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Nigeria and the Philosophical Problem of Disputed Elections |
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Sitting safely in Dakar, I can tell you without fear of getting my head cracked that from all outward appearances last weekend’s presidential elections in Nigeria were a complete farce.
First were April 14th’s state elections, where at least 21 people died in election-related violence. Then came the presidential elections of April 21st with more violence, as well as bitter accusations of fraud. The majority of election observers, ranging from internal Nigerian observers Transition Monitoring Group to heavyweights such as the EU and the group sent by the British Commonwealth, decried the elections as unfair and unacceptable. By the time it was announced on Monday that ruling party candidate Umaru Yar’Adua had won in a “landslide” 70%-plus vote, the EU was reporting that over 200 people had been killed. On Tuesday, major opposition parties began planning mass protests.
The importance of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and one of the world’s major suppliers of oil, is clear. Setbacks in Nigeria’s struggle for democracy will, in one way or another, affect Americans. But for many of us, even those points will seem a touch distant from the reality of our lives. However, the election dispute touches on broader themes, namely the following:
Conventional wisdom holds that an election ends when the opposition concedes. But in Nigeria, the opposition will not concede - maybe ever. Yet the elections appear, for all intents and purposes, to have definitively ended with the announcement of Yar’Adua’s victory. So here’s the question:
When an election ends, and the results are announced, and you believe the election was fraudulent, what can you really do about it?
My argument is this: you can’t do anything about it. Maybe events in Nigeria will prove me wrong - I certainly hope so. But every tactic the opposition could use seems doomed to failure. Let’s go through the main ones.
The opposition has about a month - until May 29th, when the new government takes power - to mount a challenge. After that I suppose legal challenges would still be possible, but it will be exponentially more difficult to contest the elections after Yar’Adua is sworn in, after his government is acknowledged by other world powers, etc.
The opposition has called on the people to take to the streets and protest, and many Nigerians will bravely heed the call. But with its behavior during the voting, the ruling party has already demonstrated its willingness to engage in violent repression against dissidents. In potential problem areas, the government will simply ban protests, as it has already done in Kaduna State.
Moreover, the opposition’s fragmented organization won’t serve it well if it tries to mount a real challenge to state authority. And without the backing of important civil society groups like the Catholic Church, which has already announced that it is against protests (see previous link), the opposition will be even weaker. And what can they really achieve? If the state becomes afraid that protesters might destabilize it, it will use the police and the military to lash out. In such a clash the opposition would most likely lose.
In an ideal world, a legal challenge would be the perfect route to take. Indeed, the opposition plans to take its complaints to court and seek a verdict that will overturn the elections and set up new ones. But again, the ruling party controls the government and the courts - hence it can delay or deny justice if it chooses. The most likely outcome in the legal arena is that time will simply run out. The new president will be sworn in and the court cases will be forgotten.
Of course, one check that is supposed to exist on political parties is the state itself, which in theory should transcend any particular “regime” and be able to act, in the context of elections, as the neutral guarantor of equality and fairness. In far too many of the world’s nations, however, the line between the regime and the state is blurred into nonexistence, and it becomes impossible to separate the government’s functions from those of the ruling party. This appears, sadly, to be the case in Nigeria.
So what does that leave? International intervention? Thus far major world powers have confined themselves to expressing verbal concern, and it is my prediction that they will stop there. Who on the international scene wants to be drawn into Nigeria’s internal conflicts? Yes, Nigeria is vitally important - but for major powers like the US, the priority is not that Nigeria be democratic, but that it be stable. If the continuation of PDP (People’s Democratic Party, to which Yar’Adua and outgoing president Obasanjo belong) power offers a reasonable certainty of stability, foreign powers will be extremely reluctant to do more than criticize from a distance. Finally, regional authorities like the African Union would have their hands full trying to step into Nigeria’s muddled politics, given that they’re already dealing with nightmares like the genocide in Darfur.
Other options - namely, armed resistance, civil war, rebellion, and so forth - have been employed frequently on the African continent in the postcolonial period, and have almost always brought disaster. There are some stories of change and reconciliation in Africa - a nasty civil war in Cote d’Ivoire, for example, seems to have been brought to a successful and peaceful close. But Nigeria, with its deep ethnic and religious cleavages, is in many ways a powder keg, and one hopes that the opposition will not choose to ignite it.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, President Yar’Adua, the winner of a fraudulent election, will take power on May 29th. The announcement of his victory - a victory that in all likelihood never existed - made that victory a reality. Is democracy so fragile? It seems that it is, because so many countries have held sham elections simply to curry favor with the international community. Real control is never passed to the ordinary people who drop their ballots in the ballot box - rather, power is held by the people who can buy off the people who count the ballots. It’s held by the people who pay thugs to turn away voters who are likely to vote for the opposition. It’s held by people who control powerful media networks, and can influence voters before and during the voting, and then shape the results afterwards. It’s held by the people who can have your teeth smashed in with a rifle butt if you say something they don’t want you to say. That’s reality in a lot of the world’s “democracies.”
The case of a Nigeria offers a grim reminder of all the things that go on to produce that moment where a national and world leader steps up to a podium, recites an oath, and grins at the cameras. It’s a reminder that no democracy is perfect - rather, they all exist on a spectrum, and differences seem to be more ones of degree than of kind.
What does it mean when elections are brought to a close not by the agreement of all major parties involved that the elections were free and fair, but rather by a simple announcement made on the part of the government? This question, I believe, has troubling implications for democracy worldwide, and has parallels in many other parts of the world.
What do you think?
While the Western world has agreed that democracy is a good thing for the rest of the world to practice, the devil seems to be in the details. Of course “the state” should triumph over individual political parties. Power is transferred in America because deep down most of us are loyal to our country first and our politics second. But, as you state, when the state is the regime it is hard to make that transfer. It seems that young democracies really need something akin to a benevolant dictator. Without the precedent set by George Washington voluntarily stepping down after two terms in office, who knows where our young democracy would have gone.
This reminds of something I read the other day about Bhuton’s monarch voluntarily instituting democracy. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/world/asia/24bhutan.html