Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Gbagbo Rejects Pressure to LeavePower in Ivory Coast

Dear All,
Perhaps one can at this juncture venture an opinion. From the June 12 debacle in Nigeria through in 2007, Zimbabwe in 2009 and now Ivory Coast in 2010, ordinary citizens tired of maladministration and despotism, no longer wanting to be ruled in the old ways, and desirous of transformative change have largely voted across latent ethno religious divides for charismatic opposition movements promising change.
The problem however have persistently been that of ruling elites unwilling to give up power and working consciously even if irrationally to thwart popular.
In all of these instances it is the shameless bare faced open rape of popular mandate, and the repression of indignant protest that have combined to turn latent fissures into active volcanic eruptions.
This is why the international resolve building up against the rape of popular will in Ivory is such a necessary complement to the unwaveribg internal resolve to reclaim the mandate from the usurper.
If the international resolve should wane or be allowed to be rolled back, and the usurper regime is enabled to unleash repression, then there will be no escaping another Kenya, a descent into the chaos of civil war. If this is allowed to happen then liberal racists and the apologists of african exceptionality would be emboldened to return to their caricature of the african reality as primitive and tribal.
The issue at stake here is not the genuineness of the purveyors and apostles of change, the charismatic opodition leaderships benefiting from a mobilisation of popular anger; what is at stake is the united anger and aspirations of a people long suffering oppression and repression, the beginning yet again of the crystalisation of popular will into an emergent national consensus on the foundation of which a Nigerian, a Kenyan, a Zimbabwean, an Ivorien people, nation and nation state can then emerge and be consolidated.
For if we do not allow a Nigerian or an Ivorien people and nation state to emerge, how can we conceiveably expect a Pan African people and union to become a reality?
It is for this reason among numerous others that we should actively support the deposition of the usurper, and the restoration of the popular will.
Let the winner of this election once in power short change the people! Then the people drawing confidence from their current struggle to validate their will at the election will be able to recall even such a government.
It was this combination of unwavering internal and international resolve which allowed Kenya to perch so perilously on the edge of the abyss.
Regards,
Jaye Gaskia (Ayodeji Ajayeoba)

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

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From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 12:07:49 -0600

To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Gbagbo Rejects Pressure to Leave Power in Ivory Coast

Ken,

I hear what you're saying. These are not straightforward issues and it is easier for distanced outsiders to advance absolutist, puritanical positions than it is for insiders in these countries to do so. I get all that. What worries me is a pattern of making exceptions for Africa and African rulers when it comes to these basic liberal democratic norms. You see, I am not naive. And am not sold on the so-called democratic moment that swept and is still sweeping Africa. It is a shorthand for expensive Western liberal democracy, which cost too much to operate, cause intractable ethno-religions conflicts and frictions, and result in excessive logjams in governance. I know that there are arguably more African democratic alternatives that do not involve expensive and contentious regular elections that result in winner-takes-all configurations, alternatives that are nonetheless representative of the broad will and political aspirations of citizens in different national constituencies. The facts of precolonial African history supply democratic and representative models that could be less expensive, less volatile, and certainly less open to manipulation than the largely unfamiliar one-man-one-vote, zero-sum democracy of the Western liberal imagination. However, to the extent that there is now a consensus (nurtured abroad and internalized at home by Africans) that African states should practice western liberal democracy, replete with periodic electoral rituals, separate arms of government, etc, those norms should be enforced. The narrative that African countries will implode or explode if an uncompromising attitude is adopted in electoral contests or that Africans are so clannish and ethnically divided that they will disintegrate chaotically along those fissures if a clearly expressed electoral mandate is enforced strikes me as the usual white liberal infantilization of Africans and Africa. It's another way of saying Africans are not ready or matured enough for Western liberal democracy and its winner takes all elections. Or that they are not as advanced and postmodern in their political imagination as us Westerners and should be protected from the potential ills of insisting on the sanctity of elections. The hasty recourse to power sharing formulas as a default settlement in Africa's electoral disputes is the clearest expression of this condescending disposition in my opinion. My question to Western democratic evangelists is: then why market liberal democratic pluralism and its electoral niceties to Africans in the first place? You cannot eat your kwulikwuli and still get to keep it. I am uncomfortable with a Western liberal vocabulary that constructs Africans, their countries, and politics as fragile infants to be allowed to circumvent universal norms that they have themselves embraced. There are several other arenas where this offensive liberal attitude is adopted. Let African leaders play by the rules like everyone else. Africa would be better for it. Insisting on this may cause some short term conflicts but that's the only way democracy will be deepened on the continent and that's the only way to prevent electoral manipulation and the predictable outcome of shared power from becoming the norm across the continent. If Western liberal democracy is too burdensome and too rancorous, let's try something else--a different kind of representative democracy. But once we decide to do democracy the Western way, the least we can do is to insist on respect for electoral verdicts delivered through the sanctity of the ballot box. 

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 5:26 PM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

hi moses
i guess we should take each case on its own, even while seeing parallels.
nothing is worse than mass killings, genocide, violence that destroys everything. there is some discussion around the notion that the pressures on habyarimana to accept a multi-party democracy drove the conflict to a head, resulting in the extremist faction of his party generating the genocide.
democracy means what? that we can vote, that the vote counts, that we have rights that the govt cannot abrogate.
if the price for democracy is mass deaths then we are operating on the logic of those who orchestrated the reign of terror in the french revolution.
it won't come that way. example? rwanda: despite the victory of those who overcame the genocidaires, rwanda has now one of the least democratic states, measured by the elements above, in africa, in the world actually. there was a "vote," but the scare quotes defeat the claim, since indeed it is fear that pervades the country, according to human rights reports.
and to believe our list, nigeria has a way to go before there is an acceptable vote as well, despite a multiparty opposition.
i guess i wouldn't want to decide for others. when patrick henry says, "give me liberty or give me death," well, let him take it on for himself.
will the conditions in kenya and zimbabwe result in a greater number of deaths than would have been the case had the compromise not been reached? would the deaths that gave iraq "democracy" under american rules have been as great had the "great satan" saddam not have been unseated?
and would "democracy" always enable us to vote out unpopular govts?
aren't the answers really messy in each case. and isn't each case different.
i wonder how much fighting the ivorians have a taste for to remedy this bad scene.
our list would profit from their views--we can't tell them to bite the bullet, as it were
ken

At 05:56 PM 12/8/2010, you wrote:

Ken, the tragic examples are piling up across Africa of election winners "forced" by international mediation to share power with incumbents who won't respect the will of the people. Kenya, Zimbabwe, and now Ivory Coast? When will it end? Yeah, it may keep away the dogs of war for a time, but at what cost? Does it not merely buy time before the inevitable implosion/showdown? The problems rocking the power sharing arrangements in Zimbabwe and Kenya are signposts, in my opinion, to what is bound to happen in Ivory Coast if Mr. Gbagbo is allowed to get away with a power sharing contrivance. And what's the value of democracy if the incumbent can use their de facto position to negotiate the continuity of their power even after losing at the ballot box? During the debate on the Kenyan election crisis, I remember critiquing the convergence of international opinion on the "pragmatic" option of crafting a power sharing government through Mr. Annan's mediation instead of insisting that the genuine election results be released and Mr. Odinga sworn in. Sadly, that and a similar arrangement in Zimbabwe may have provided Mr. Gbagbo with a blueprint on how to keep power illegally. This case may be different because of the unusual unanimity (save for Russia) in international and African opinion and the clarity of the international condemnation of Gbagbo's antics.

Democracy is so expensive in Africa (in monetary (ask Nigerians), social, and policy terms). Its redeeming quality, which may offset its cost to Africans, remains the ability of citizens to vote out erring and unpopular governments. Absent this, and with unpopular and defeated incumbents parlaying their incumbency into power sharing arrangements that keep them in power, what's the value of democracy to Africa/Africans?

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 11:58 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

we all are thinking of obvious parallels in african elections to this: kenya, zimbabwe, with power sharing as ways of muddling through, and, to look on the brighter side, to keep away the dogs of war.

but here is another example that come to mind: burma/myanmar. (or, as many of us would also say, the u.s. election in 2000). anti-bush though i am, the myanmar example strikes me as more apposite, more egregious, and with similar results in that the annulling of the election depends on which way the army goes.

ken

On 12/8/10 12:02 PM, Toyin Falola wrote:

 

Gbagbo Rejects Pressure to Leave Power in Ivory Coast

Scott Stearns | Abidjan08 December 2010, VOA

West African leaders are calling on Laurent Gbagbo to step down as president of Ivory Coast, in favor of a former prime minister who won a vote that was certified by the United Nations.

Mr. Gbagbo appears determined to hold on to power in the face of international pressure.

Gbagbo spent much of the last decade joining fellow West African heads of state in trying to resolve regional issues, most recently military rule in Niger.

But Mr. Gbagbo is now on the outside, excluded from an emergency meeting of the Economic Community of West African States to discuss the political crisis in Ivory Coast.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan chairs the regional alliance. He says Mr. Gbagbo's former colleagues want him to yield power, without delay, because he lost last month's vote to former prime minister Alassane Ouattara.

"We believe that, in a democratic election, the votes of the people must count," he said. "Where we have a democracy where the votes do not count, ECOWAS will no longer accept such a pseudo or false democracy.  And, we believe that the results declared by the electoral commission and accepted by the U.N. special representative there is the authentic one, and Ouattara is the person who we support as the president of Cote d'Ivoire."

Mr. Ouattara's claim to the presidency is based on the United Nations certification of electoral commission results that show him winning 54 percent of the vote. Mr. Gbagbo's claim to the presidency is based on Ivory Coast's constitutional council annulling as fraudulent nearly ten percent of all ballots cast, giving him 51 percent of the vote.

Both men have named new prime ministers and have the support of rival armed forces. Mr. Gbagbo is supported by senior military officers who control southern regions. Mr. Ouattara is supported by former rebels who control northern regions.

Mr. Gbagbo's rebuke by former colleagues and Ivory Coast's suspension from the regional alliance is not likely to change his approach to the political crisis. The constitutional council's decision is unappealable. Mr. Gbagbo is moving forward with a new cabinet and a new foreign minister, who has threatened to expel the United Nations special representative.

In the media blackout that has followed this vote, all foreign news broadcasts are suspended.  State-run television has made no mention of the original electoral commission results or calls from the African Union, the United Nations, the European Union, France, the United States and Britain for Mr. Gbagbo to step down.

Instead, the national broadcaster is running a series of interviews with Gbagbo supporters.

Alcide Djedje, who is Mr. Gbagbo's new foreign minister, used his time on the nightly news to threaten the U.N. special representative here.

Djedje says the United Nations was meant to help Ivory Coast out of its crisis, not to interfere in its internal affairs.  He says this is the last time the U.N. can act in that fashion.   He says, if the U.N. special representative here continues to call Mr. Ouattara the winner of the election, he will be expelled.

 

 

 

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