SINCE THE END of the Cold War, West Africa’s political systems have undergone both rapid and momentous changes. A region that once accounted for more than 70 percent of all military coups in Africa is now on a seemingly unstoppable march towards pluralistic forms of governance. Without a doubt, competitive general elections — often conducted under the scrutiny of the international community — have played a pivotal role in this seismic political shift.
More West African governments today have been chosen through free and fair elections than at any other time in the region’s history. In 2005, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea Bissau, Togo, and Cape Verde all conducted parliamentary and/ or presidential elections. Eight more elections are scheduled in 2007 in Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Guinea, Senegal, and Mali.
In conflict-racked West Africa, elections are much more than just a means of choosing public officials and changing governments. Due to the symbiotic relationship between poor governance and instability, elections have also come to be viewed as a means of conflict management. In both Sierra Leone and Liberia, free and fair elections, in 2002 and 2006 respectively, conferred legitimacy upon the political order and helped consolidate the fragile peace that both countries are now enjoying.
Even where elections are deemed free and fair, West African politics is by and large, still a zero sum game. Political parties are more often than not predatory networks through which ambitious individuals strive to maximize their access to state resources and to reward cronies. Under this climate of ‘winner takes all’ it is not surprising that instead of unifying a nation, poorly-timed elections can also contain the seeds of discord and anarchy. In polls that were said to be one of the most honest in the country’s history war-weary Liberians overwhelmingly voted for Charles Taylor in the 1997 elections even though he had terrorized the country for close to a decade. “He killed my father, he killed my mother – still I voted for him” was the slogan of many voters. Without doubt the voters were fully aware that should Taylor loose, he will re-start the war. He won the elections but the war continued.
In the vast majority of the few elections conducted in West Africa since independence, the incumbent has almost always won. In the 1997 elections in Liberia, Charles Taylor garnered 75.3 percent of the vote, while his nearest competitor, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, received a mere 9.6 percent. President Ahmad Kabba won the 2002 Presidential elections in Sierra Leone by over 70 percent. In the Nigerian Presidential elections in 2003, President Obasanjo was re-elected by nearly 62 percent. The reason for this seemingly unassailable lead is simple: there is a huge gulf in resources available to the incumbent. Apart from controlling the nation’s resources, the officeholder often controls the media and other state apparatuses, such as the army and police.
In West African elections, ballots are often cast along predictable ethnic, clan, regional, or religious lines as these are the most easily mobilized sources of political support. In many cases, political parties merely mirror this cleavage, in the process exposing deep social divisions. Cote d’Ivoire plunged into civil war when the northernbased politician Alassane Outarra was barred from standing in the 2000 presidential election on the grounds that his parents were not born in the count ry. The conflict now pits h i s l a r g e l y n o r t h e r n supporters against Laurent Gbagbo’s mainly southern Bete tribe.
Power is often vested in the hands of a few powerful individuals. When General San i Abacha agreed to hand over power to civilians in 1993 he decreed that only two officiallyauthorized national o r g a n i z a t i o n s should contest the elections. But the military leader refused to hand over power when the outcome was not what was expected. With the swift stroke of the pen he nullified Nigeria’s elections and set the country’s democratic clock several years back. In Cote d’Ivoire, junta leader Robert Guei blatantly rigged that country’s elections held in late 2000 and declared himself the winner.
West Africa is a bad neighborhood. Liberia's descent into civil war in late 1989 plunged most of subregion into chaos. The conflict created a disastrous domino effect in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and, eventually, Cote d’ Ivoire. Apart from the logistical challenges of conducting elections in countries with damaged infrastructure, the process can also open old wounds and undermine the fragile peace.
For most of the 1990s West Africa was held to ransom by a few strongmen, who between them scuttled several peace processes. Sierra Leone’s Sam Bockarie and Foday Sankoh, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, and Cote d’ivoire’s General Robert Guie allplayed the role of spoilers. The semblance of peace that now prevails in the subregion is partly due to the fact that most of these extremists have either been captured and incarcerated or killed.
Civil society is still relatively weak and divided in post-conflict West Africa. As ruling parties continue to embark on a monopolistic style of rule, they have deliberately weakened the opposition and other pressure groups. Such groups that should act as checks of power abuse have not proved strong enough to enforce the accountability and transparency needed for democratic governance.
The tendency of the international community to push for quick and early elections can sometimes undermine a country’s fragile peace process. Early elections in 1997 only exacerbated Liberia’s problems. Advocates of early elections are not always sufficiently cognizant of the dangers in pushing for elections, particularly in countries which have recently emerged from civil conflict. The democratization of West Africa has come a long way. From military dictatorships to one party politics, the subregion has made immense strides in establishing broadb a s e d p a r t i c i p a t o r y governments. In spite of this progress, there is the realization that elections alone, no matter how free and fair, will not solve West Africa’s myriad socioeconomic and political problems. The key challenge is to go beyond regular elections to instill and consolidate those democratic values that decentralizes and devolves political power, tackles corruption, promotes human rights and the rule of law, create credible judiciaries, fosters independent mass media, empowers civil society, and, perhaps most importantly, isolates the spoilers. Without these wide-ranging measures the few democratic gains that have been recorded can be quickly reversed in a region circumscribed by fractured polities, moribund institutions, damaged economies, and divided societies.
REFERENCES Decalo, Samuel. 1992. The process, prospects and constraints of democratization process in Africa. African Affairs 91, no. 262 (January). Makinda, Samuel. 1996. Democracy and Multiparty politics in Africa. The Journal of Modern African Studies 31, no. 4 (December).