MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS CONTESTING ELECTIONS IN AFRICA

Okello Oculi argues that multinational corporations promote election of corrupt leaders

The prosecutors at the International Criminal Court suffered a humiliation following the judgement that declared that former president of Cote d’ Ïvoire, Laurent Gbagbo, is not guilty as charged. He had accused French companies of attacking him because he challenged the dictum that French companies must enjoy priority rights to contracts awarded by government. It is only after they do not find a contract juicy enough that it can be open to companies from other countries. He considered this ridicule to his country’s sovereignty unacceptable.

In an interview after he was thrown at ICC, Charles Taylor, accused the American company, Firestone Inc, of punishing him for not agreeing to their demands for diamond concessions in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The company held the charter to govern ‘’Liberia’’ as a ‘Protectorate’ after the American government – between 1810 and 1820 - grabbed a chunk of territory in West Africa to extend her imperial ambition beyond the Caribbean, South Americas and the Pacific Ocean space. Taylor is not as lucky as Gbagbo who French companies had allegedly rigged elections against.

In the Pacific, Commodore George Dewey, in 1898, smashed Spanish colonial troops in Philippines. The Filipinos were conducting guerrilla warfare against Spanish colonial dictatorship. They were delighted at the arrival of American troops, seeing them as liberators from the land of revolution against British colonialism. They were very mistaken. According to Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Dewey turned against the guerrilla fighters and slaughtered 250,000 Filipinos and opened the land for American companies to extract tobacco, sugar, hemp and coconut oil for the American market. The companies had won an armed election against Filipino freedom and lives.

Congo’s independence on June 30, 1960 was from Belgian colonial neo-genocide - in which it is estimated that 10 million Congolese perished. One week later, the United States, Britain, France and Belgium dropped troops into Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) to block patriotic Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba from inviting the Soviet Union into a country rich in precious natural resources. He had won a majority of seats in parliament. Belgian colonial officers sprouted scores of tribal parties but failed to defeat his national campaign.

A local agent of the CIA, Joseph Desire Mobutu, had joined Lumumba’s party, was appointed by Lumumba to head the military and later arranged for Belgian agents to assassinate him in Katanga. Joseph Kasavubu, the country’s non-executive President, had cooperated with Mobutu and his NATO handlers to dismiss Lumumba from his post of prime minister in the hope that power would come to him.

By 1965 following the defeat of a secessionist war in Katanga province, power flowed to Mobutu. He held it till Euro-American companies used Laurent Kabila to chase him out in 1987. Kabila was the new client. The American

LAURENT GBAGBO ACCUSED FRENCH COMPANIES OF ATTACKING HIM BECAUSE HE CHALLENGED THE DICTUM THAT FRENCH COMPANIES MUST ENJOY PRIORITY RIGHTS TO CONTRACTS AWARDED BY GOVERNMENT

imperialists had changed their tactics from grabbing territory in Liberia to recruiting and directing agents to run ‘’client states’’. Those companies lurking in the shadows were still committed to the CIA arranging military coups against socialistic leaders.

In 1949 the United States created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as babies of the United Nations. In the name of promoting ‘’development’’ they gave loans to African governments on the eve of independence. These loans were met by newly independent countries mainly for welfare services, notably: education and health care. They yielded debts whose repayments swallow up most of earnings from exports of agricultural and mineral resources. ‘’Debt slavery’’ became more destructive when lenders created measures for collecting their debts before earnings reached national treasuries. Euro-American companies collected earning from economies of so-called ‘’developing countries’’ without ‘’putting boots on the ground’’ in victim countries.

In international law ‘’every state has the right to defend itself from external attack; none has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another’’. That is the moral value of ‘’sovereignty’’. Imperialism is indifferent, even contemptuous, of this doctrine. President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush came up with a brutal tool for undermining ‘’sovereignty’’: the dictum that ‘’the promotion of democracy abroad ...and the best hope for peace in the world’’ is for the United States and her NATO allies to plant and grow ‘’democracy’’/’’freedom’’ throughout the globe.

As a reflection of American culture - which rejected feudal injustices of Europe; and a local aristocracy rooted in slave trade in her Southern States - this version of ‘’democracy’’ is against free high-quality mass education; and increasing incomes for the masses through revenues earned from government ownership of ‘’public enterprises and corporations’’. It is anchored on creating and deepening poverty by ‘’globalisation’’ - which crushes local artisans, farmers and business groups.

Basil Davidson – a distinguished scholar of African history – asserted that Western leaders deliberately promoted corruption to derail patriotic governance in post-colonial Africa. They preferred inequality and blocked social progress. Corruption would destroy the provision of good quality education; and feed deepening poverty,

Multinational corporations promote election of corrupt leaders who confront loss of popularity by crushing critics; and are indifferent to creating peace through the contentment which general prosperity generates. The visionary and disciplined leadership which built the miracle of Singapore may have escaped relentless attack by Euro-American multinational corporations because it advertised to Communist China’s leaders that capitalism gives birth to economic prosperity.