by L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
Egyptians went to the polls last week to elect a new president. While Europe debated whether or not Greece would remain within the Eurozone. Both situations force a reflection upon democracy.
What does the Egyptian vote mean? A religious party that is not committed to secularism has a large say in Egypt’s parliament. The economic conditions that helped spawn the people’s uprisings in the Maghreb and Mashreq have not yet changed — and the changed political conditions are not guaranteed.
Meanwhile, the contemporary Greek tragedy is the gulf between the economic imperatives the Greek government has to abide with and the Greek citizens who continue to flood the streets in protest at those economic imperatives. The government is forced in one direction to pacify the European Union and lenders — while the people pull hard in the opposite direction. It’s a stark and untenable tension —democratically elected leaders being forcibly divorced from the will of the demos.
Elections are clearly merely an indicator of representative democracy. We have to select political leadership in a predictable and transparent way and we do not have a workable substitute for the electoral process. Male elders sitting under a tree just do not cut it anymore, for a whole range of reasons — not least their being male and our political community being broader than the family, clan or ethnic group.
Which is not to suggest that representative democracy is an end in itself. Far too many African states still have winner-takes-all rather than proportional electoral systems — so representative democracy often implies rule not by the majority, but by a minority. And the extent to which our parliamentarians feel an obligation to represent their constituents or their political parties is evidently questionable.
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It is true we still have a long way to go. Elections should provide us choice in terms of agendas and platforms for change. Instead, we choose from personalities and political parties that are empty shells. Elections should provide those who come to power with the capacity to effect those agendas and platforms for change. Instead, on the economy, too many African states (like the Greeks) are, in the words of Prof Thandika Mkandawire, “choiceless democracies.” Political pluralism is meant to be about meaningful, substantive choice. Instead, it is reduced to five-yearly disintegrations and meltdowns.
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