Free and fair elections or not: Politicians are assured winners
Speaking to diplomats representing their countries/organizations to Tanzania, in Dar es Salaam, President John Magufuli told them that the general election expected to be held in October this year will be “free and fair”. He also said that international agencies and observers will be allowed into the country to monitor the whole process.
With the experience of the last four years, countless by-elections where opposition parties suffered huge losses, civic polls last November; where opposition parties cried foul play in favor of the ruling CCM, with some of the leading opposition parties boycotting the process entirely, coupled with the experience from other previous elections, needless to say, President Magufuli’s assurance was received with skepticism from opposition leaders.
There are those who argue that the issues which have consistently failed us in our democratic experiments time and again are rooted in our legal set up, in particular the autonomy of the electoral body, as its leaders can be appointed or fired at the pleasure of the president who happens to be a national party chairman of the ruling party as well. Plus the role of district executive directors who are election supervisors but seen by opposition parties to be partisan, something which ended up in the courts of law.
Free and fair or not, (as far as the “conventional” view is concerned), elections in Africa have come to play a role of legitimizing those who end up being elected regardless of whether they belong in the ruling party or opposition parties. This legitimacy, even when there are claims (and in some cases, evidence) of irregularities, is an important currency of sustaining those in power.
While opposition parties may cry foul play about the outcome of the presidential election as was the case here back in 2015, the same thing was not extended for parliamentary seats which were up for grab as well. This complicated dichotomy of our “democracy” places the opposition in a strange political reality but one which we have come to view as “normal”. That, the same electoral process produces polar opposite conclusions.
This has given us a reality where a political party boycotts the sessions of a lawmaking body in one part of the country while attending the sessions of another lawmaking body in another part of the country.
Despite politicians bickering about the electoral process being free and fair or otherwise, they are united in never pointing fingers at the price tag of the process which places many of them at the pinnacle of their political careers.
The only blemish might come by them asking for more funding for the electoral body, saying such funding is crucial to delivering credible elections. This price tag, even when the process is flawed, and a burden to taxpayers is justified with the cliché of “democracy is expensive”.
This price tag which is part of the government’s financial budget in an election year like this one, does not include the other financial price tag of the money used by political parties or their candidates to fund their efforts during the whole election process. This amount is secretive, and those footing the bill whether taxpayers or members of these political parties or donors can never be sure of the exact figures spent by these political vehicles called political parties.
And the promises through election manifestos and the many others shouted by politicians of all stripes from political podiums or impromptu stops are rarely debated in depth as to whether they have substance. It is all about maintaining power or replacing those in power with a different set of “eaters” at the table.
While the skepticism and concerns about free and fair elections are genuine, they, however, put too much emphasis on the process through which politicians end up on the dinner table or not, and where their political parties stand in the pecking order, they do not address the concerns of ordinary voters who at the end of the day, are cheated by the process and the assured winners, always, are politicians.
It is strange, to say the least, that those who claim all they want is nothing but to serve the rest of us, routinely do not fail to do the opposite.
In other words, whether elections are free and fair or not, politicians will never end up falling on their back like the famed Amalinze the cat, which is why elections in Africa are spectacles; colorful affairs and in many cases deadly.
