By Owei Lakemfa
We were gathered. Some intellectuals, social activists, journalists, serving and retired diplomats. The primary issue was democracy. Is it universal and is there just a single, or multiple roads to democracy? Is the British democracy which calls itself the Mother of Parliaments, superior to the American version; is the latter better than the Australian or the Chinese? Is Russian democracy superior to the Ukrainian?
A product of the consummate Cuban
diplomatic tradition which puts people at the centre, Pulido reminded us that
Africa had seven days earlier, lost one of its famous liberation fighters and
internationalists, Chris ‘Che’ Matlhako of the African National Congress, ANC,
and five days later, the United States, US, had on April 25, lost one of
its most famous singers and a giant of the Civil Rights Movement, Harry
Belafonte. She asked us to honour the duo, not with a minute silence as is
traditional, but with music that represents their vocal nature in the cause of
the liberation humanity.
She then played the famous song ‘Malaika’ (My
Angel) a duet by Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, also known as Mama Africa. We
rocked to the Swahili hit song which was composed in 1945 by Tanzanian
musician, Adam Salim. Makeba had been forced into exile and made stateless by
the Apartheid regime. She had stayed in the US and during her first visit to
Africa in 1962 had learnt the song in Kenya, sang it at a concert in 1969 and
made a duet with Belafonte who had become her mentor. They were two of the
sweetest voices on both continents.
The Cuban elections into the National Assembly
of Peoples’ Power had seen the election of 472 Members of Parliament by 68.56
per cent of voters. Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez was re-elected President,
Salvador Valdés Mesa, Vice President and Esteban Lazo, as Speaker.
Leaders were also elected for the Council of State. The prime minister was also
ratified and the Council of Ministers appointed. The ambassador explained that
the system of elections in Cuba is that the populace vote directly for
parliament which then votes in the executive leadership. So democracy in Cuba
is a combination of direct and indirect elections. What is most
interesting for me is that unlike Nigeria where the senator is cumulatively
paid some N14 million monthly and the honourable member of the House of
Representatives is paid cumulatively N10 million monthly, their counterparts in
Cuba are not paid a dime; neither salaries nor allowances.
The Cuban parliamentarian does his
normal job after which he attends parliament to make laws. There are those who
claim Cuba is not a democracy. This is debatable. I see democracy as a
system of government by popular representation based on the vote of the
electorate in which the will of the people prevails. A famous definition which
is more descriptive, is by former American President Abraham Lincoln who
said: “Democracy is the government of the people by the people for the people.”
America thinks itself perhaps the greatest
democracy in the world. However, American democracy did not include the Black
people until 1964 when the Civil Rights Movement and international campaigns
made it too embarrassing. Although it is assumed that America is a democracy,
not a few are uncomfortable with its kind of democracy in which majority
vote is not what counts, but some electoral college. In its 2016 elections,
Hillary Clinton with 65,845,063 votes or 48.2 per cent of the total vote, lost
to Donald Trump with 62,980,160 votes or 46.1 per cent of the votes. Clinton
with about three million more votes than Trump, lost!
In the follow-up elections, the sitting
American President Trump tried to use arms to get himself re-elected. Until
today, Trump has not been brought to book, and may well contest the next
elections. Another point on American democracy is that while majority
Americans are against gun proliferation, the will of the people has not
prevailed. A simple reason might be that America is a country in which you need
to be a millionaire to contest for congress; it is the wish of the rich that
prevails. So, to paraphrase Lincoln, American democracy is the government of
the rich, by the rich, for the rich. Democracy in Britain can even be more
ridiculous than the convoluted American one. It runs a ‘constitutional
monarchy’. The government is called ‘His Majesty’s Government.’
There, you have a mixture of the
parliament and monarchy. When Prime Minister David Cameron lost direction
and his Brexit compass malfunctioned, he became a liability and had to go. One
of his successors, Boris Johnson was known to be an unreliable politician who
had been sanctioned as a journalist for manufacturing an interview that
never took place. His ‘alternative facts’ caught up with him and
Britons were fed up with him; he had to resign. The best option would
have been for the people to decide through free elections who should govern
them, but their system of democracy does not allow such freedom until the
five –year general election circle is completed or cut short by the governing
party. Until then, they must be governed by whoever the parliamentary caucus of
the ruling party throws up.
The UK brand of democracy is the Westminster
type in which the party or a coalition with the highest number of seats,
appoints its leader as prime minister. Even if the overwhelming majority of the
populace do not want an incumbent prime minister, but he can
win his single constituency seat and please his fellow parliamentarians,
he can stay in power indefinitely. There are no term limits in British
democracy; Prime Minister Robert Walpole spent about 21 years in office
and William Pit, about 19 years.
The shortest-lived is Liz Truss who spent 49
days having been appointed on September 6, 2022 and thrown in the towel on
October 25, 2022. A major drawback of British democracy is that the Prime
Minster needs only to be a parliamentarian voted for by one of its 650
constituencies. So he does not need to be known or voted for by the rest of the
country.
A major issue about democracy is that the
world tends to look more at its form and not its content. Democracy
should be a system that delivers on the basic needs of the people
and not rhetoric and propaganda. Democracy should not be like
fashion in which ‘my democracy is finer than yours’.
*Lakemfa is a commentator on public issues
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