Obama takes on African power structure
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — President Barack Obama confronted the power structures of Africa on Tuesday and called for long-entrenched leaders to step down, using his stature as the first U.S. president with African roots to try to reshape the continent’s politics.
As he wrapped up what may be his final trip to Africa while in office, Mr. Obama took on one of the region’s most enduring obstacles to democratic progress: its history of one-man rule by presidents and potentates who enrich themselves and hang onto power for years, if not decades, in calcified regimes.
“Nobody should be president for life,” Mr. Obama declared in a speech at the African Union, the continent’s umbrella organization. “Your country is better off if you have new blood and new ideas. I’m still a pretty young man, but I know that somebody with new energy and new insights will be good for my country. It will be good for yours, too, in some cases.”
Just 18 months from mandatory retirement under the
Constitution’s two-term limit, Mr. Obama used himself as a model for giving up power. “I actually think I’m a pretty good president,” he said, departing from his prepared text. “I think if I ran, I could win.
“There’s a lot that I’d like to do to keep America moving,” he added. “But the law is the law, and no person is above the law, not even the president.”
The comments reflect a bitter issue in Africa: the attempts by some leaders to hold onto power well after their terms expire. Just this month, Burundi’s president pushed ahead with elections that gave him a third term in office, throwing his nation into upheaval in a move widely regarded as violating the country’s constitution and the peace agreement that ended a devastating civil war there.
It is a theme Mr. Obama struck forcefully during his visit to Ghana in 2009, when he declared: “Africa doesn’t need strongmen. It needs strong institutions.” Since then, the debate over inveterate rulers has continued to reverberate across the continent, with startlingly different outcomes.
The government of Burkina Faso collapsed last fall when protesters surged through the streets, denouncing President Blaise Compaoré’s plans to extend his 27-year rule. In Rwanda, lawmakers voted this month to support a constitutional change allowing President Paul Kagame a third term. And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are concerns that President Joseph Kabila will try to circumvent the two-term limit outlined in the constitution by delaying the 2016 presidential elections.
Indeed, about half of the more than 50 countries in the African Union have presidents, prime ministers or monarchs who have been in power longer than Mr. Obama, some of them for decades. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979. Robert Mugabe has been in power in Zimbabwe since 1980. Paul Biya has governed Cameroon since 1982. Yoweri Museveni has governed Uganda since 1986. Omar Hassan al-Bashir has governed Sudan since 1989.
On the other hand, there have been transformative moments lately. In Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, Africans celebrated in the spring when the party that had governed since the end of military rule peacefully stepped down after losing elections, a successful transfer of power in one of the world’s largest democracies.
Unable to travel to Nigeria because of security concerns, Mr. Obama decided to mark that transition by hosting the new Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, in the Oval Office last week before departing for his trip here.
None of the long-ruling leaders whom Mr. Obama seemed to have in mind were on hand to hear his speech in person Tuesday, but representatives of governments from around Africa attended, and it was broadcast live across the continent. The audience interrupted Mr. Obama with applause nearly 75 times, but it cheered and whooped the most enthusiastically when he talked about leaders who overstay their welcome.
“When a leader tries to change the rules in the middle of the game just to stay in office, it risks instability and strife, as we’ve seen in Burundi,” Mr. Obama said. “And this is often just a first step down a perilous path. And sometimes you’ll hear leaders say, ‘Well, I’m the only person who can hold the nation together.’ If that’s true, then that leader has failed to truly build their nation.”
The crowd cheered even louder when he said he did not understand why leaders do not step down, “especially when they’ve got a lot of money,” again going beyond his prepared text in a knowing reference to African officials who have accumulated great fortunes while in office, often through corruption.
Mr. Obama’s tone Tuesday was more forceful than he used in either Kenya or Ethiopia earlier on the trip. In Kenya, where the deputy president faces charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court and the president faced them as well until December, Mr. Obama preferred to focus on what he saw as movement in the right direction, particularly a 5-year-old constitution meant to resolve disputes that arose out of the contested 2007 elections, which erupted into violence.
As for Ethiopia, where the ruling party and its allies just won 100 percent of the seats in parliament, and where journalists have repeatedly been imprisoned for criticizing the government, Mr. Obama gently urged greater progress while expressing understanding of the country’s difficult history. Aides said that in private, Ethiopia’s leaders were unusually candid in acknowledging flaws in their system and seemed committed to change.