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West Africa’s burdened
democracy
By Kofi
Akosah-Sarpong
Why
democratic tussles
Democracy and
freedoms are struggling in
West Africa, according to
the
U.S.-based Freedom House,
a non-partisan organization
that monitors political
rights and civil-liberties
worldwide.
Its
survey of
sub-Sahara Africa in its
Freedom in the World 2009
concludes that there were
more democratic barricades
than democratic growth in
Africa, especially in West
Africa, where most African
states are grouped. Only
Mali, Ghana, Cape Verde and
Benin are democratically
“free” out of the 15 West
African states surveyed.
Apart from
Guinea that is ruled by
military junta, all the
remaining 14 West African
states are democratic of
some sorts – some under the
shadow of military coups and
frightening tension. The
degree of democracies across
the region is informed by
mindset, history, culture,
and the nature each state’s
elites. That makes Ghanaian
democracy slightly different
from Burkina Faso’s. Added
to this is the fact that
West Africa is the poorest
region in the world – with
Sierra Leone as the poorest
country – and for some time
the region was the most
unstable and frightening
military coups/one-party
systems ridden
area in
Africa. Against this
background, the conviction,
after much trial and error,
is that West Africa’s
progress, as a democratic
act, rest with how
“accountability to the
people, freedom of
expression, rule of law and
human rights are
incorporated into the fabric
of each nation,” said
Freedom House.
Over time,
despite the virtual
commonality of cultures
across the region, the
differences due to
geography, different
histories have made
democracies in the region
have different continuum.
Despite this, ECOWAS, the
regional body, is
strenuously enforcing
democratic enlargement.
Ecowas’ rejecting of the new
military rulers of Guinea
from its fold is one; the
other is proactively boxing
in members that appear to be
veering off the democracy
radar, urging West African
politicians to “demonstrate
courage and leadership” in
the face of brittle
democracy and freedoms.
Once the play
ground of thoughtless
military juntas and awful
one-party systems, West
Africa is returning to its
foundational democratic
ethos, moving away from
authoritarianism that
stifled its progress.
Ghana, Mali, Cape Verde and
Senegal are emerging as
serious democracies, but one
country standout in the
region’s democratic
evolution - Benin Republic.
Yes, Ghana’s democracy may
be running into its 17th
year and hailed globally but
Benin tells the West African
attempts at democratic
consolidation better. In its
15th multiparty
democratic elections, in
March, 2007, Benin ran short
of funds to finance its
election machinery so voters
raised cash, loaned
computers, and lit up
vote-counting centers with
their motorcycle headlights.
The belief in democracy as
vehicle for progress runs
counter to a Benin that was
once a Marxist dictatorship.
Benin reveals
the unlikely positive trend
in West Africa's tartan path
to democracy. Variously, 20
years ago, Benin and other
Ecowas members were
struggling to move away from
the Cold War-era
authoritarianism that
dominated most of African
states that got independent
in the 1960s from European
colonialism. With
centralized economy,
revolving military regimes,
one-party systems and little
natural resources, Benin
vegetated with little chance
moving out of crushing
poverty. Aware that Marxist
system couldn't work, the
then dictator, Mathieu
Kerekou, realistically
floated a national
conference in 1990 made up
of civic and religious
organizations, farmers and
political parties.
Democratic
elections and presidential
term limits was born.
Kerekou held elections, lost
them and yielded power. He
was re-elected five years
later, serving until 2006.
The other two presidents
came from outside Kerekou’s
political party, using their
technocratic backgrounds to
foster economic policy
changes that encouraged
investment and freed the
state’s centralized economy.
As Ecowas states like Sierra
Leone, Cote d’Ivoire,
Liberia, Guinea-Bissau
staggered through civil
unrest, military coups and
elections during the last
two decades, Benin nurtured
free market enterprise, a
free press and a stable
economy built largely on
agriculture and the service
industries. Part of Benin’s
democratic growth is its
unique extensive integration
of its 42 ethnic groups that
has fostered long stability.
Those same
points can be made of other
Ecowas states but with
different degrees –
Nigerians think their
budding democracy is
anything but and are calling
on their politicians to
learn from medium-sized
Ghana. With weak national
institutions, inability to
integrate traditional
institutions into its
democratic structures,
foster greater inclusion,
and fuzzy actions that
undermine freedoms and
democracy, Ecowas elites
have more homework to do to
consolidate democracy.
Despite
unshackling colonialism some
50 years ago, largely after
World War II, the 21st
century was supposed to
herald the ascent of
democracy in West Africa,
where most of the countries
were founded on democratic
and freedom ideals, and
where Ghana, currently a key
democracy light, was the
first country in sub-Sahara
Africa to have got freedom
from British colonial in
1957. While Guinea is still
governed by the military and
coup attempts occurring in
Guinea-Bissau, the past
decades have seen a region
that is painfully moving
towards democracy and
freedoms against all odds.
Over the past 15 years, most
Ecowas states have held
elections, and many have
undergone quiet democratic
regime changes.
Yet
throughout 2008, many West
Africans were suspect of
democratic politics. In
Sierra Leone and Liberia, a
United Nations report spoke
of shaky instability.
Former
Liberian warlord Prince Yomi
Johnson, now a Senator,
whose rebel unit killed
former president Samuel Doe,
has warned against a
witch-hunt by the country’s
Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, which leaked
report, intends to arrest
him, among others, and
“vowed to resist any effort
to arrest him.”
The Gambia
suffers from dearth of good
governance and democratic
freedoms, proof that simply
holding polls doesn't ensure
a healthy democracy. Despite
being a multi-party state,
only President
Yahya
Jammeh’s Alliance for
Patriotic Reorientation and
Construction (APRC) party
hold sway, effectively
stifling opposition parties
and making mockery of
democracy. The Gambia is yet
to account for its killing
of some 40 Ghanaians and
other Africans. The new
Ghanaian Vice President John
Mahama had suggested stein
position on the Gambian
killings and, if possible,
cut-off relations with the
Gambia. Genuine democracies
do not cut each other off;
democracies do not fight,
democracies are much more
co-operative as the global
experiences demonstrate and
as more and more West
Africans migrate within the
sub-region and
inter-marriage among its
over 250 ethnic groups’
increases. The resolving of
the Gambian issue would be
done better in a West Africa
where all the governments
are deeply democratic, the
rule of law, and freedoms
driven.
Post-elections riots shock
Nigeria, while Cote d’Ivoire
is trying to exorcise itself
from years of civil wars,
divided country, and
democratic stasis that have
seen northern rebels and
southern politicians sharing
uneasy power. In
Guinea-Bissau, though recent
elections appear to have
calmed years of
instabilities, was virtually
reverted into military rule
when there was a
near-successful coup attempt
in 2008. In Niger, for
several months now a
political debate has been
raging that says President
Mamadou Tandja, who is about
to end his last of two
terms, should be allowed to
serve a third term and asked
for a change to the
constitutional mandate of
the President, or, if not,
to simply prolong his
present tenure.
Even in
Ghana, dubbed Ecowas
democracy star, for its
comparative degree of
democratic strengths, the
2008 general elections
uncovered a deep well of
electoral inconsistencies:
transition log-jam and
protection of citizens from
electoral harm in places
such as the Volta and
Northern regions. For the
past 50 years, Guinea has
been stuck in military
juntas, one-party regimes
and fraudulent democracies
all rolled into bizarre mix.
And Senegal
is Ecowas’ oldest democracy,
untainted by decades of
military juntas that
sauntered the sub-region.
Even despite this, Senegal
has been confronted with
rebels in its Cassamance
region that seek greater
national goods and services
and thinks there aren’t
enough freedoms and
democracy.
In 1974 when
the cunning Leopold Sedar
Senghor, Senegal’s first
president, created a
strictly controlled
multi-party system, with
four parties allowed, which
had to stick to political
labels Senghor selected, and
one of which parties was
“Liberal” and called the
Senegalese Democratic Party
and was led by Abdoulaye
Wade, the current president,
Senegal is yet to free
itself from the Senghor
democratic shadow that has
seen opposition and some
media forces thwarted now
and then.
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