Tag Archives: democracy

The “Burkina Faso effect” is still unclear

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Six months later, we are still no closer to a definitive answer on the question: “Burkina Faso’s Printemps Noir: A Black Spring or a fizzle?”

In other words, has the surprise popular/military ouster of Burkina Faso’s authoritarian president over a term limits dispute had any ripple effects across the rest of sub-Saharan Africa’s countries with long-serving leaders — many of whom are also currently trying to change their constitutions to seek additional terms? Will people be inspired to challenge attempts to revise term limits and nip their potential future strongmen’s careers in the bud?

A partial map of the years that Sub-Saharan African strongmen took office, in relation to Blaise Compaoré's 1987 coup in Burkina Faso. (Map labels by Arsenal For Democracy.)

A partial map of the years that Sub-Saharan African strongmen took office, in relation to Blaise Compaoré’s 1987 coup in Burkina Faso. (Map labels by Arsenal For Democracy.)

In Burundi this week we got perhaps the clearest parallel so far as a major military coup attempt was made against the president after weeks of increasingly bloody protests over his planned third term. It’s currently still too early to tell what the outcome of that uprising will be, since the army was divided over the decision to intervene in the political sphere.

Fighting raged in the capital last night. Reuters:

“The coup attempt failed, loyal forces are still controlling all strategic points,” said Army Chief of Staff General Prime Niyongabo in a statement broadcast on state radio.

A Reuters witness reported a journalist at the state broadcaster had said there was still heavy gunfire being heard around the state television and radio station in the capital on Thursday morning. Another Reuters witness said loud blasts were heard in the capital.

 
The Guardian:

Witnesses said rival factions of the armed forces, divided between supporters of the coup attempt and the president’s loyalists, were exchanging heavy machine gun and rocket fire around the state television and radio complex, which is held by the president’s supporters.

According to a pro-coup military source, the RTNB complex was attacked in the early hours of the morning after Burundi’s armed forces chief used state radio to announce that the coup had failed.

A journalist inside the complex confirmed heavy fighting raged through the early hours of the morning and after dawn, with heavy weapons including cannons and rockets being used.

 
Regardless of the outcome in Burundi, however, there is a bigger picture also still unresolved. Even beyond the “super-dicator” types — those who have ruled for 30-40 years and show no signs of budging or don’t even bother with real elections — there are almost a dozen wannabe-strongmen who are similarly trying to change the rules to contest semi-competitive elections and plan to coast to re-election on popularity or intimidation and join the ranks of the super-dictators.

The trends on the latter front appear to be quite unclear, with some countries and organizations showing positive signs and others making the same unfortunate decisions as we have just seen the president of Burundi undertake. An op-ed in Al Jazeera English summarized the state of play in the various countries with similar situations:

The forced resignation of Burkinabe President Blaise Campaore in October last year, following similar protests in Ougadougou is a case in point.

Perhaps that influenced President Thomas Yayi to accept the Benin constitutional court’s refusal to amend the constitution for a third term, and he has publicly stated that he will not seek re-election next year.
[…]
Meanwhile in the DRC there has already been strong opposition to President Joseph Kabila’s attempts to amend both the constitution and the electoral law, including from within his own party.
[…]
In other parts of the continent, the signals are mixed. In stark contrast to Burundi and DRC, in neighbouring Rwanda, two million people have petitioned parliament to amend the constitution in order to allow Paul Kagame to extend his rule for a third seven-year term in 2017.
[…]
Last month, Togo’s Faure Gnassingbe and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir were both re-elected as their countries’ leaders, despite high questionable track records and notwithstanding protests against Faure’s third-term bid and an opposition boycott of the poll in Sudan, where Bashir has been in power since 1989.
[…]
However, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) looks set to change such apathy this week, when it will table a new clause that would prohibit presidents of member countries from ruling for more than two terms. It is also said to be considering adopting a new legal regime that will make all ECOWAS decisions immediately applicable and binding on member states.

 

The Economist on technocracy in democracies

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In March of this year, I published a very lengthy two-part essay on the political challenges technocracy increasingly poses to Western democracy.

In “Drawbacks of Technocracy, Part 1: Europe’s Political Crisis”, I defined what I meant by technocracy:

Technocracy is a term that essentially means rule by non-elected technical experts, often academics, who (theoretically) place the country’s interests above the interests of any particular “side.” By extension, technocracy is usually set in contrast with, but not opposition to, elected partisans (i.e. champions of a specific political party or faction). It is not the same as “bureaucracy,” either, because bureaucrats carry out the policy decisions of the executive and legislative branches, whereas the technocrats are replacing the role of the decision-makers themselves. That means the experts are substituted directly for politicians at the top. Also, quite unusually compared with other systems, technocracy often exists alongside democratic systems and completely within a normal constitutional framework. The replacement of the politicians does not occur in a “state of emergency” or other extra-constitutional circumstance, as would occur in a dictatorship, but rather occurs through appointments of experts to the top level of government through regular constitutional procedures.

 
I also explored how it had grown in strength in the European Union:

Technocrats, in this case, had to step in to fill a new vacuum, more than they were needed to replace existing elected officials. The democratically elective component of the EU’s political union was (and is) quite weak to begin with — like the political union itself — because the functions of the “supranational government,” such as it is, are quite limited and removed from the population.

 
And I argued this dependency on technocrats was becoming a problem for the future of the Union:

Worse, the reliance on and deference toward technocrats at all levels of the European project has suffocated all debate. Yes, it is hard to hold a debate across 28 member countries, but the lack of debate has engendered fearsome resistance to the policies and projects. Debating policy is politics. In essence, politics may be unseemly sometimes, but it is still the mechanism necessary to sell the people on policy solutions.

Europe’s drift toward unaccountable technocracy means even the good ideas can’t be sold to the masses, because no one has been selling them at all other than by alluding to the expertise of the people making the decisions. That works right up until that trust erodes, and then no one is there to make the case itself. Ideas are simply dropped on the masses as fait accompli policies, like a ton of bricks from the window of an ivory tower. The populist parties that actually bother to campaign on ideas — even horrible ideas — start to take a big share of the vote.

 
In “Drawbacks of Technocracy, Part 2: Blue-ribbon America”, I examined whether technocratic systems were creeping into the U.S. democracy as well.

The Economist has just published a new mega long-read entitled “What’s gone wrong with democracy” (Subtitle: “Democracy was the most successful political idea of the 20th century. Why has it run into trouble, and what can be done to revive it?”). I don’t necessarily agree with some of their proposed solutions, but their diagnosis seems largely correct (to me). I highly encourage people to read it. There were many, many hundreds of words I wanted to highlight, but I decided I could break up some of the great excerpts across various posts whenever I had my own things to say about specific themes it covered.

flag-of-europe

Since, as outlined and quoted above, I already covered the topic of technocracy in depth on my own in March, I figured I would start by quoting the relevant passages about technocracy from The Economist essay on threats and opportunities facing democracy in the 21st century: Read more

Peaceful protest is becoming much harder

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Not only is riot suppression an increasingly lucrative global business opportunity, but governments in advanced democracies have been taking cues from their more authoritarian brethren in outlawing or severely curtailing the right to peaceful assembly altogether.

In other words, these democracies are demanding non-violent protest, but then outlawing peaceful protest, too. Some recent examples, among many, of this trend:
Under the [Spanish] provision, which goes into effect on July 1, police will have the discretionary ability to hand out fines up to $650,000 to “unauthorized” demonstrators who protest near a transport hub or nuclear power plant. They will be allowed to issue fines of up to $30,000 for taking pictures of police during protest, failing to show police ID, or just gathering in an unauthorized way near government buildings.
[…]
And the United States is hardly doing better. In Baltimore, many of those who protested Freddie Gray’s death were held without charges for over 48 hours. Cells designed for one or two people were crammed with dozens, and prisoners haven’t been allowed phone calls, blankets, pillows, or any contact with lawyers or anyone from the outside world. In 2012, H.R. 347 made protesting near government buildings, political conventions or global summits — except in heavily policed and encaged “free speech zones” — a federal crime. After the Black Lives Matter movement had subsided in New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton demanded a new force of 1,000 police, armed with machine guns, specifically to monitor protests and sought to turn resisting arrest into a felony charge.

 
This is, of course, antithetical to representative democracy and core founding values of the United States, but it’s also fairly stupid in the long run. Why? Because if there’s one thing humans like almost as much as actually getting their grievances fixed is the having opportunity to loudly tell everyone about their grievances in a public place and to get other people to listen, even if they don’t agree or don’t do anything in response. I’m serious. People will often settle for at least “being heard” if they can’t actually get their way. It’s a lesser form of catharsis and has a positive effect on society in terms of defusing (or diffusing) some of the tensions into more constructive paths before they can build into violence. It’s also vital to incorporating minority political opinions in a theoretically majoritarian system without provoking open conflict.

Unfortunately, letting frustrated people be heard doesn’t seem to be on the agenda anymore in the developed world, democratic or otherwise. To quote the previous item again, an op-ed by Willie Osterweil:

These new laws suggest that the ruling elites are preparing themselves for protracted conflict. Rather than genuflect before the idols of democratic freedoms — or, God forbid, actually attempt to alleviate such widespread social problems as inequality, racist violence and ecological collapse — governments are giving themselves new weapons to crush those who demand change. But once non-violent marches are punished just as harshly as rioting, will protesters stick to passive demonstration? Or will they take the streets with more radical ideas about what’s required to win justice?

 

Riot police in action during Gezi park protests in Istanbul, June 16, 2013. (Credit: Mstyslav Chernov via Wikimedia)

Riot police in action during Gezi park protests in Istanbul, June 16, 2013. (Credit: Mstyslav Chernov via Wikimedia)

Previously from AFD:
“After Baltimore: In defense of riots” by De Ana
“After Ferguson: In defense of non-peaceful resistance” by Bill
“Non-violence has cost at least 2.7 million Black US lives” by Bill

Violent clashes in Burundi as the president clings to power

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After Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his long-anticipated plans to seek a third term as president in violation of the post-civil war constitution’s term limits, deadly protests erupted this weekend. They have escalated rapidly after initial fatalities:

Gunfire was heard and streets were barricaded in parts of the capital, Bujumbura, in the third day of protests, witnesses told the BBC. Police are blocking about students in the second city, Gitega, from joining the demonstrations, residents said.

The protests are the biggest in Burundi since the civil war ended in 2005. The army and police have been deployed to quell the protests, which have been described by government officials as an insurrection.
[…]
BBC Burundi analyst Prime Ndikumagenge says the phone lines of private radio stations have been cut, a decision apparently taken by the authorities to prevent news of protests from spreading.

 
This may be the contagion some observers speculated might unfold after the uprising in Burkina Faso last October, when President Blaise Compaoré tried to extend his presidency in a similar fashion.

Flag of Burundi

Flag of Burundi

Burundi’s Army has been accused repeatedly of conducting extrajudicial mass executions of “rebels” and political opponents. Already, thousands of people have fled political persecution to neighboring countries in just a matter of months. Burundi also has a very low median age — half the population is younger than 17, according to the CIA World Factbook — and the President has essentially created child death squads by arming teenage members of his political party’s “youth wing.”

Burundi, which has the same colonially-fostered Hutu/Tutsi split as neighboring Rwanda, experienced a 12-year civil war beginning shortly before the Rwandan Genocide and continuing until 2005, despite repeated attempts to share power. The presidents of both countries were killed in a surface-to-air missile strike on their plane in 1994, in the incident which was widely seen as the trigger signal to initiate the genocide in Rwanda. However, the war in Burundi was already in progress at that point. Hundreds of thousands died before the 2005 peace deal.

It is interesting, however, to note that so far the armed forces have continued to respond to orders from President Nkurunziza. He is Hutu, and the armed forces are a mix of ex-rebel Hutus and the Tutsi regular troops from before the peace deal. In South Sudan, a merger of various ex-rebels from competing ethnic groups, which had been secured around the same time as the Burundi deal, basically broke down completely in December 2013 as certain factions obeyed the president and others the former vice-president, who had been sacked.

April 15, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 124

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Topics: Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore and the meaning of democracy; the pros and cons of term limits. People: Bill and Nate. Produced: April 13th, 2015.

Episode 124 (40 min):
AFD 124

Discussion points:

– What does Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy in Singapore tell us about other systems of government?
– Does democracy or enlightened despotism serve the public interest better?
– Can China’s ruling party actually govern well without democracy?
– Term limits on legislators and executives: Positive or negative?

Related Links:

– AFD: The Singapore model probably isn’t widely applicable
– AFD: Abolition of Russian Serfdom vs Abolition of US Slavery
– NCSL: Frequently Asked Questions About Term Limits

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The call that changed it all

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Kingsley Moghalu, former Deputy Governor of Nigeria’s central bank, on the significance of Nigeria’s election outcome:

No sitting Nigerian president and his government have ever been removed from office through the ballot box. This is a rarity in Africa as a whole. There has been only a handful of opposition electoral victories, including in Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal and Zambia.

Perhaps just as important is incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan’s phone call to Buhari conceding defeat before final poll results were announced. This sets the tone for a peaceful transition devoid of the violence that characterized previous elections.

 
As it happened:

Jonathan apparently conceded in a telephone call to Buhari at 5:15 pm even before the final results were declared, earning him praise from politicians of all stripes.

 
The inside story of the call, from Mansur Liman, editor of BBC Hausa, who broke the news:

He told me that Gen Buhari had just received a phone call from his rival, in which the president conceded and congratulated him.

I did not doubt that this was true as I trusted my source, but given what has happened before in Nigeria, this kind of concession was up to that point unimaginable.
[…]
There were, of course, people who were very concerned about what could happen if the result was contested.

And I have since discovered that members of the National Peace Committee, which is headed by former President Abdulsalami Abubakar, visited President Jonathan as the results were being announced.

I understand they were the ones who persuaded the president to do something to avoid any trouble, and shortly after the visit he made the call.
[…]
By making that call the president saved Nigeria a great deal of pain. If the PDP had insisted that they had won the election, and the APC had said the same, the country would have been in chaos.

Lives would have been lost and property would have been destroyed. That call showed that in Nigeria, people can put the country first.

I have heard from PDP supporters that the president took the decision to make the call without consulting anyone. They told me that if he had talked to some of his advisers, they would have objected.

 
The President continues to enforce his will to concede, over the objections of the diehards, thanks to the positive affirmation he received from around the world:

“The President has prevailed on PDP to drop plans to go to tribunal against Buhari. He said he wants his word to be his bond, having been applauded by the international community,” a source told The Nation.

“At a point, Jonathan said ‘I don’t believe in post-election petition at tribunal because it distracts the incoming administration’. He also said Nigeria must emulate other nations where once the presidential poll is lost and won, the new government must not be distracted with election petitions. He told party leaders that he was not interested in going to the tribunal. It is now left for PDP leaders to heed his advice,” the source added.

 
Now, the APC’s President-elect Muhammadu Buhari must begin the difficult work of reviving Nigeria’s economy and extricating it from a mishandled and brutal northern rebellion.

Logo of the All Progressives Congress opposition coalition. (Credit: Auwal Ingawa)

Logo of the All Progressives Congress opposition coalition. (Credit: Auwal Ingawa)

The Singapore Model probably isn’t widely applicable

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In tributes to Singapore’s recently passed founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, much was made of the (undeniable) gains in prosperity and standards of living among the people under his strictly “managed” pseudo-democracy, as well as of how happy most residents are with their quality of life and the safety and cleanliness of their little country.

The late Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, 1959-1990; cabinet member, 1990-2012. (U.S. Government photo, 2002)

The late Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, 1959-1990; cabinet member, 1990-2012. (U.S. Government photo, 2002)

The logical extension of these commentaries has been to ask whether the success of this (almost literally) shining city on a busy coast means democracy isn’t the best way to produce a “government for the people” that actually governs well. Despite the name of this site, I’m open-minded enough to at least consider the possibility that there are other forms of government that might be equally (or even better) suited to a given society’s governance. I don’t presume to assert with certainty that Western liberal democracy is positively the be-all/end-all or the universally applicable ideal. But let’s not get too carried away by Lee Kuan Yew and the Singapore story and draw overly broad conclusions in the opposite direction either.

For a start, some of the quality of life and law enforcement issues are actually more controversial than the glowing tributes from around the world would imply; things are pretty rigid and harsh sometimes. Even the reported happiness, according to Singaporean commentator Sun Xi in a November 2013 article in The Globalist, is debatable…

But for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that his governance of Singapore was predominantly very good and served the public interest well, despite the lack of free, fair, and open elections. Let’s say that model worked effectively in Singapore. Would that really be enough to argue credibly that Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy might undermine liberal representative democracy’s claims to serving the public interest most effectively (and therefore governing on behalf of the people best)?

I would suggest not. There’s a major component missing in such analyses. It is probably far easier to have an effective and responsive yet non-democratic government if there is also broad/near-universal agreement in that specific society about the goals and purposes of government. Democracy is less “necessary,” so to speak, for effective governance in the public interest if everyone in a society more or less agrees on what their government should be doing and what an ideal society would look like. If everyone agrees, the government just has to do those things well, and it will have succeeded. That agreement is likelier to be found in a small place like Singapore. In a vaster and more politically or culturally heterogeneous society, such as the United States, democracy is necessary to provide a stable and peaceful mechanism for sorting out competing fundamental visions of governance.
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