{UAH} Pojim/WBK: OBBO: A year in East African politics, and why it is good when - Opinion | Daily Nation
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OBBO: A year in East African politics, and why it is good when - Opinion
From January this year to early 2018 (depending on how Kenya decides the next election) is one big long election season in East Africa — covering the wider region, including Ethiopia.
Elections, you must agree, are done differently on the eastern side of the continent. Consider what happened in Nigeria in March. The opposition's Muhammadu Buhari defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, and the latter just went home without complaining that he was cheated or going to court.
Jonathan did complain though, but about his friends. He said they had all abandoned him within days of his loss and, so to speak, deleted his phone number.
In East Africa, meanwhile, in troubled South Sudan in February the government extended President Salva Kiir's term by two years.
Further north, in Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir won an election boycotted by his rivals with, wait for it, 95 per cent of the vote.
In Burundi, the country has been plunged into turmoil, with President Pierre Nkurunziza insisting on standing for what his critics say is an illegal third term. He did hold a parliamentary election, ahead of the presidential vote, and his party won 77 of 100 seats.
In Uganda, elections are coming up in February 2016 and campaigns for nomination have got off in earnest. As a result, the expected happened: last week President Yoweri Museveni had two of his potential rivals — his former prime minister, Amama Mbabazi, and the perennial thorn in his side, opposition politician Kizza Besigye — arrested.
Fortunately the State has now stepped back and the police has given them permission to campaign freely, but not before Museveni had deposited his nomination fee with his party.
Oh yes, how can we forget the Ethiopians. They had an election at the end of May. Going into the poll, the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had 539 seats in parliament. The opposition had just one. When the vote counting was done, the startling results were announced. The EPRDF had won all the 540 seats. The opposition had zero! They do not take political prisoners in Abyssinia.
And then our brothers and sisters in Rwanda are also tackling the third term problem. They want the constitution amended to allow President Paul Kagame, whose second term is ending in 2017, to stand for a third term, at least.
The matter was taken to the people's representatives to decide whether an amendment should be written and a constitutional referendum held on Kagame's fate. The Rwanda Senate voted "yes" 100 per cent. The Parliament voted 98 per cent. The two per cent, reports said, was not a "no" vote. It was a spoilt one. Probably an MP with a shaky hand made a mistake.
Finally, last week Tanzania's long-ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) held nominations for its presidential candidate in the October elections. The lot fell on Works minister John Pombe Magufuli.
Tanzania is not Nigeria. Magufuli might as well print out the invitation cards to his inauguration this week because, as the Tanzanians say, to become president you do not need to win the presidential election. You need to win the CCM nomination.
But for someone watching East Africa from the vantage point of Nairobi, something unusual happened in the CCM nominations. Unlike, say, an ODM in Kenya, it ended without a fist fight or officials being ejected and chairs broken. So what do all these political and electoral events have in common? For today, we focus on a very different conclusion from the usual one about East Africa being plagued by power-hogging strongmen. We shall return to that juicy tale another day.
I remembered something Calestous Juma, a Kenyan academic at Harvard University, said on his Twitter page some time after an ODM brawl — or was it the wrestling match inside the Nakuru County Assembly? He said people only fight for things they care deeply about. In short, because Kenya is notorious for these political brawls (followed by Uganda in the region), democratic passion runs deeper in Kenya.
Controversial and debatable, but if there is any message in that for the oppositions in Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania, it is that they can do a lot better. However, they have to be hungrier for power and put a lot more of their necks on the line to get it.
The author is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa. Twitter@cobbo3
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