From Mugabe to Mubarak, Many African Dictators Still Reign

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
From Robert Mugabe in the south to Hosni Mubarak in the north, Africa still has its share of “big men,” as its dictators are often called.

Even when they hold elections, the results are known in advance, thanks to intimidation of opposition candidates and their supporters; lack of media coverage for opponents; and, finally, ballot rigging.

The most recent example was last fall’s presidential election in the Ivory Coast, where the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, actually lost to rival Alassane Ouattara, yet has refused to step down, despite calls from ECOWAS -- the Economic Community of West African States -- and the United Nations to do so.

The UN was invited to certify the election results in Ivory Coast as part of a peace agreement signed by all parties after a 2002-2003 civil war divided the country in two.

It endorsed the findings of the country’s electoral commission, but the constitutional council subsequently declared Gbagbo president after throwing out more than half a million votes from Ouattara strongholds.

The result may be a resumption of the civil war pitting the largely Muslim north, which supported Ouattara, against the Christianized south, where Gbagbo was the favourite.

Egypt’s Mubarak, who intends to have his son Gamal succeed him as president, himself fixed a legislative election last year.

Claims of fraud and bullying marred the vote, in which the main opposition Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates were forced to run as independents, was all but wiped out. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party won 420 of the 444 contested seats.

A presidential election is scheduled for later this year in Egypt. Many leading political figures in Egypt, fearing a fix, have already announced that they will refuse to take part.

Zimbabwe too plans a presidential election later in 2011. Mugabe seems fed up with sharing power with his decade-long rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. They were forced into a coalition government after a rigged 2008 election which had exacerbated a severe economic crisis.

But Tsvangirai has stated that before polls can be held this year there must be a referendum on a revised constitution which will include electoral reforms, and an end to violence perpetrated by members of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF Party.

“When the police, army, militia, war veterans are used to intimidate, coerce, and cause torture and death to the people, that is the kind of violence we need to contain,” he declared.

Neighbouring Zambia will see Rupiah Banda of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy running for his first full term as president. Banda narrowly beat his main challenger, the Patriotic Front’s Michael Sata, in a vote in 2008 after the death of president Levy Mwanawasa.

There was considerable violence following the 2008 election and many fear a repeat this year, as both men will again be running for the top job.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian Ijaw from the southern part of Nigeria, plans to contest the 2011 election in his own right. The former vice-president, he became head of state in 2010 following the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua, a northern Fulani Muslim who had won the presidency in a highly controversial election in 2007.

However, many Nigerian Muslims feel that it should now be the turn of a Muslim to sit in the presidential palace in Abuja. So the presidential contest might feature one or more northern Muslim candidates opposing Jonathan, against a backdrop of ongoing ethnic and religious violence and an insurrection in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The election “could lead to post-election sectarian violence, paralysis of the executive branch, and even a coup,” according to John Campbell, a former American ambassador to Nigeria.

Apart from these countries, 14 other African states will be holding presidential contests. In many of them, challenges to those in power will be met by harassment, electoral manipulation, and the withholding of resources from those who support competitors. This promises to be a year of high political drama in Africa.