Democracy Faces Hurdles in Some Parts of Africa

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Perhaps you’ve heard that African states have been on an upward democratic trajectory in recent years. Don’t celebrate just yet. Three recent elections in widely separated parts of the continent tell a different tale.

In the West African nation of Senegal, President Macky Sall’s coalition United in Hope (Benno Bokk Yakaar) lost its absolute majority in parliament by a single seat in the July 31 election, winning 82 of the National Assembly’s 165 seats, down from the 125 it gained in 2017.

The main opposition coalitions, Liberate the People (Yewwi Askan Wi) and Save Senegal (Wallu Senegal), running in an alliance, won 56 and 24 seats, respectively, for a total of 80. Save Senegal is led by ex-president Abdoulaye Wade.

This is the first time since independence in 1960 that a ruling party has lost an absolute majority in Senegal. For Sall, who has been accused by the opposition of wanting to break the two-term constitutional limit and run for president again in 2024, the disappointing legislative results could curb any such ambitions.

That sounds like progress, no? But wait. Before the vote, the candidate list for Liberate the People was thrown out by the constitutional council, leaving high-profile candidates off the ballot. Liberate the People had to run a substitute list, largely composed of political outsiders.

Even at that, Senegal’s opposition leaders maintained that they had defeated the government coalition. “The people will respond,” Barthelemy Dias, head of Liberate the People, warned. “You lost this election at the national level. We will not accept it.”

In east Africa, a hotly contested election has also led to claims of fraud. Kenya’s Aug. 9 presidential election saw two high-profile candidates, Deputy President William Ruto and veteran politician Raila Odinga, in the running to replace outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta.

Ruto was declared the winner by a razor-thin margin, coming in at 50.49 per cent– or so the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) announced.

Elections to the two houses of parliament were also virtual dead heats, with Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza Alliance winning 24 seats to 23 for Odinga’s Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition in the Senate, while Odinga’s group beat Ruto’s supporters 162 to 159 in the National Assembly.

But just before the declaration, four of the seven electoral commissioners told journalists they could not support the “opaque nature” of the final phase of the vote verification process.

Disinformation had begun spreading on social-media platforms by camps allied to Odinga and Ruto as Kenyan media began publishing differing tallies, sparking confusion among people anxious for a result.

Odinga immediately rejected the result as “null and void,” and on Aug. 21, he and his running mate Martha Karua alleged in court that the 2022 presidential election was rigged long before Aug. 9, by 21 individuals -- 19 foreigners and two Kenyans -- who had access to the electoral agency’s technology.

They cited evidence ranging from a suspicious laptop and allegedly falsified ballot papers to the arrest of foreign nationals with access to the election’s digital infrastructure. The two candidates maintained that the alleged rigging began in March 2022 through tampering with the IEBC’s systems.

“There was an elaborate and fraudulent premeditated scheme to interfere with and undermine and defeat the integrity, credibility and security of the presidential election. The interference was intended to alter the true results of the presidential election,” they claimed. Karua accused IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati of 12 electoral offences and ethical breaches.

But the Supreme Court on Sept. 5 rejected their claim, describing it as “sensationalism,” “hearsay,” and “a wild-goose chase that yielded nothing of value.”

Finally, in southwest Africa, Angolan President Joao Lourenco’s People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) won the Aug. 24 legislative election with 51.17 per cent of the votes and 124 seats and is poised to continue its nearly five-decade rule.

Lourenco, who has now been handed a second term in office, promised to be the “president of all Angolans.” He pledged to continue with reforms, including stopping the corruption attributed to the late president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

 But the leading opposition party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which ran second with 43.95 per cent, good for 90 seats, is contesting the results.

UNITA leader Adalberto Costa Junior cited discrepancies between the National Electoral Commission’s count and their own tally. He called for the country’s constitutional court to nullify the election.

The MPLA has traditionally wielded control over the electoral process as well as state media, which had raised fears of voter tampering. Several members of the National Electoral Commission did not sign off on the final tally.

Over the years, the MPLA has spawned a regime described as a “competitive authoritarianism,” in which parties in power set up a skewed political playing field in favor of the incumbents.

Can this be blamed on the former colonial rulers? The three countries were governed very differently, by the French, British, and Portuguese, respectively. Senegal gained its independence peacefully, Kenya after a brief struggle followed by elections, while in Angola, rival factions fought a protracted guerrilla war against a nation that was itself a dictatorship.

So the indigenous political cultures in these ethnically divided states seems more likely to be the problem.