generalspeaking

Democracy Had Its Day

Let's hear it for Democracy. A political system that almost every country in the world aspires to because it seems to endow them with special status, that of popular legitimacy. Even dictatorships present themselves as democracies. Lauding themselves for permitting the people to become an electorate, to cast votes, whether or not they will be respected by legal audit, or debased by corruption.

What appears to be important is the illusion that democratic action has been taken and fulfilled, accounting for a lawful outcome that demonstrates the will of the people. It is what we saw taking place in Egypt, in Iran, in Venezuela and Zimbabwe and in any number of African countries as a thin veneer of civility behind which dictators could rule with zealous efficiency.

"We are now declaring the end of the Ali Abdullah Saleh era and will build a new Yemen", chortled human rights activist Tawakul Karman, who owns the distinction of having shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize, waiting to cast her ballot outside a Sanaa University faculty.

There were long lines of anxious voters forming from early morning outside polling stations, amid tight security. An explosion hadblown up a voting centre in the port city of Aden the evening before the vote. Turnout is said to have been officially as high as 80%; roughly the number said to have voted for President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt's past elections.

Who else would they vote for, after all? Just as in this election in Yemen, having ousted Ali Abdullah Saleh in an uprising, bringing the country through a dictatorship into a state of chaos, there was one candidate only in the presidential election. The election an outright sham since there was no competition.

That 80% turnout was able to vote for the sole candidate on the slate. General Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, formerly Saleh's vice-president and confidant is now president of Yemen, prepared to implement a power-sharing deal with political opponents. Those famous power-sharing deals that invariably result in tribal and clan clashes.

But Democracy had its day.

Labels: Africa, Political Realities

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 22, 2012