ONDO ELECTION, OUR DEMOCRACY: Lessons for Nigeria from the United States poll, by Mike Igini, ex-Resident Electoral Commissioner By Dapo Akinrefon Mike Igini, until recently the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, for Cross River and Edo States respectively, monitored the November 8 presidential election in the United States of America. In this interview, Igini points out the lessons for Nigerians in the poll.
You have just returned from the US to monitor the election. The outcome came as a shock to the whole world. Are you surprised?
Well, the outcome appears to have gone against expectation in many circles as well as the generally held view about the candidates that should have won the election. On my part, having been involved in the task of conducting election as an umpire like many others across the world who went to observe the election, our focus, interest and take away was the process, whether it was transparent, credible and if it delivered a free and fair outcome, and not necessarily about who should have won.
It is part of the expected professionalism, to always keep the eyes on the process and leave the matter of choice and outcomes entirely in the hands of voters.
In all situations, focus should be the need to ensure procedural certainty that all stakeholders have confidence in, to deliver substantive uncertainty of outcome, which is one of the key characteristics of democratic elections.
Mike Igini Is the world about to witness a decline of the US democracy given the disposition and idiosyncrasies of the president-elect towards immigrants and gender insensitivity, yet, he won the election? There are concerns by various racial groups within America and even beyond, particularly the minority groups, over the Trump presidency, given his rhetorics and the kind of values he espoused all through his campaigns.
However, whatever one feels about the worldviews of the American president-elect, it must be remembered that the American people elected him following their accepted processes of securing over the mandatory 270 delegates’ electoral college votes of the 538 obtainable and not necessarily the popular votes which Hillary Clinton secured. The latter condition is the established outcome requirement which all election participants, candidates as well as voters subscribed to, prior to the election.
The American people understand that, within the next four years, they must allow the choice that the electoral college has delivered through the ballot, to play out in terms of policies, and where they find things they cannot accommodate, there are institutional processes, checks and balance to even fire elected officials or for expressing displeasure.
I feel the world should respect this fact and adopt the attitude of wait and see, and, indeed, observe how the reality of governace plays out with the rhetorics of campaign promises.This expectation should also be the standard for other democracies; no democracy is flawless, it is often work in progress, but the ultimate goal of human development must never be forgotten, elected office holders only help countries to achieve the goal of development by the quality of their policy choices. Sometimes they advance the goal of collective development, sometimes they don’t, but there will always be opportunities for other choices by the next election, as long as voters are the ultimate deciders.
What do you make of what appears to be a global citizens’ anger towards their governments and the rise of populism and its dangers to the global community? The growing global dissatisfaction and anger by citizens is an indication that political leaderships around the world have become complacent in the set modes of governance, whereas the challenges facing the people have evolved. Unlike previously, where it takes days and weeks even within a country for issues of collective interest or survival amongst people or even events to get to people and to different parts of the world, currently, people have real-time awareness and assessments of issues or events of common interest.
Thus, they are able to organise and mobilize for action towards the achievement of that goal. So, as new actors offer new variants, such as theocratic governance, extreme or marginal nationalism, like the Trump phenomenon that has racial profiling and the economic narrative of job creation for Americans, as well as the promise of guaranteed “stomach infastructure” in a manner of speaking, many Americans were tempted to say: why not? This may be why they moved against issues of morality and the language of inclusive political correctness, which is the Hillary Clinton message of globalization. Do you think Donald Trump can deliver on the promises that galvanised the electorate for his victory? It is prepostrous and indeed premature to make any statement on that for now.
But going back to the history of populism and the Trump phenomenon on his promises, such as deportation of millions of illegal immigrants, building walls that Mexico would pay for, it may be just like Cepras of Greece who swept electoral victory by over-promising only to confront reality afterwards. Characteristically, there are certain common features about populists which are a tendency to over-promise in the face of limited resources and lack of competences that may lead to adoption of extreme measures that may eventually impact negatively on institutional integrity.
While admittedly some countries have provided reasonable levels of satisfactory responsiveness to the collective aspirations of their country folks, using the established two models l earlier told you, others have not even begun to address even the most minuscule basic needs of their people. In all, we should bear in mind that it is impossible to please everyone even where great efforts have been expended to meet the collective aspirations.
It is in recognition of the need to find models that work most of the time, to meet such collective needs and aspirations that several efforts have been made to define development and its principal attributes, as well as the pre-conditions which enable or sustain it. But clearly not only do more efforts need to be expended in these initiatives, more importantly, leaders need to listen to the people and identify their real needs, think creatively about how to apply such endevours to provide a better, more satisfying society for the people.
What do you mean by the statement that the United States electoral system is built on trust? That is what it is and has been for decades now, in that, the entire electoral system, as complex as it appears, is built on trust, under a regime of strict adherence to the rule of law and not the rule of men who are above the law.
The fear of huge consequences, we are told, is the reason people behave according to the law of the land, there is no police presence in any polling unit, unlike in our country where almost all security agencies are mobilized to polling units or collation centers as if we are going to war. In some places, in order to vote, neighbours could identify one another by way of accreditation.
In Maryland for instance, you do not need any form of identity, provided your name is on the register of voters. This is what l mean by an electoral system built on trust that everyone would do the right thing.
Everyone who is entitled to vote, would simply go to the polling station from either his home or her place of work, since there is no public holiday for election, they go to the polling station and cast just one ballot for a candidate, no snatching of ballot papers, result sheets or multiple thumb-printing.This is the beauty of a society governed strictly by the rule of law. The system is all about the underpinning motivations that inform the American federal system, in which the whole of the system entrusts each part to do its bit, based on enlightened interests and which leads to each part contributing to the enlightened interest of the whole.
The Americans trust that every electoral board in each county and state, irrespective of whether its governed by the Republican or the Democratic Party, will meet a high degree of election integrity by recording the votes as given by the electorate and therefore the outcome for the whole system relies on these summated individual electoral integrity.
But is that what we have here with state controlled electoral bodies where every LGA election conducted by them is won by the party controlling the state 100%, except elections conducted by INEC, where you see the multi-party system of our democracy being reflected? Even though there are few cases in the United States, where people have tried to ‘game the system’ to win at all costs, like the reported attempts at gerrymandering and Identity accreditation laws in some states struck down by the courts, the general norm, practice and preponderating tendency are that most jurisdictions can be trusted to follow a relatively high standard of election integrity.
Moreover where complaints are raised, it is well followed–up, documented at different levels and remedial steps taken immediately, either through administrative processes or judicial intervention and also documented. It is not perfect, but from the county level upwards during a general election, you can almost sense a whole machinery working, primed to produce a result that Americans would accept and they have relied on this for decades. They understand that their survival as a country and their collective development relies on it, so they do not indulge any politician who tries to undermine it for his interest.
Can the prompt and timely judicial approach to election matters in the United States be compared to our system, like the recent Ondo election matter which was resolved just two days to election? As a people, we should learn to emulate good practices that have helped to strengthen democracy in other parts of the world.
The judiciary is the backbone of the strong tradition of the American democracy. Hardly would any electoral matter get to court that is not resolved immediately, particularly when election dates have been fixed and are considered sacrosanct. In the just concluded US general election, hundreds of pre-election matters bordering on procedures, mode of identity, voters register, that were subject of either administrative procedure or court adjudication, were all resolved before the election, including electoral disputes that arose even on election day, as we saw in Maryland and Nevada where agents of Trump challenged in court election voting procedure.
The judges in whose court the matters were instituted sat immediately and determined the issues and the process of voting continued unhindered. But that was what the Appeal and Supreme court did before the election? I’m saying that this festering leadership tussle in PDP should have been resolved by the courts several months ago, even before the Edo governorship election.
If our judicial system is like that of the US, if as the Supreme Court declared in 2003, in INEC Vs Musa, that “political parties are the essential organs of the democratic process”, why should it take the judiciary this long to deal with a simple narrow issue of which group represents the legal leadership of the party? Look, if the court had determined this matter since, all the accusations and counter-accusations about removal of names and limitation of time for the submission of party agents would not have arisen. Again, let me give you another example of a similar situation in the United States. In South Carolina some years back, a governorship candidate suddenly withdrew participation 48 hours to the election.
The election board decided to put the name of the first runner-up and this was challenged at the High Court. Because election date had been fixed and it was just 48 hours to the time, both the Appeal Court and Supreme Court were placed on standby, and as soon as the High Court decided and its decision was appealed against, the Appeal Court sat and thereafter the Supreme Court, thus, within 24 hours, the highest court disposed of the matter. That is how the judiciary protects the American democracy, by acting timeously against any action that may bring about widespread political disruption.
If it were to be in the US, as l have told you or in other more sober climes, the leadership crisis of any party, particularly the two main parties, would have been a matter of urgent importance that must be resolved within a week or at most a month, by a final verdict of the highest court because they are the pillars of democracy, and the judiciary in the US would not allow a crisis to fester because of the potential for instability and the security implications.
It is unfortunate what is going in my constituency, the judiciary, on account of the unethical conduct of a very few legal practitioners, particularly very senior members of the Bar and regrettably a number of judicial officers, who have violated the judicial oath and have continued to bring shame to our noble profession. Everytime l hear of some of the ignoble things associated with the judiciary, l feel sad that the most critical arm, and indeed the only pillar of democracy to which all other arms of democratic governace must bow, is not living to its esteemed expectation because of the actions of a few bad ones. Very sad indeed.
INEC has been grappling with card readers and other challenges.Looking ahead, what do you consider could lead to electoral failures? Let us be fair here, since 2011 till the last election of Ondo, barring a number of challenges and unmet expectations, there have been remarkable improvements in INEC electoral service delivery in terms of innovations such a credible biometric register, PVC, card reader, logistics as exemplified in early arrival of personnel and materials in the polling units.
As long as this system and innovations are targeted at the electorate they are meant to serve, it will alway be a basis and a foundation for further improvement as work in progress. There is no perfect system anywhere in the world afterall given the growing desperation by politicians in the U.S now, there are talks going on in some states about biometric voters registration for elections which we have done here.
To be frank with you, where the problem or challenge has always been in our country is with the political actors outside the control of INEC who try to game the process which may lead to electoral failures in places, they do everything from recruiting thugs to snatching ballot papers, result sheets or outright disruption of the electoral process.
They spend so much to counter and undermine every innovation of INEC to win at all costs. It is to prevent all of these nefarious activities of politicians that is increasing the cost of election when INEC has to spend so much money to safeguard the integrity of the process by printing separate customized colour differentiated election documents from LGA to LGA and even wards, maintenace of RACs, security and so on. So much is going on to improve the process for better outcome but dissapointingly nothing has changed or being done to change the behaviour of the political actors through development of targeted deterrence measures for those who commit electoral offences by having the electoral offences tribunal established. What then should be done to change this ugly situation that is also breeding corruption and lack of committment? To build a good society, we must first build the people who will build that society.
This is why societal development is judged upon the levels of human development indicators, because you look at the people and assess their needs and how to meet them before you build the institutions they will sustain effectively.
I am not excusing any ignoble roles played by some ethically challenged police and judicial officers and lawyers who sometimes actually play the role of middlemen in election related corruption matters in the country, but I am insisting that we must show leadership by manifest examples as heads and officials of these agencies and institutions bearing in mind that we are holding these positions in trust for the public, respect the people and do not look down on them with disdain.
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