Refusal to cede power a test for democracy

WORLD VIEW:African leaders who use violence to stay in power are sending out a dangerous signal

JOSEPH KABILA faces an election in November, just one of the 20 presidential and legislative elections on Africa’s crowded democratic calendar this year – they include Nigeria, Congo, Cameroon, Uganda, Zambia, Liberia and Egypt

And, like more than one of his fellow incumbents, he has been watching with interest and not a little nervousness the ongoing post-election stalemate in Ivory Coast and the contagion of street democracy in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere.

And so Kabila, president of the vast, impoverished and war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has just made the odds a bit easier for himself by pushing through, against vehement opposition, electoral law changes to remove provisions for a second round of voting when candidates fail to get an overall majority. In theory he may now be re-elected with as little as 20 to 25 per cent of the vote if the opposition, as expected, can’t agree on a common candidate.

It will save money, Kabila claimed, adding that it would also prevent post-electoral crises such as those seen recently. “Elections in Africa often end in confrontation of an ethnic character rather than political – we do not want to experience what happened in Kenya, Guinea and now in Côte d’Ivoire,” Lambert Mende, minister of information, told the Financial Times, insisting that abolishing the second round would help avoid repression and riots.

It’s not only in the DRC that Ivory Coast’s stalemate over the refusal of incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo to cede power to elected rival Alassane Ouattara is providing Africa’s less democratically minded with a way to evade the logic of democratic accountability.

It is also testing the democratic credentials and institutional capacity to act of the 53-member African Union which meets in Addis Ababa this weekend and will debate further sanctions and even military action to depose Gbagbo.

“If the continent’s people came to believe their votes were not what brought to power the leaders they wanted, elections would become meaningless and pave the way for unrest,” Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga, the AU-designated mediator, warned as he flew out of Abidjan after a failed mediation bid 10 days ago.

Former United Nations’ official Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group think tank, also warns of the impact on this year’s elections. “To cave in to the defiance of the loser of a legitimate election really would be a betrayal on behalf of the whole international community, particularly the United Nations,” she argues.

Nigeria wants UN backing for military intervention to prevent Ivory Coast slipping into a civil war that could destabilise the west African region, foreign minister Odein Ajumogobia said on Monday. The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), which may be the vehicle, needs “unequivocal international support” through a UN Security Council resolution, Ajumogobia said. In recent years it has sent troops into Burundi, Darfur, the Comoros and Somalia to intervene in crises.

“If you don’t move firmly, there’s a chance you’ll get more of this [this] year. We don’t want to create a bad precedent,” a spokesman for Sierra Leonean president Ernest Bai Koroma says.

But Gbagbo has in the last couple of weeks rallied some important regional support. South Africa, Uganda and Angola, have broken with the UN-EU-AU-Ecowas consensus that Ouattara’s election was broadly fair, and are arguing for a reballot and/or a government of national unity involving both men. They mutter about imperialist interference in the country’s affairs.

The South African stance, seen as reflecting the continuing influence of former president Thabo Mbeki’s Africanist leanings, is reminiscent of its dubious role in Zimbabwe where it also brokered a deal involving a national government. Ouattara has rightly rejected Gbagbo’s offer of a unity government, insisting any powersharing accord must accept him as president – unlike in Kenya and Zimbabwe where incumbents Mwai Kibaki and Robert Mugabe remained in the driving seat after similar rows.

Critics warn that a repeat of that formula would send out a dangerous signal that those who refuse to accept electoral outcomes and use violence to maintain their grip on power can expect to be rewarded, not the message democratic Africa wants to send out.

Meanwhile, international sanctions are beginning to bite. The European Union has imposed a ban on trading through the country’s ports, and major cocoa exporting companies – the country’s most important export crop and a source of $1.6 billion (€1.17 billion) a year in revenues to the state – have said they are complying with a call by Ouattara for a one-month export freeze.

Gbagbo may also be increasingly short of cash to meet his military and civil service payroll of about $100 million a month. Desire Dallo, his finance minister, on Tuesday said pensions had not been paid on time, and blamed the refusal by the BCEAO, the regional central bank, to free up funds after it received a freeze order from a Ouattara-nominated finance minister. On Saturday, the governor of the bank, a Gbagbo ally, was forced out by regional heads of state after he failed to cut off Gbagbo’s access to the country’s accounts.

Whether the African Union will this weekend be able to step up the pressure further will be a real test of the organisation.