence he has that Ivoirians are already engaging in the kind of partisan violence that followed stolen elections in Kenya.
This does not bode well; not least because Gbagbo now has an even firmer grip on the military and police forces than his dubious mentor, Kibaki, had on similar forces in Kenya. Moreover, if it persists, he seems quite prepared to order them to squash this unrest by any means necessary.
Gbagbo thusly consolidated his power in 2002 after a failed coup against his government by mostly Muslim rebels in the North, where Ouattara – himself a Muslim – derives most of his support.
Accordingly, chances are very good that Ouattara will be lucky if he can muster enough political leverage to entice Gbagbo into forming a coalition government in which he (Ouattara) consents to play the chief eunuch.
And so it goes in Africa. But, who knows, if President Obama loses to Sarah Palin or some other Republican in 2012, perhaps the African in him (his daddy was from Kenya no less) might compel him to pull a similar ploy to hold onto power….
NOTE: Ouattara is married to a white Catholic woman. So, prevailing prejudices on the Continent being what they are (in this case both racial and religious), one would have thought this fact alone would have disqualified him from elective office.
Therefore, it speaks volumes about the progressive minds of the people of Ivory Coast that they voted so overwhelming for him to become their duly elected president.
Related commentaries:
Kenya forms grand coalition…
Zimbabwe forms (improbable) coalition government
Mugabe swears himself in…
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.