Africa is in the throes of election fever. But more voting does not necessarily mean more democracy. In fact, African dictators are getting better at rigging elections
Indeed, elections have become a normal occurrence on a continent once better known for the frequency and violence of its coups and civil wars. Since the late 1990s the number of coups has fallen sharply (see chart), whereas the number of elections has increased, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places.
The west African country of Guinea is an encouraging example of a possible new trend. After two decades of dictatorial rule by Lansana Conté, the army seized power after his death two years ago. So far, so predictable. But the story took a new twist. The coup leader was attacked and injured by one of his aides, enabling other members of the junta to promise a return to civilian rule after elections they vowed not to contest. The first round of a presidential poll was held peacefully on June 27th; a run-off is expected soon.
Several factors explain this surge in enthusiasm for the ballot box. Would-be voters, anxious to make their often corrupt and arrogant politicians more accountable, are exerting fiercer pressure. For example, Nigerians expressed fury at the way the ruling People’s Democratic Party conducted the charade of an election in 2007. As a result, the government has had to make concessions over the running of the election due next year. The recent appointment of Professor Attahiru Jega as head of the Independent National Electoral Commission has raised hopes that his organisation will be truly independent of political control, rather than just a cog in the ruling party’s re-election machine. Nigeria’s coming election will be scrutinised across the continent.
Pressure for improvement comes from beyond the continent, too. Gone are the days of the cold war when West and East propped up their favoured dictators for geostrategic reasons. Nowadays a lot of aid money and diplomatic support are tied to progress in governance and democracy. Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, for example, held the country’s recent election as part of a peace deal with the country’s southern rebels, brokered largely by the United States in 2005. Countries such as Ghana and Mali have every incentive to stay democratic to get billions of dollars of aid from America’s Millennium Challenge Account, started in 2002. This requires countries to prove a commitment to good governance and elections if they are to get the money. Africa’s own regional groupings, notably the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have also started punishing member states that fall prey to coups.
But the news is by no means all good. A cursory look at several recent polls shows that too often they are travesties. In Burundi the incumbent, Pierre Nkurunziza, won unopposed with 92% of the vote. In Ethiopia those opposed to Meles Zenawi’s ruling party won just two of parliament’s 547 seats. And in Sudan’s election Mr Bashir won against an opposition that had largely boycotted the event.
In the language of international election observers, many of these elections fall “below international standards”; in plain English, they are rigged to ensure that the incumbent or his ruling party cannot be ejected by the voters. Moreover, though even the nastiest leaders now feel obliged to hold elections, they are also getting more adept at fixing them. In Sudan, for instance, the regime manipulated every stage of the electoral process long before the actual voting, from the census in 2008 to keeping the opposition off the television screens just before the vote. Mr Zenawi has become similarly expert, passing laws before the poll to muzzle dissenting voices and hamper opposition.
This is part of an older problem: the refusal of a defeated incumbent to accept defeat and bow out. Refreshingly, it does sometimes happen, as in Somaliland earlier this month and in Ghana in the past decade. But President Robert Mugabe refused to go in Zimbabwe after a clear verdict in an election in 2008 and President Mwai Kibaki refused to go after the elections in Kenya in 2007. Both leaders sparked widespread violence in their countries, thanks to their determination to cling to office; both eventually had to accept power-sharing agreements with the opposition.
Moreover, elections are often a poor guide to a country’s overall state of democracy and civil liberties. The mere number of elections can be deceptive. The advance of African democracy remains patchy. Too often the big men still find a way to stay put, whatever the voters may want.
African leaders are getting better at rigging elections
BEFORE Sudan’s people went to the polls in April, President Omar al-Bashir invested a great deal of time and money in ensuring that there could be only one outcome. Constituencies were comprehensively gerrymandered. Fake parties were created with names that sounded very similar to the real opposition, in order to confuse the largely illiterate voters. NGOs with neutral-sounding names, paid for by the regime, pretended to monitor the results. There were few overt signs of fraud during the voting itself: there was no need for it.
African leaders are getting better at rigging elections. This leads some to despair of the democratic process in the continent. Yet gloom is the wrong response to this development. The riggers’ sophistication is testament not just to their determination to hold on to power, but also to African voters’ growing insistence on having a say.
The voting habit
Africans could certainly do with the chance of kicking the bums out. Over the past 50 years or so much of the continent has been exploited by thugs who have felt able to steal and murder with impunity. Power has all too often changed hands through violent, destabilising coups.
African countries need political systems that can punish corruption, mediate between tribal groups and competing economic interests and turf incompetents out peacefully. Democracy is the only way they are going to get them.
Fortunately, there is more of that about than there was. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the voting habit has spread through Africa, and has now caught on in most of the continent. This year, barring delays and cancellations, a score of sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries will have held multi-party elections, making it potentially the biggest year for voting in the continent’s history.
Yet, if Africa’s recent history is any guide, many of those elections will fail to live up to the name. When leaders are defeated, they tend to cling on, even if they have to settle for cranky power-sharing arrangements with the opposition — as Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe. Authoritarian leaders like Mr Bashir have become increasingly adept at rigging the vote. Plenty of countries that make a show of giving their citizens the vote will nevertheless brazenly deprive them of civil liberties, press freedom and the rule of law. These institutions are essential to the functioning of a constitutional democracy, yet in Africa they are hardly ever accepted as the natural ingredients of successful government. Rarer still is the idea that an opposition that sets out to criticise the man in power can count as loyal and patriotic.
Pessimists counsel that, given election-riggers’ growing sophistication and reluctance to accept defeat, it is not worth forking out precious aid money to support democracy and elections in Africa. But that is to misunderstand the significance of what’s going on. Leaders are having to put more effort into fixing results because people are increasingly determined to have their say.
Citizens plainly like to vote. Even the most authoritarian leaders now feel obliged to hold elections. Presidents Bashir and Mugabe, as well as Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia — none of them natural democrats — have all had to hold elections in recent years. Only a decade ago countries such as Sierra Leone and Liberia were bywords for anarchy and bloodshed. Now their people vote enthusiastically. It will be hard even for dictators to take that right away altogether, for the experience of elections, even flawed ones, seems to help embed democracy. Ghana, for instance, which reverted to civilian rule only in 1992, has twice changed governments after tight elections. This month the incumbent in Somaliland, a nation-in-waiting, conceded electoral defeat. In Nigeria the ruling party, despite efforts to snuff out democracy, is having to concede improvements that should make for a better vote next year.
Outsiders can help the process along. Among Africans, there needs to be a revival of the healthy peer pressure that was around in the early 2000s. The West needs to protest about bad elections to encourage Nigerians, Sudanese and others fighting for clean ones. The millions it spends monitoring elections are wasted if its criticism is muted by its interest in keeping in with an important government, as critics claim happened after Nigeria’s rotten election in 2007.
A battle for democracy and accountability is under way in Africa. The fight is not going too badly.
