Level voting field
Ilook forward to reading an upcoming book by David Shimer titled Rigged: America, Russia and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference. The reviews are tempting. I am hoping it will shed some light on African destabilisation at the hands of outside powers and its impact on development.
Nothing is new in its revelations. Anyone who has watched the James Bond series knows that big powers have always engaged in covert activities to undermine legitimate governments. This is no fantasy but a policy that has had devastating consequences for small countries. What is new, however, is that the book places both the US and Russia on the same level as covert election offenders. What would have been considered treasonous in Western capitals before can now be viewed as mere candour.
From Asia to the Middle East to Latin America and yes, Africa, the Third World is littered with casualties of covert action by big countries. In the 1970s and before, brute Conradian force was used as the preferred instrument of regime change. This was the policy of assassinations.
Hardly seven months in office as first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the Belgians. There followed a litany of victims. Amilcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, Tom Mboya in Kenya, Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso. What all these leaders had in common was their dedication to clean government. Regime change was the enabler of corrupt regimes. A generation that could have been a barrier against corruption, arguably the biggest obstacle to African development, was lost. But regime change has evolved since the days of rampant assassinations.
Covert electoral interference is now the preferred method. In Africa its bedrock is the system of Election Observers. No African election is considered valid without the approval of the EU and US observers. These are observers who are silent on electoral corruption in their own countries, where voter suppression is prevalent.
Now that the cat is out of the bag on electoral interference, what would level the playing field would be open interference in each other’s elections.
It is the covert part that is suspicious. Russians would observe American elections and Americans would observe Russian elections.
Africans would observe whoever observes ours. Countries could opt out of observers and instead reform their Electoral Commissions to enable them to carry on their democratic duty of conducting elections in a fair manner.
— Wongaletu Vanda, via e-mail