The ‘Peaceful Transfer of Power’ Editorial

In his 2000 book ‘What is Africa’s Problem?’ Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president waxed political prose about why Africa is dysfunctional. In his estimation then, the ‘quagmire’ stemmed from leaders that stayed on for much too long. Seminally, Museveni showed that mechanisms for the peaceful transfer, which should be key to the inevitability of change, are deeply flawed and often missing. Only a few African countries have taken the peaceful leap of changing guards. Instead, coups, assassinations or constitution abrogations are more common than a hand over when a presidential term is ‘due.’.

That’s why Jamaica presents an excellent showcase and challenge to Africa. And this’ in the aftermath of Qaddafi’s demise and Mubarak’s incarceration. For his part, former Jamaican prime minister, Bruce Golding, had been in office since 2007; and had, like a great many of his predecessors, come into power with the support of Jamaica’s cognoscenti – some of whom included criminal lords like Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. By the time he resigned from office, there was so much at stake. He had just extradited to the US a man – Coke – who was not only a big campaign contributor to the prime minister’s party; but someone who had been part of the landscape of the Caribbean island. If you want to see how much influence the infamous Coke had, look into how long it took for the premier to hand him over to the US!

Closely attached to this, Golding handed the power reins of his party and the country to the young hands of a 39 year old education minister, Andrew Holness who, October 23, 2011 became Jamaica’s ninth Prime Minister. Although the future holds both promise and peril for Mr. Holness, the neighborhood is seemingly impressed with Jamaica’s ability not to fall apart. Trinidad and Tobago has not been quite as lucky. According to a leading paper, the country was, once again, ‘stuck’ with a prime minister – Patrick Manning – who was exercising office well past his expiry date’ even after leading his party ‘into near-obliterating electoral defeat.’

The cutaway from this is simple: Countries can only bear the leadership of an individual only for so long. For whatever term of office, people expect to be led properly and hope that when the time comes – a subjective thing in Africa and the Islands – you should leave. This is because benevolent dictators are not too frequent in either Africa or the Islands and neither, like already hinted, are term limits respected. Interestingly, Museveni agreed with this and by the measure in his book, the Ugandan leader who has been in power longer than a quarter century has failed.

Contrariwise, the British do not have term limits; and until the 1947 Twenty Second Amendment [and 1951 when the states ratified it], the US Constitution had no limits on the number of four year terms a president could serve. Museveni, again, used this argument when he amended the Ugandan constitution in 2006. However, both the Americans and British have the advantage of precedence. The first US president, George Washington, set the peremptory norm by only serving 8 years – and this was only broken by Roosevelt in the extenuating circumstances of the Great Depression and WWII [he won elections 4 times – 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944 and served for 12 years]. As for the UK, the British Prime Minister serves in Her Majesty’s Government and works in a ‘responsible party’ system where a prime minister is punished, just like in Jamaica, for all ‘failures’ or ‘liabilities.’ Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’ herself suffered this fate when she lost to John Major in 1990 who, himself, was trounced at the polls by Tony Blair in 1997. Apart from the fanfare associated with the British and American elections [and the debacle around Bush and Gore in 2000], there is practically no drama when there’s a new Chief Executive. Jamaica now joins the ranks of these powerful nations.

Of course, one could argue that Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, Nigeria [in the recent past] and especially Ghana have been able to surmount this ‘transfer’ quandary. However, while a new face was able to manage the affairs of the respective country in question, these victories could, for the country as a whole, be portrayed in‘Russian pyrrhic victory’* terms [See explanation below]. The cost to Kenya’s power transfer is that it is still prone to ethnic and economic violence. Zambia has too many corruption investigations. Mozambique is remarkably poor and wrought with disease. South Africa is still much too young to speak of [and anyone who came after Mandela was going to have to fill such huge shoes]. Nigeria is falling apart internally [from the natural resource imprecation and also from ethnic plus religious tension] and Ghana is … Well, Ghana is not too bad after all. While each of these countries got new leaders when the time came; there was unnecessary fracas. This is seminal because in the globalized world where the Internet [and too many camera mobile phones] shows rioting, looting, corruption accusations or scandals, you never want to have people wringing their hands in despair and further looking at Africa as a lost cause.

The lesson, I guess, is: The smoother the transition, the better. African leaders, in fact, have an incentive package from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation waiting for them if they can transfer power to another person and peacefully leave the stage for another to manage. Jamaica’s Mr. Golding would have, if he had qualified, deservedly, received the millions and millions of dollars in prize money!

Dennis Matanda,
Editor

* I use the term Russian Pyrrhic Victory to allude to the fact that the transfer of power in Russia came at too huge a cost to that country’s credibility. This stems from the fact that Vladimir Putin left the Presidency to Dmitri Medvedev ; a man who was seemingly, only too happy to serve at the former’s behest. Putin then formed a new office as Prime Minister, and although the President is supposed to be Supreme Commander of the Country, Putin is still Russia’s most powerful man – and is, in 2012, going to seek the Presidency again.