Author: Moses Khisa. PHOTO/FILE
This year has been particularly bad for incumbent governments all around the world. On the African continent, at least three ruling parties and presidents suffered humiliating defeats – Botswana, Ghana, and Senegal. These three are among the best of Africa’s fairly well established democracies that hold routine and relatively free and fair elections, for what they are worth.
Despite its decent democratic credentials, Botswana had failed one crucial test: the Botswana Democratic Party was the sole ruling party since independence in 1965, nearly 60 years uninterrupted. In October though, the BDP suffered its first and decisive electoral defeat. The incumbent president promptly conceded. Earlier, the ruling African National Congress in South Africa got its first major electoral setback, losing the majority in parliament for the first time since the country’s first truly democratic elections in 1994 and the formal end to the nefarious apartheid system. Things do not look good in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but taken as a whole, Southern Africa is Africa’s most stable and democratically promising sub-region.
Further afield in West Africa, just last weekend, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in Ghana suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the main opposition. In Senegal in April, 44-year old Bassirou Diomaye Faye pulled off a stupendous surprise-victory, decisively defeating the then ruling party, only 10 days after leaving prison! Over the last two decades, both Ghana and Senegal have experienced alternation of ruling parties and presidents, again, for what it is worth.
Democracy sceptics may frown at the value of alternation of power without meaningful substantive change, but until opposition parties and candidates can successfully challenge the incumbent at the polls, it is impossible to consider a country democratic. In both Ghana and Senegal, there was a strong anti-incumbent sentiment, a similar trend around the world, including in the United States of America. On the Asian continent, South Korea, considered a shining star of liberal democracy that side of the world, is in the throes of unprecedented turmoil after the president unsuccessfully attempted to impose martial law, reversed his move and came up for impeachment!
In Bangladesh, a country with decent democratic credentials, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina dramatically fled the country in August in the face of unrelenting street protests. Next door in India, dubbed the world’s largest democracy, in June, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its majority in parliament and had to fall back to coalition-partners to continue governing. Arguably the most dramatic events happened last week in Syria, where the half-century rule of the Assad family came down crashing as President Bashar Assad fled to exile in Russia, with rebel forces closing in on the capital, Damascus, having taken other major cities in quick succession.
Syria is now in a dire state. Citizens are deservedly celebrating the end to a brutal dictatorship, notorious for repressing opponents and crashing any dissent. However, the country faces potential state implosion with different rebel forces jostling for control across the country and a power vacuum that has invited Israel to conduct bombings of Syria’s military infrastructure in utter disregard of international law. Across the world, in developed and underdeveloped countries or whichever way one frames socioeconomic conditions, whether in democratic or authoritarian states, big or small, in the Western world as much as the non-west, popular disillusionment and dissatisfaction has resulted in ruptures and intense political crises. It is easy to chastise democracy.
The so-called liberal version of it is now a cheap punching bag for critics, but governing society effectively and assuring meaningful lives for majority of the public is a herculean task, especially in conditions of economic anxieties, social divisions and political polarisation. Infact, history shows that autocratic or authoritarian regimes are more vulnerable to economic crises and social disharmony than democratic systems, however defined. Worse, once deposed violently or, at a minimum, unceremoniously, the morning after is even more disastrous than the undesirable state of affairs under the overthrown regime. All this brings me to the crux of my discipline and professional work – political science.
The central puzzle is how to design and build a governing system that guarantees order, stability and makes possible the conditions for individual and group activities, for people to engage in whatever productive work they choose, to go about life without needing to rise up against the status quo. It is the challenge of establishing the foundations of political order to which I shall turn next week!
