Gambia shock: East Africans should not be last poll thieves

What you need to know:

  • Jammeh, who grabbed power in a coup 22 years ago, was routed in the election and, as the world watched in shock, in less than 18 hours after the polls closed, conceded defeat to the opposition’s Adama Barrow.
  • In December 2002, Kenya became the only East African Community country where a ruling party was defeated by the opposition, but Daniel arap Moi was stepping down. So it too does not know what an electorally beaten president looks like.

I am sure I am not the only one who has not recovered from the events in the tiny West African nation of Gambia last week. This was not supposed to be how an election under its half-crazed leader, Yahya Jammeh, would normally have ended.

Jammeh, who grabbed power in a coup 22 years ago, was routed in the election and, as the world watched in shock, in less than 18 hours after the polls closed, conceded defeat to the opposition’s Adama Barrow.

Jammeh himself seemed aware that many people would find it impossible to believe, so he went on live TV, called Barrow, and put him on speaker phone.

All the signs pointed to a Jammeh election heist. The ex-soldier, who claimed that some concoctions he made in the State House kitchen could cure Aids and diabetes if taken on Thursdays, also claimed he had had an encounter with God a few days before the vote. God, he said, had told him victory was his.

Ahead of the December 1 election, the Jammeh government had arrested, tortured, and killed opposition activists. And in a growing fashion in Africa, it also shut down the internet and blocked international calls. Those were not the signs of a man intent on having a free election.

That is history now. Jammeh became the first president in Africa of recent times who came to power in a coup or as head of a rebel army to accept an election defeat.

East Africans need to reflect on the meaning of this. Outside of Somalia, no other country in the region has seen an incumbent defeated at the polls and accept the outcome.

In December 2002, Kenya became the only East African Community country where a ruling party was defeated by the opposition, but Daniel arap Moi was stepping down. So it too does not know what an electorally beaten president looks like.

West Africa, on the other hand, now has the highest concentration of countries on the continent where the opposition has won presidential or parliamentary elections at least once — Cape Verde, Principe and Sao Tome, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria.

In March 2015, Nigeria shook up the African political storyline when Muhammadu Buhari became the first opposition candidate to beat an incumbent in the country’s history.

Nigeria thus became the first big African country to see a post-independence democratic transition of power from one party to another at the polls. It is a feat that still eludes other big African countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa and Tanzania.

These kinds of things used to happen mostly in southern Africa (Seychelles, Mauritius, Malawi and Zambia), but now West Africa has overtaken it.

In fact, there were worrying signs of democratic decline in southern Africa, with the August election in Zambia. After incumbent President Edgar Lungu was declared the winner of a closely fought presidential contest, the result was immediately challenged by his main opponent, Hakainde Hichilema.

The opposition, with some justification, alleged that the electoral commission had colluded to rig the vote against its candidate. It was also Zambia’s most violent election and the government’s harassment of the free media was unprecedented. Zambian politics has always been mostly civil and the change toward violence and bitterness worried many.

There are some emerging trends that would be interesting subjects for political science research. It seems that when the “Big Brothers” of a region have free elections, they infect the neighbourhood with good political habits. However, if they are terrible, then likewise their bad ways are also spread in their regions.

Secondly, terrorism could be having an impact. West Africa has been plagued by terrorism more than East Africa, for one. It could be that, fearing to give extremists easy ammunition, in West Africa the political class is seeing honest elections, and legitimate governments, as a weapon against the threat posed by violent organisations.

However, the terrorism threat has not had the same positive effect in the Maghreb or North Africa outside Tunisia. That could be because they are predominantly Muslim countries. Perhaps this response is more likely to happen in countries where there is some kind of diverse divide between Christian, Muslim, and other religions, where political marginalisation could coincide with religion, and thus be used as a means of sectarian mobilisation.

Whatever the case, East Africa needs to ensure that we are not the last election cheats standing.

The author is publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. @cobbo3