Ballot box beyond Trump

By kayode idowu

 

Indications emerged last week that the official universe of the United States had finally come to terms with the win by former Vice President Joe Biden in the 3rd November presidential election in that country and the inevitability of his taking over power on 20th January, 2021 from President Donald Trump.

Since Biden won the election three weeks earlier, Trump had – unlike what was known of American electoral culture – refused to concede the poll and allow formal transition to Biden White House. He plied conspiracy theories that the election was fraught with fraud and pursued multiple lawsuits across U.S. states to overturn results announced in favour of Biden. As at late last week, he had lost more than three dozens of those suits while many key states had certified Biden’s victory, even after some obliged vote recounts. In effect, the president-elect held comfortably to his 306 electoral votes over Trump’s 232 (270 are needed to win the presidency) and an edge of more than 6million over Trump in popular votes. The electoral college is billed to meet on 14th December to formalise the victory.

Until the Trump era, the United States was the world’s paragon of electoral fidelity and sportsmanship. Losers readily conceded polls on the basis of informal projections of outcomes even without waiting for official certification of results, which normally took weeks after the vote. And those projections were never wrong. It was on the strength of projected outcomes that power transited without restraint from election losers, who typically never delayed in giving concession speeches, to election winners who were graceful in victory. The closest to such experience we’ve had in Nigeria was in 2015 when former President Goodluck Jonathan conceded to President Muhammadu Buhari, who was then emerging as victor at results collation. Much as elections are never perfect anywhere, being sociological projects and not quantum physics, the world typically looked to conventions in the U. S. to benchmark elections in other democracies.

But things are far from being the same with the latest poll. The build-up to the election was characterised by pockets of violence, voter intimidation and scantly masked attempts at vote buying, which signalled a level of desperation that was alien to what was widely known of American electoral culture. Election Day itself witnessed isolated irregularities like vote tampering and ballot box snatching, with President Trump later alleging that dead people ‘voted’ – his way of putting down culturally valid mail-in ballots from voters who preferred not to physically show up at polling precincts. He refused to concede the poll, though without proof of alleged malpractices; and to buttress his groundless rejection of defeat, he held down the customary transition to a new administration and forbade public officials from dealing with the Biden team.

Early last week after Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia certified results in favour of Biden (Wisconsin and Arizona will do same this week), other options for Trump’s pathway to victory appeared sufficiently foreclosed. Amidst his braggadocio about not conceding regardless, the American agency statutorily mandated to so do kickstarted a handover to Biden. The head of General Services Administration (GSA), Emily Murphy, in a letter, signed off on Biden as president-elect and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, as vice president-elect, notifying them that the Trump administration was ready to begin the formal transition. Historically, such move was a perfunctory step known as ‘ascertainment,’ which committed officials of an outgoing administration to coordinating with those of an incoming administration, besides unlocking $6.3million in government funding for transition. Under the present circumstance, however, it had added significance of relieving the gridlock of bad loser syndrome that trailed the November poll. Even though Biden had not waited for transition to be officialised before naming some key officials in his incoming administration, it is only now he can have access to government data and daily intelligence briefings by security institutions.

Murphy, a Trump appointee, had hitherto refused to take this necessary step – a partisan posture by a historically non-partisan agency; but intense pressure was mounted across partisan lines for her to do the needful. In the letter to Biden, she said she came to her decision “independently, based on the law and available facts.” But her move took on deeper hue when Trump, in a tweet, said he was the one who tapped Murphy’s agency to “do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols,” and that he had ordered his own team to do the same. Many people saw this as an indirect concession by Trump; but he insisted  his case against the poll “strongly continues,” adding: “We will keep up the good fight, and I believe we’ll prevail.” In his Thanksgiving Day media parley at the White House last Thursday, he rehashed his allegation of “massive fraud” in the election, which he said made the U. S. look like a third world country. What the outgoing president did not seem to get was that it wasn’t the election per se that made his country look like the third world but his bad loser vibes.

The United States used to be the world’s strongest marshal in upholding electoral democracy standards across the globe, but embroiled as it is in a messy poll, it has been totally indifferent to monkey business with elections in other climes. Even if it wasn’t internally disconcerted, the country lacks moral credibility to play such role at this time, no thanks to the Trump factor. Meanwhile, standards have been on a nosedive in many places, not the least in Africa. Late in October, Tanzania’s President John Magufuli won ‘landslide’ in an election where major social media platforms were blocked on Election Day, with few independent observers allowed and many foreign journalists not given accreditation to cover the poll. Opposition figures who called for mass demonstrations to contest the election results were arrested and charged with terrorism-related offenses.

About the same time in Côte d’Ivoire, President Alassane Ouattara won a third term in power after claiming 94 percent of the vote in an election that was boycotted by the opposition, which insisted that the constitution allowed only two terms in office. Ouattara counter-argued that a new constitution in 2016 gave him legal cover to run for the election. He had earlier this year said he would not stay beyond two terms, but changed his mind last August following sudden death of his handpicked successor, Prime Minister Amadou Coulibaly. No fewer than 30 persons were reported killed in clashes between protesters and security forces from the time Ouattara announced his rethink up to the 31st October poll. In the aftermath of the election, nearly 4,000 Ivorians were reported to have fled post-election violence to neighbouring Liberia. Considering the circumstances of Ouattara’s ascension to power in 2011 after Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede election defeat, the present self-perpetuation in power is utterly ironic.

Also in Uganda, at least 45 people were reported killed in protests that rocked Kampala and other parts of the East African country recently following the arrest of popular music star turned presidential candidate, Bobi Wine, at a campaign rally. Government said Wine was arrested to enforce restrictions necessitated to curb the spread of Covid-19; but opposition politicians and their supporters said the restrictions were an excuse to curtail their campaigning before the January 2021 election in which Wine is a favorite challenger of incumbent President Yoweri Museveni who has been in power for more than 30 years.

So, there are winds raging against the soul of electoral democracy across the world which analysts described as a new wave of autocratisation. As things are presently, the United States is in no shape to do anything about it; and it remains to be seen when it will be back to the role. But whereas there isn’t much to emulate in the country’s latest poll, the in-built pillars of its political system – independent judiciary, indomitable press and unleashable federalism – appear to have caged the Trump aberration. And the lesson for us in Nigeria, as everywhere, is to also build our own system to have such formidable resilience as could isolate and rebuff rouge players. That is what just happened in America.

 

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