… 31 March, 2011 Of Presidential Debates and Incumbency "The April 2011 election is just a month away. I watched the Presidential/Vice Presidential debates of ACN, ANPP and CPC. I reached the conclusion that we have people of great ideas and potentials. But one issue kept on agitating my mind - Is it feasible and possible to have a free, fair and credible election in circumstances where incumbents are contenders?" - Olutoyin Adeyinka Eweje The above is a quote by a member of Respect Nigerians Coalition (RNC), proposed for discussion in a thread in the organization's Facebook platform. She made the comment after the NN24 Presidential Debate and I think there are two separate issues here that need a wider airing, considering the needs of our nation. I have therefore decided to generate further discussions on these issues with this article. The Presidential Debate is a conventional way of getting the presidential aspirants to sell their programmes directly to the people before an election in a democracy. While it is not a substitute for proper campaigning, its format, medium and moderation try to encapsulate the visions of the aspirants in a nutshell for prospective voters. So far, our limited democratic experience means the format itself is a work in progress. Perhaps, over time, we will need to establish a permanent non-profit and non-partisan body to sponsor this, rather than leave it for different media houses to organise at the same time. This is because it is important that a process of this nature is given the concentration and seriousness required as the performance of candidates on the forum helps voters in decision-making. We have never lacked people with great ideas in politics, if by ideas we mean churning out a wish list of what they think the country needs at any point in time. Personally, I do not think that all the presidential aspirants that spoke on NN24 or other forums thereafter have great ideas and potential. I have done a brief analysis of their performance during the NN24 debate and the core of my submission is that they are all long in speeches, but short on actual solutions. A whole lot of politicians re articulate enough on camera, but what we should really interest us is how their thought process works to deliver the goods. Voters can get the idea not only from how they talk, but how they connect the ideas to what is achievable, how it's achievable and the vision they have, if they have it. Therefore, solution is not just a restatement of wishes; it needs to include a picture of what things will look like when the aspirant takes over office, the means to achieve those things, where to get the human and material resources to deliver them, time frame of delivery, monitoring processes, avenues for popular involvement, benefits and further statements on development and how all these can be built upon when the office holder finishes his/her term. All these are lacking in the debates so far, except statements of the problems and individual proclamations of solutions without the nuts and bolts. The above is a function of several things. One is the nature of our democracy. Due to the fact that the people are not intimately engaged with its variegated aspects, but only understand it as mere civil rule, the deeper knowledge of rights and responsibilities elude them. Secondly, as a corollary to the above, citizen awareness is in actuality very low, especially in the rural or non-urban areas where all forms of anti-democratic arrangements packaged as culture or convention prevail to undermine the right to individual choice. Third is the lack of developmental data from the public information system due to unnecessary governmental secrecy. Information that should ordinarily be available to the public is kept away under some ancient laws while we play politics with the Freedom of Information bill, for instance. Fourthly, economic illiteracy is high, as our crude capitalist system is devoid of many system-enabling components. For instance, it's still largely a cash and carry economy, capacity utilization is still very low and the informal sector is still largely pedestrian, technologically unconnected and unprotected, even where they employ the largest workforce. Property rights still elude large sections of the populace, especially women, who despite their huge contribution to the informal sector and other areas still have harder hurdles to cross to covert their labour to capital. The banking system is still highly political and subject to unstable state policies. Real investments and support for real sectors are acutely lacking. Overall, we have an economy where money is chasing money, rather than money chasing production. Finally, state economic policy has no eye for comparative advantage. The result of all the above is that we have a system that does not institutionally provide information and knowledge for the people to use to better themselves or to challenge a failed and failing establishment democratically while the failing and failed establishment ensures that leadership and succession is limited only to a class that will not rock the boat. There is no better recipe for continued national failure. Crucially, because the state has no agenda for creating a niche area of national economic development, several advantages we ordinarily should have had in the competitive environment of international economics because of our rich raw materials and human resources has been negated by negative neo-colonial and foreign activities in the economy to the detriment of our national growth. The immediate and long-term solution to the above problem is exactly what we are doing at RNC, which is attempt to develop new and fresh ideas to challenge the failed establishment with the objective of changing the face of politics, public service and economic and social relations in Now, coming to the second question Olutoyin raised, the natural answer would be yes, it is possible to have a free, fair and credible election in circumstances where incumbents are contenders, because the whole idea of a democracy is that the votes should count and if they count in favour of non-incumbents, the incumbents must go. History of politics in credible democracies worldwide proves this. But the question we as Nigerians must ask is whether it is possible for there to be a free and fair election in First of such factors is the institutional lack of independence of the chief electoral umpire and, by extension his fellow Commissioners and officials. The country has been struggling with electoral credibility since the return to civil rule in 1999 and it came to a head with the blatant rigging of 2007. After President Yar'Adua's public admission of the discreditable process that brought him to power, a consensus was reached nationally to find a permanent solution to the problem through the establishment of the Uwais Commission. Everyone agreed from the beginning that the recommendations of the Commission will be implemented wholesale to give confidence to the polity and allow everyone see clearly that we are working towards the same goal. The key recommendation of the Commission that was recognised as the singular most important factor that will immediately engender confidence in the process was centred on the question of INEC's independence which posited the principal determinant in the appointment of the Commission's Chairman. In order to remove the possibility of an incumbent President manipulating it in his/her favour, the Uwais Commission recommended through a complex checks and balances system that the National Judicial Council makes the appointment. But from the very beginning, the PDP-led government began to show bad faith. The Presidency and the National Assembly ultimately conspired to throw out that provision and, in fact, even before doing so, President Goodluck Jonathan in a classic case of divide and rule appointed Professor Attahiru Jega, who himself was a member of the Uwais Commission to head INEC. So, it was a double blow to credibility. On one hand, Jonathan has indicated that he would be using his incumbent power of appointment to keep the 'advantage' even if clearly against the interest of the people and against the spirit and intendment of the Uwais' recommendation and Professor Jega for taking the post has himself called to question his own vaunted credibility as the question he couldn't answer was why he felt it appropriate to accept the appointment against the advice and recommendation of a Commission in which he sat as member and which as a body voted in support of such a recommendation. If he had objections to that particular recommendation on appointment, he could have issued a minority report. But he can't have his cake and eat it! The second factor is the combination of the electoral process and the Electoral Act 2010. Granted that the latter was aimed at improving the much-vilified 2006 edition, but it still falls quite short of the product that will produce a free and fair election, basically because related provisions do not go far enough to ensure internal party democracy, funding and fair or satisfactory challenge of declared primaries and election results in the courts. It cannot be over-emphasised that an Electoral Act stands or fall on how well it handles these areas. In terms of internal democracy within the parties, the problem is two-fold. On one hand, the voice of the ordinary party man and woman is decidedly stifled, while, on the other hand, INEC's implementation of the rule is non-existent as evident in the primaries that took place in the parties where money was used to buy votes (we will deal with this more substantively later) and where impositions and selection was used by dark forces within the parties under the guise of acclamation. The danger is while those who lose out in such contests are usually reticent about challenging these clear undemocratic processes (because they are always looking to remain in the party 'good books' to earn something else later by way of appointment or some other elective office), the ordinary party member becomes the ultimate loser because his choice will never make it to the ballot. That is why, in most instances, party voters and then voters during the general elections are never presented with opportunities of clear choices. They usually get burdened with a Hobson's choice of candidates while pretend patriots urge them to "vote wisely"! Where is the wisdom in choosing from a list of candidates that are angling to get into elective offices to kill you and the nation in varying ways? In terms of funding for political parties and campaigns, the provisions of the Electoral Act are awfully inadequate. While it pegs the amount of money to be spent by candidates and parties for elections, it makes no provisions for the spending of 'soft monies' or expenditures nor how these can be controlled so as not to distort the process. For instance, open community bribery schemes by political parties are still prevalent and despite security information and glaring evidence of these, INEC does nothing about them. A party comes to a community today to distribute bags of garri and there is dancing and singing in support of that party. The same people receive bags of rice the next day from another party and more singing and dancing in favour of that party. INEC's mandate isn't only to organise elections, but to create the right atmosphere for a free and fair elections. While it's easy to say all the main parties do this and therefore the incumbent shouldn't be blamed, the unsaid fact is that in the corrupt system that is In terms of fair or satisfactory challenge of declared primaries and election results in the courts, the contradictory provisions of sections 87(10) and 87(11) of the Electoral Act do not help to instil confidence in the process. While the first grants the Federal High Court or the High Court of a state power to entertain complaints about party rules and selection of candidates for elections, the second removes the power to stop the holding of any such primaries pending the determination of the suit from the courts. So, the overall effect of this is that you are allowed to complain to the courts about illegalities in the primaries or selection processes, but the court has no power to stop such illegalities, because they cannot even issue interlocutory injunctions to maintain the status quo! These are criminals' empowerment provisions that have been used to deadly effect in the primaries so far! Another provision that gets you scratching your head is the one making the Court of Appeal the court of first instance in Presidential and Governorship elections. Clearly, the Court of Appeal is not a trial court, so how can it handle such matters as election petitions arising from contests over such important state positions satisfactorily? At the moment, not all the 70 positions in the Court of Appeal are filled, but even where they are all filled, how can they cope with the deluge of cases? How can they cope when they are expected, even within the same period, to be dealing with traditional non-election cases? How can they cope when the Electoral Act itself stipulates a period of 180 days between when petitions are to be heard and judgments delivered? Another key factor is the incumbent's control of the state instruments of violence and the security forces. Everyone knows how key the role of the security forces is in an election, but where there is no strong constitutional provision or convention to insulate the services and their heads from politics, they will always remain the instruments of the ruling party to impose its will, even if it's against the interest of the people, including helping to perpetrate electoral fraud to keep their incumbent appointers in power. When in early September last year, Jonathan made wholesale changes to the headships of the security forces, some of us raised eyebrows and immediately accused him of playing the old trick, perfected by his predecessors, to put people whose appointment and continuation in office will be tied to his own re-election. It's quite obvious that the change was never intended to address the appalling security situations as more insecurity has been visited on the nation since then under the watch of the new guys and they haven't showed that they have the answers. There is no doubt that the man did it with an eye on the election and there is no better evidence of that than the appointment of Hafiz Ringim, his friend and confidant to the position of Inspector-General of Police, the most vital and strategic position to deploy in a rigging scheme. He appointed the man from his position as an Assistant Inspector-General of Police ahead of several superiors, including Deputy Inspector-Generals and AIGs senior to him in the Force. You don't engage in such colossal waste of human resources and point-blank nepotism if there is no agenda. This is because the police are the number one security forces needed at every level of the election. The faux pas recently committed by the Inspector-General of Police when he directed that citizens should not bring their cameras and mobile phones to election grounds clearly betray that agenda. Of course, he quickly retracted or indeed denied the directive, but the cat was out of the bag, scampering all over already! Finally, one factor that makes it unlikely that we are going to have a free and fair election in April is one that has the people's imprimatur all over it. It has to do with the active collaboration with electoral cheats by a large section of the population (thus making all of them electoral cheats) and the complacency of the other part that would not join them in doing this, yet act powerless in the face of the atrocities. In other words, I am referring to our culture of rigging in incumbents. The reason for this is that opposition is always weak in One core institution that helps the incumbents in this regard is the traditional institutions. Though, they have no constitutional powers, but because of the control and influence they have over local politics, they are always the first to be compromised or suborned by incumbents. For them also, it is a self-survival game where just supporting any incumbent is the safest thing to do. They are the ones in power and they are the ones that pay their stipends and all sorts of baksheesh to keep them sweet. Supporting them is only to keep their gravy train rolling. So, while they are still in power and contesting elections, majority of these traditional monarchs will do all sorts of underhanded things where necessary to keep them in power. If in spite of that they lose, then they don't have a problem switching allegiance under the excuse that their role is simply to support 'government' and not fight it. Thus, this culture of rigging supported by the traditional institutions and a section of the people and overlooked by another section of the people will continue to keep incumbents in power, even where they've failed, because there is no solidarity amongst the people to fight it. I mean, by the time they blow the deadly powders of ethnicity and religion into the mix, as they usually do, where would the solidarity come from? Kennedy Emetulu, .. |
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