AU should think about quality of polls in African nations

Credit goes to the African Union and the Economic Community of West Africa, for bringing an orderly resolution to the situation in Burkina Faso following the overthrow of President Blaise Campaore – in power for 27 years.

Pressure by the African Union provided direction to the new military rulers and, therefore, forced a resolution which led to the appointment of a civilian, Michel Kafando, as the interim president.

This commendable outcome was possible because of a growing intolerance within the Union for coups d’etats, a feature of African politics since independence.

The AU position against military coups is now crystallised in three formal instruments.

The first is the Lomé Declaration on the Framework for an OAU Response to Unconstitutional Changes of Government, of 2000, the African Charter on Democratic Elections and Governance, and the Malabo Protocol, which created the offence of unconstitutional change of government as one of the many crimes for which the expanded court would be responsible.

This is the one area in which AU practice is consistent with the relevant formal instruments that the Union has adopted. In other areas, like the protection of human rights, or support for justice for crimes under international law, AU practice has remained at variance with the formal instruments, and in the case of international justice, the AU is even rolling back on existing commitments, as evidenced by the Malabo Protocol, which seeks to shield serving presidents and senior officials from prosecution for crimes under international law.

There is a simple explanation for the AU aversion for unconstitutional changes of government. It is the mechanism that incumbents have adopted to protect themselves from the takeover of power, often violent, as happens in military coups.

The legal instruments prohibit not just coup d’etats but also intervention by mercenaries to replace democratically elected governments, the replacement of democratically elected governments by armed dissident groups and rebel movements; and the refusal by incumbent governments to relinquish power to the winning political parties after free and fair elections.

CITIZEN UPRISING

While it is clear that there is a self-serving intention in the AU position on unconstitutional changes of government, through which presidents seek to protect their hold on power, the situation in Burkina Faso appeared like a spontaneous citizen uprising deposing President Compaore, which created a power vacuum into which the military then stepped.

Whatever the case, the AU intervention co-ordinated with the Ecowas has helped to save the country from what may have turned into a large-scale political crisis that could have resulted in the loss of lives.

While the intervention in Burkina Faso recently, and Mali before that, shows that the AU has the resources to enforce compliance with its own instruments, the failure to make a similar intervention in Egypt when faced with the same circumstances over which the intervention in these other countries was made, shows inconsistency and creates the impression that the Union is only able to act in small states but remains powerless in the political situation of the major African states.

There are also questions about the capacity of the Union to maintain a long-term engagement in a country, beyond the cessation of hostilities, to ensure that it completely stabilises.

Additionally, it is not clear what constitutes an unconstitutional change of government, arising from the failure by the AU to classify the Burkina Faso occurrences as constituting that, even though the succession of Campaore was obviously extra-constitutional.

Further, while the AU has prioritised interventions in situations of military and other illegal takeovers of power, it has been more reluctant to address deficits in democracy as evidenced by poorly-run elections calculated to maintain the incumbents in power against the will of the electorate.

Next year alone, 11 countries around Africa will hold presidential elections. These include Nigeria, Togo, Sudan, Mali, Ethiopia, and Burundi. Others are Mauritius, Cote d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Libya.

VIOLENCE

For different reasons, most of these elections will be difficult. Some of them, including those in Nigeria and Burundi, are seen as having the potential towards violence. Cote d’Ivoire is holding the next elections after the troubled elections of 2010, which were marred by post-election violence following which the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, faces charges before the International Criminal Court.

Both Libya and Mali have recently experienced significant political instability leading to violence, from which they have not fully recovered.

As Africa looks to the AU to address mounting political problems, including the tragic conflict in South Sudan, sadly now off the radar, it is too early to tell whether the Burkina Faso uprising is a stand-alone occurrence, or represents the beginning of a sub-Saharan uprising against long-serving presidents, similar to the Arab Spring.

Other than the AU, countries with long-serving presidents such as Cameroon, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe will be keenly watching developments around the continent, hoping that Burkina Faso is no more than a national event that will not be replicated elsewhere.

Already, Zimbabwe is in the throes of a grim power struggle, occasioned by the perceived loosening of President Robert Mugabe’s grip on the country, a situation which has brought out First Lady Grace Mugabe into active politics.

As the AU prepares to intervene if any of these elections goes wrong, it must increasingly also ask questions about the quality of the actual elections, whether these represent the true will of the population.

The answer to this question is the only sustainable way of ensuring that AU intervention will not become necessary in the first place.

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