Democracy-in-Nigeria: A Vote for Proportional Representation
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Franklin Otorofani, Esquire
03.22.08
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Work-in-Progress
I’m no presidential historian and I don’t profess to be one. But I do know that
former United States President, Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) it was, who
described democracy as the “---government of the people, by the people, for the
people,” at the dedication ceremony of the military cemetery in Gettysburg, PA,
during the American Civil War.
That was indeed, a very audacious, gratuitous, and patronizing definition of
democracy in Lincoln’s time, of all times! However, in dressing up democracy in
such beautiful flowing robe, the 16th President of the United States was being
idealistic rather than realistic in his description of democracy, because in his
days democracy was far from answering the description that he generously
ascribed to it, and has never really lived up to its high billing two centuries
afterwards, even in the present time.
However, the very fact that President Lincoln who, on January 1, 1863, issued
the Emancipation Proclamation to free black slaves in the Confederacy, was
prepared to go to war to free black slaves stuck in the South, was a poignant
indication that the man had seen a future for an all-inclusive democracy—a
vision that was at odds with the realities of his time, because it follows that
the emancipation of blacks would be a stepping stone to their full participation
in the democratic processes, as it indeed, happened a century later after he
suffered death in the hands of an assassin, John Wilkes Booth, on April 14,
1865—(Blacks were granted voting rights in 1965).
While it is true that democracy has made substantial progress in the United
States in terms of enfranchisement of certain demographics, the Lincolnian model
remains an ideal that has yet to be realized and might not be fully realized in
the foreseeable future given the several hurdles hurled in its path by vested
interests. Democracy can thus be seen as a work-in-progress and not a finished
product. And contrary to Lincoln’s postulation, democracy can be, but it has so
far, not been a ‘government of the people by the people and for the people’—at
least not with over a hundred thousand lobbyists swarming Washington, DC,
ferociously pushing the interests of Corporate America and foreign governments
behind the people—framing the issues for the debates with their dollar power,
and in the end short-changing the people, while their own so-called
representatives dine and wine with the ubiquitous lobbyists on Capitol Hill.
That democracy is not necessarily a government ‘for’ the people is evident, for
instance, in the ability of the tobacco, banking/credit card, oil,
telecommunication, and auto industries in the United States, to frustrate every
single legislative proposal in Congress aimed at curbing their excesses against
American consumers and the inability of Congress to take them on decisively for
fear of reprisals from these companies during their re-election.
For decades, the tobacco industry was getting minors hooked on to cigarette
smoking through aggressive ads specifically targeted at teenagers while at the
same time vehemently denying that cigarette smoking was harmful at all. The idea
was to “catch ‘em young” and make youngsters ‘smokers for life.’ Breeding the
next generation of life smokers would be good business for the tobacco industry.
It didn’t matter if those life smokers end up with cancer, asthma, health
diseases or even stroke. They ridiculed the results of every tobacco related
health studies that tied tobacco smoking to a variety of heart diseases and
commissioned their own studies to repudiate such findings until the scientific
evidence was so overwhelming that it could no longer be validly challenged—very
much like that of global warming that oil industry denied for so long.
Congress was helpless while the tobacco companies were busy playing these morbid
games at the expense of the people supposedly represented by Congress. They
successfully blocked every attempt by Congress to legislate against the dangers
cigarette smoking until the frustrated States took matters into their hands and
began to slam lawsuits against the tobacco industry, resulting for instance, in
the multi-billion dollar award for the States to offset some of the huge health
bills incurred from cigarette related diseases in the States. Their so-called
‘representatives’ sheepishly sold out. But for the courts the tobacco industry
would have gotten away with ‘murder’ literarily.
One could say the courts are part of the government. Yes, but they are not
‘Representatives’ of the people. The Legislature by whatever named
called—Parliament, Congress, Duma, Knesset, National Assembly, ex-cetera,
ex-cetera, and not the courts, is the true representative of the people. And to
the extent that Congress is forced by lobbyists to uphold the wish-lists of
special interests that are diametrically opposed to the interests of the people,
the characterization of democracy as, ‘a government for the people,’ is not only
fallacious but presumptuous. At best such characterization is superficially or
theoretical. It has little or no bearing to the practical realities on the
ground.
Similarly the lobbyists were at work for the oil industry preventing the
government from legislating on the development of alternative energy sources
other than oil. Banks and Credit Card companies have, through unscrupulous
means, hooked Americans up with over a trillion dollar credit cards debts that
will outlive them and the lobbyists have ensured that Congress does nothing
against the credit card companies. The Credit Card companies in the United
States—Mastercard, Visa, Discover, etc, have managed to stick 115 million
Americans with a whopping $1.5 trillion credit card debts—most of which for
life.—(Frontline, PBS.Org).
The same is true of the auto industry with regard to fuel efficiency and
emission standards where the government has shown timidity in tackling these
issues—no thanks to corporate lobbyists. As a matter of fact, every major
industry in the United States has an army of lobbyists garrisoned in Washington,
DC whose combined forces and ‘fire power’ easily overwhelm the United States
Congress and the White House, leaving the people at their mercy—helpless and
hopeless on issue after issue; whether it is healthcare, energy, media,
mortgages, credit cards, labor; you name it!
It is not a government ‘by’ the people but a government by nominal
representatives of the people who end up representing themselves and their
corporate friends. Each time I hear politicians in the United States arguing
that they will ‘vote their conscience’ in any given issue regardless of the
position of their constituents (as for instance with the current issues of Super
Delegates in the Democratic Party presidential candidate nomination), it turns
Lincoln’s postulation on its head, literarily. And what is more: Lincoln knew
too well that the term “people” in his definition did not include blacks and
women in his time because they were not considered “people” enough to be part of
the democratic process.
We shall address these issues later in this article.
Suffice it to state, however, that democracy can be an ugly or a beautiful game
depending on the players, venue, temperament, and attitudinal orientation of the
both players and spectators of the game. If the game is played in any country in
Europe and the Americas, particularly in a country called Britain, France,
Germany, or Canada, and to some extent, the United States, its beauty glows and
radiates out of the continent like the rays of the sun. But if the game is
played in Africa, Asia, the Middle-East, or Latin America, particularly in a
country called Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, Iraq,
Venezuela, Haiti, or Mexico, democracy shows its ugliest looks that even a toad
could be crowned a beauty queen in a beauty contest democracy!
Like every other game democracy has its rules of engagement which the players
are expected to abide by failing which a professional and unbiased umpire doles
out appropriate punishment to an offending party. Where the rules of engagement
are observed by both the players and the umpire, democracy can indeed be the
most beautiful game around. On the flip side, however, democracy can turn really
ugly and nasty where the rules of engagement are flouted with impunity by either
or both parties, right in the face of the umpire who looks the other way
pretending all is well with the game.
That explains, in a nutshell, why democracy is celebrated in the West but
dreaded in the Middle-East, Africa, and generally in third world countries,
where democracy has been turned into theaters of warfare particularly during
elections and in parliamentary debates. To be sure, the ugliness of democracy
transcends the boundaries of third world countries especially in parliamentary
proceedings. Parliamentary proceedings in first, second, and third world
countries—from India to Australia—Nigeria to Italy—and South Africa to South
Korea, have been reduced to boxing and wrestling tournaments in which state
matters are settled with a show of ‘Smack Down!’ and ‘Rumble in the Jungle!’
where only the ‘Rocks,’ ‘Tysons,’ or Mohammed Alis, of this world stands a
chance of having a say in the debates. The shameful and uncivilized conduct of
stone-age men and women, who are allowed to make laws for decent members of
society in 21st century parliaments, is evidently serious blight on democracy.
Perhaps that is part of the attraction of democracy—the passion with which
issues are debated by our selfless and dedicated lawmakers that more often than
not verges on violence, testifies to the capacity of democracy to entertain our
sadistic and morbid appetites by admitting bouts of pugilism and wrestling into
legislative deliberations. It’s a testament to the rather slow progress of
civilization from the point of view of our social instincts that our parliaments
look more like Madison Square Garden in New York City and Caesars Place in Las
Vegas; hosts to boxing and wrestling tournaments than the hallowed citadels of
legislative deliberations in the 21st Century.
However, while that might hold some attraction to boxing and wrestling fans in a
given polity including Nigeria, the major attraction of democracy lies not in
its boxing and wrestling bouts in the Halls of Parliament, but in the direct
involvement of the people in the choice of their leaders. ‘Voting’ which is the
process of election is at the heart of democracy as the most liberal,
pre-eminent, and most celebrated system of government. This is the main
characteristic that distinguishes democracy from other forms of government, such
as monarchy, theocracy, and military rule—to name but a few. Thus, the whole
complicated system of election is designed not only to weed out undesirable
elements who might otherwise find their ways into leadership positions, but more
importantly, to enable ordinary people the opportunity to recruit their leaders
through the ballot box—not just the rich and powerful and the literate, as it
once was.
The history of democracy shows that only the propertied class and the very
powerful in society enjoyed the rights and privileges of voting and being voted
for in elections, and women in particular, were totally excluded from the
democratic processes and therefore denied political leadership positions. For
example, in the past only white men were allowed to vote even in the United
States and Britain, and that did not even include black men in the case of
United States. It was not until August 06, 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson
signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into Law that blacks were granted full rights
to vote and be voted for in the United States.
“The contemporary significance of the Voting Rights Act is that it reminds us
that democracy is an unfinished experiment.”
---Clayborne CARSON, Author and editor of tthe King Papers Project, Stanford
University
But even before blacks, women were in general, denied voting rights in the
United States. It took the 19th Amendment of the Constitution of the United
States ratified in 1920 under President Woodrow Wilson, to give women full and
unfettered voting rights, nationally. Prior that amendment it was matter for the
states to determine and only a few states were prepared to take the risk.
The States-ratified article of the 19th Amendment states as follows:
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
The 1965 Voting Rights Act coupled with the 19th Amendment of the US
Constitution in 1920, effectively introduced Universal Suffrage in the United
States in the teeth of opposition by racial bigots and sexists alike—a feat that
was not achieved in the UK until 1928 when Parliament passed a law granting
equal voting rights to women as had men.
But universal suffrage is far from universal as huge segments of the population
are still denied the rights to vote and be voted for e.g., prisoners and minors
in virtually all democratic countries with the exception of countries like
Island, Canada, some states (Vermont and Maine) in the United States, South
Africa, Australia, and a few others that granted their prison population limited
franchise of the right to vote. The exclusion of ex-convicts and the very high
US prison population (2.3million last year according to study by the Pew
Center), which is disproportionately minority African/American, is being viewed
within the black community as a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise the blacks
through the back door. Below is an excerpt of the study sourced from the
Brisbanetimes.com.au
“While one in 106 adult white men are incarcerated, one in 36 Hispanics and one
in 15 African-Americans are behind bars, according to Pew's examination of
Justice Department data from 2006. Younger black men fare even worse, with one
in nine African-Americans ages 20 to 34 held in cells.”
All that it takes to disenfranchise a black man in the United States is to
arrest and throw him in jail and he loses everything—can’t get a job after jail
and can’t vote either! It’s a double whammy that socially destroys the lives of
African/Americans and other minority groups especially the Hispanics who bear
the brunt of incarceration in the US, which by the way, is the highest in the
world. The huge black prison population constitutes a significant reduction of
the voting power of African/Americans in relation to other racial or ethnic
groups, in addition to the huge economic loss of the black community.
But that’s not all. Universal Suffrage could be undermined in several other ways
to deny a people their right to vote for the candidates of their choices or
otherwise reduce the power of their votes. This could be done in a variety of
ways including gerrymandering as was done for instance in the state of Texas by
the Republican controlled Texas Legislature, allegedly under the direction and
influence of former Republican Senate Whip, Senator Tom Delay, who was disgraced
out of office in the heat of the scandal involving Washington, DC super
lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.
It could be done by deliberate undersupply of voting materials to certain
demographics in order to reduce their voting power in favor of opposing
candidates as it’s often alleged in Nigeria, with a great deal of validity, by
opposition parties. Or it could be done through the voting mechanism itself as
witnessed in Forida’s ‘hanging chards’ debacle during the 2000 US Presidential
election, which disenfranchised African/Americans in several counties in Florida
with huge African/American population.
In the US state of Ohio, for instance, people were being asked to present their
IDs before being allowed to cast their votes in the last election and those who
could not were allegedly turned back. The Republican-controlled legislature
rammed through a law requiring voter identification before being allowed to
vote. Incidentally, these voters happen to be predominantly minorities with no
IDs who traditionally support the Democratic Party and its candidates. In
Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is reported to be mulling a legislation
presently that would disenfranchise Commonwealth citizens in Britain from voting
in British elections. Indeed, there is no limit to the ways in which certain
demographics could be disenfranchised or otherwise have their voting power
drastically reduced, where it exists.
Conversely, there are efforts to strengthen the mechanism for the exercise of
voting rights of otherwise disadvantaged peoples as witnessed in President Bush
signing of the Voters Rights Protection Act of 2005, passed by Congress in the
aftermath of the Florida episode. However, legislation is one thing and the
actual implementation of the legislation is quite another because the law is not
self-executory in these instances. It all depends on the prevailing attitudes of
electoral officials charged with the responsibility of implementing the laws
during elections as well as the voters and politicians themselves.
That said democracy is a rule of the majority—indeed the tyranny of the majority
over the minority. To that extent therefore, democracy cannot be said be for all
people in a given polity. It is for the majority because it is a system of
majority rule. This is one of the greatest drawbacks of democracy. The worth of
an individual vote is determined only in association with other individual votes
of similar preference or choice in relation to other individual votes of
different preferences or choices. Therefore, an individual vote has only a
latent power unless and until it’s yoked with other individual votes of the same
preference or choice. Thus, while a single vote might not determine the choice
of leadership in any particular election, an agglomeration of individual votes
cast in favor of one or more candidates, is an indication of voter preference
for the proposed leadership embodied in the candidacy of the individual (s)
concerned; all other conditions fulfilled— e.g., geographical spread and the
threshold of majority votes required by law to win an election.
Viewed at that perspective, therefore, there is such a thing as ‘wasted votes’
votes in a democracy. All votes cast in favor of a losing candidate are for all
practical purposes, wasted votes. Because of the system of winner-takes-all the
votes cast in favor of losing candidates automatically become as it were ‘waste
products’ of the electoral system, which like sewage, are flushed out of the
stream of leadership. That is why electoral losses are just as painful for the
losing candidates as they are for the voters themselves who voted for such
candidates at the polls. A voter who has invested so much time and energy in a
particular candidate is bound to feel a personal sense of loss if the candidate
is defeated in the end and more so if the loss is perceived to have sprung from
unfair practices by the opposing side. It is not simply a loss of his/her
investment in the candidate but also a loss of expectation in the victory of the
candidate.
In developed democracies such acute sense of loss is taken as part of the beauty
of democracy and the losers get on with their lives. This attitude springs
mainly from the perception that the loss was suffered in a free and fair
election. In less developed democracies however, such losses have resulted in
unbelievable violence usually on the part of the losing candidates and their
supporters. More often than not such violence stems from the
unwillingness on the part of the losers to come to terms with realities on the
ground. And the situation is not helped where there is a perception (contrived
or real) of electoral frauds of whatever description by the losing candidates
and their supporters. The violence that greeted the results of the 2007 general
elections in Nigeria and the 2008 general elections in Kenya demonstrates how
far the voters are prepared to go to express their deep sense of losses in a
democracy.
Majority Rule—Winner-Takes-All! But Every Vote Has Equal Value!!
While losing candidates and their supporters are quick to blame their losses on
electoral malpractices allegedly perpetrated by the winning candidates and their
supporters, the fact remains that there is an inherent, inbuilt, waste value in
the electoral process itself. Democracy is akin to a sport and only the ultimate
winners are rewarded with leadership positions regardless of the efforts and
time put in by the losers. And this is true whether elections are free or
fair—they will always with exception—produce winners and losers in the end. In
reality therefore, the empowerment of the citizenry through universal suffrage
only has a potential (not necessarily actual) value of enabling the individual
to determine the outcome of political leadership contest. Political empowerment
is thus relative and not absolute concept.
Eliminating the waste value of political contest from the electoral system is
the crux of this presentation. This author believes that in a democracy every
votes counts. But democracy must go beyond counting every vote. Every vote must
have a value translates to leadership choice and not wasted as minority vote.
Universal suffrage has no practical meaning in a situation where the votes cast
in favor of losing candidates become the ‘waste products’ of the electoral
system that are eventually flushed out of the leadership stream like sewage.
This belief is based on the fact that a vote cast for a so-called ‘winning’
candidate is no more important than a vote cast for a so-called ‘losing’
candidate because every vote has equal value in a democracy. Therefore, the
value of a vote cast for a losing candidate must be translated into leadership
choice just as a vote cast for a wining candidate.
There have been cases as with the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in the
United States where the wasted votes were even more than the winning votes.
Former Vice-President Al-Gore and Presidential Candidate of the Democratic Party
in 2000 election scored more popular votes than then Governor George Bush who
was the Presidential candidate of the Republican Party. Yet the majority votes
became waste products of the electoral system when George Bush was made to win
through the Electoral College which decision superseded the will of the majority
as expressed in the popular votes.
In 2004 President Bush defeated John Kerry with less than 5000 votes in the
state of Florida and thus won the Florida delegates to the Electoral College on
the basis of winner-takes-all. That is the very antithesis of the concept of
empowerment and hence democracy itself. Any system of government that gives
people the power to elect their leaders and proceeds to render such power
meaningless at the end of the day has got to be critically re-examined. It is
atrociously wasteful and callously retrogressive. Democracy should not and need
not be the rule of the majority but the rule of the people through the TOTALITY
of their votes and not through MAJORITY of their votes. Democracy must shed its
defining totem of MAJORITY RULE because a country belongs to all of its citizens
and not to the majority of its citizens, therefore, its government put in place
through the democratic system can be no less so.
The bitterness and sometimes violence associated with democracy and its
electoral systems are inevitable by-products of winners-take-all variant of the
democratic system. Democracy has got a black eye because of the winners-take-all
syndrome that it has inflicted upon itself needlessly, precisely because it
makes some winners and others losers where all should be winners. Why should a
man or woman who has taken his or her time to go to the polls to cast his or her
vote for the candidate of his or her choice be made to be a loser at the end of
the day for performing his or her or civic duty? Why should his or her vote be
counted and yet not count at the end of the day even if such a vote when
aggregated with other form a third, quarter, one half or even more than one half
of the total votes cast at the polls? Why must such votes go to waste and not
count? Why must such a large portion of the electorate not be represented on the
basis of their votes for the particular candidates of their choice?
These questions should prick the conscience of all democrats. Democracy is long
overdue for massive overhaul and it’s up to the developing countries like
Nigeria wracked by electoral violence to lead the way forward. It has remained
static and unreformed for centuries since its controversial debut in the Grecian
state of Athens centuries ago. The status quo is unacceptable and a veritable
recipe for political violence and instability.
That President Kibaki and opposition leader Odinga have worked out a power
sharing agreement based on their electoral performances is a direct repudiation
of the winner-takes-all syndrome of democracy and recognition of the merit of
proportional representation advocated in this presentation. That President Musa
Yar’Adua of Nigeria was forced to craft a Government of National Unity (GNU) to
accommodate losing members of the opposition parties on the basis of their
electoral performances, is direct repudiation of winner-takes all feature of
democracy and recognition of the superiority of proportional representation, not
just at parliamentary level but at the executive level as well.
If democracy is a representative government it behooves the guardians of
democracy to devise a system of proportional representation in all democracies
where EVERY VOTE COUNTS and not just the majority votes. In the current US
Presidential Primaries the Democratic Party Primaries best approximates the
system of proportional representation in the allocation of pledged delegates
based on the percentage of votes won by the candidates in the primaries. That
way, a candidate’s campaign efforts and his supporters are rewarded pledged
delegates proportionally. That eliminates the perennial bitterness and acrimony
that attend every election with its attendant instability for the polity.
A system of proportional representation is truly reflective of the will of the
voters. Therefore, it rewards candidates and their supporters proportionally in
accordance with their individual performance in the best tradition of democracy
rather than rewarding some and punishing others for casting their votes for the
‘wrong’ candidate. There should be no question of a ‘wrong’ candidate in an
election because is nothing like a wrong candidate or a wrong choice in an
election. In a democracy voters are entitled to the candidates of their choice
and their votes must therefore count in favor of the candidates of their choice
regardless of the candidates failings in the judgment of others. And the only
way to make their votes count is through their representation in leadership at
both legislative and executive branches of government. Granting minority voters
representation in parliament and turning around to deny them representation in
the executive branch, amounts to gross injustice in any democracy.
In practical terms, that means that a new government must be constituted at both
the executive and legislative levels through proportional representation on the
basis of electoral performances of all participating candidates and/or political
parties in a given election. That would be the anti-dote to rigging, post
election violence, and demonstrations in which all candidates or nearly all
candidates and their supporters will be winners rather than losers. This of
course, will depend to greater or lesser extents depending on margins of their
individual electoral performances in relation to one another.
To bring it home, such a system as herein advocated would have rewarded
Muhammadu Buhari, Abubakar, and even ex-Governor Kalu of the PPA, and their
supporters with ministerial positions, membership of Boards of government owned
Corporations, in addition to diplomatic postings, and many other others. These
positions would be thrown open to all the parties that cross certain clearly
defined thresholds in their electoral performances. The only positions that
would not be affected would the presidency itself and this is because the
president and his vice have a joint ticket that cannot be alienated or ceded to
another party, although given the Supreme Court Judgment in Atiku Vs Federal
Government, even the Vice-Presidency can in law, be ceded to another party with
high enough electoral performance to deserve it. In this way there would be no
ruling party as such, but ruling coalitions of parties.
The net effect of this is government that is OWNED by all the victorious parties
and their supporters and not a ‘PDP’ ‘ANPP’ or ‘AC’ government, but a
multiparty-coalition-government. The degree of participation of each individual
party in the coalition is determined by its percentage win of the popular votes
at the election. A mathematical formula can easily be worked out and embedded in
our electoral laws and the constitution.
If follows, therefore that institutions of government including INEC, would have
members of the ruling coalition as functionaries not necessarily as party
representatives but as government officials doing the business of government as
opposed to party business. This is because government’s business is the people’s
business, and it’s different from party business.
As the Electoral Reform Panel set up by President Yar’Adua in Nigeria gets down
to work to fashion out a more enduring electoral system, it should cast its net
far and wide beyond merely improving on the mechanics of the electoral system.
The entire democracy project should be overhauled to make room for proportional
representation in the legislative and executive branches of government for all
participating political parties on the basis of their respective electoral
performances on an agreed upon mathematical or statistical formula.
This will not doubt require a constitutional amendment to remove the
winner-takes-all provisions from the present constitution. Thank goodness, the
National Assembly too is considering amendment of the constitution. This
recommendation should be the front and the center of such amendment because as
Carson states: “…democracy is an unfinished experiment.”
It is time to perfect this experiment and Proportional Representation is the way
to go!
Franklin Otorofani, Esquire (USA)
Contact: Mudiagaone@yahoo.com
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