A stolen poll in 2011 might be good for our democracy

We have just witnessed a spectacle in Burundi that, if the threats of some of the opposition leaders in Uganda are carried through, might happen in next year’s election. Following an opposition boycott of the Burundi election, President Pierre Nkurunziza was left to run against himself as the sole candidate.

In Uganda, the opposition has threatened to boycott the February 2011 polls if there are no election reforms, which they insist must include an overhaul of an allegedly partisan Electoral Commission.

Observers agree that the Burundi boycott has denied Nkurunziza of legitimacy. But, as a Kenyan leader once famously said, “the croaking of a frog doesn’t prevent the cow from drinking the water.” And that is the opposition’s eternal dilemma. A boycott robs the president of legitimacy, but it doesn’t prevent him from ruling. And, sometimes, a president who wins a controversial election can use power to manufacture legitimacy.

Uganda’s history suggests that if your aim is to discredit a bad regime, then don’t boycott an election. In December 1980, there was pressure from sections of (now President) Museveni’s Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) to boycott the election because the UPC-controlled Military Commission was bent on rigging it for the party.

In the end UPM participated, UPC stole the election, and Museveni and his comrades took to the bush to begin a guerilla war. By contesting, UPM and other parties like the Democratic Party (DP) forced UPC to commit a theft and leave fingerprints at the scene of the crime. And brandishing that evidence, they made a convincing case that the UPC government was fraudulent.

If they had boycotted, the UPC would have been accused of many things, except theft—because there would have been no opponents’ votes to steal. If you understand that, then you understand why, when in October 2000 Dr Kizza Besigye (Forum for Democratic Change chief) announced that he was going to challenge President Museveni in the 2001 elections, the President and his men totally lost their cool.

It is possible they knew that Besigye had done to them what they had done to Milton Obote’s UPC in 1980 – pushed them into a place where they had to steal the election to assure themselves of victory.

Also, the only UPM candidate to win a seat in 1980 was Minister of Defence Dr Crispus Kiyonga. Kiyonga didn’t take up his seat in Parliament. He took off into exile. However, by so doing he repudiated the election in a stinging way. He had won a prize, which he spat on and cast away.

It gets better. President Museveni had run a one-party (no party) State since 1986, but the criticisms of “one-party dictatorship” never damaged his local and international standing like the election burglaries of 2001 and 2006 (remember, the courts ruled those two elections were swindled, except they weren’t sure by how much).

If the opposition had boycotted the 2001 and 2006 elections, we would not have had two rigged polls, and the international standing of Museveni would be much better today.
The other thing is that if you have been cheated, you have a greater moral authority to complain, than a by-stander.

I have argued before that a rigged vote is better than no election. You are more likely to demand a better election if you have voted before in a bad one, than to ask for a clean poll on the first occasion. In fact, I think Africa proves that democracy tends to advance more through stolen elections, than honest ones. After the election debacle of 1980 in Uganda, a common feature in Africa then (and today), several changes happened to how we conduct elections.

One lesson from December 1980 was that, where possible, ballots should be cast in transparent boxes. Secondly, and most importantly, that the votes be counted at the polling stations in view of the voters.

That did not stop rigging. What it did was that now rigging was in plain sight, so more people saw it—and it became easier to convince them that a rogue government had stolen the vote. But also because voting is open, the state-election cheating machine had to operate away from the polling stations. One of the things they did was pre-tick ballot papers. However, this kind of approach requires the use of thousands more people to steal the election than was required in December 1980.

In 1980, a few Landrovers and trucks collected ballot boxes, took them to a tallying centre where the masses weren’t watching, and the returning officer could announce any result he wished. You could use 150 people to steal victory in 1980.

Today, according to some sources, you need at least 500,000 people to steal an election. That is 499,850 more than 30 years ago. I have not met any disgruntled former NRM insider who has not admitted to having stolen the vote.