Minimum democracy in crisis
By
IT was Karl Popper, the celebrated Austrian philosopher, who, many years ago, formulated the following problem of democratic governance: "How is the state to be constructed so that bad governments and rulers can be got rid of by a majority vote, without bloodshed, without violence, and before they cause too much harm?". The philosopher said that he was not theorising "the rule of the people" - perhaps because, at heart, he did not believe in it - but rather the "rule of law that postulates the bloodless dismissal of the government by majority vote". Since I believe that Popper spoke for the cream of the present political class in Nigeria, inspired by the new imperialism, I shall address him as I would address a Nigerian politician. What I understand Popper to be saying or implying here is that he would not be drawn into the argument over the correctness, appropriateness or desirability of defining democracy as the "rule of the people". He would also not concern himself with the methods by which governments come into office. His concern was how a government, having come into office by any means whatsoever, can be removed peacefully - by majority vote, he says - before it could do much harm to the community. "Majority", as used here, of course, means the majority of actual electors, or the majority of the representatives of actual electors, not the theoretical electors - the people - hypocritically enshrined in the Constitutions of many nations of the world.
In case the last point is not sufficiently clear or suggestive, let me recall a small incident during the visit of a delegation of the Political Bureau to a Nigerian military government in March 1986. I led the delegation. Behind closed doors - on which the governor had insisted - the young military man advised us not to waste our time discussing presidential elections. We could discuss "outstanding" issues such as transition time-table, number of political parties, elections into National and State Assemblies, etc, but not the presidential election. Then followed a session of questions and answers. Why should we not concern ourselves with presidential elections? Because a president had already been elected. Who was elected president? General Ibrahim Babangida. When was he elected? August 27, 1985. Who elected him? The army officers who brought him to power through a coup.
If we were "true democrats", and had followed Popper, what would have been our concern was - since Babangida had already done "too much harm" - how to ensure his removal by officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces "without bloodshed, without violence". Of course, we rejected the governor's advice, but we were painfully aware that Nigerian governments since the 1964 federal election have been "elected" and removed by very tiny fractions of the population. At best, what we have had can be called minimum democracy of minimum electorate. This is still the case today. Even then, the question posed by Popper, as narrow as it is, deserves some consideration because it is playing itself out in Nigeria today.
In 1999, Nigerians were called out to elect democratic institutions for the governance of what is now officially called the Fourth Republic, but which I prefer to call Obasanjo's Republic. At the end of the exercise, we were said to have elected a President, a Vice-President, a National Assembly, 36 governors, 36 deputy governors and 36 State House of Assembly. 774 Local Government Councils were also "elected". Today, more than three and a half years after the event, many Nigerians would agree that the results of the elections did not reflect the voting patterns, and in fact, that the elections had been rigged at the stage of registration of parties and the heavy monetisation and widespread corruption of the process. The people who emerged as elected rulers and members of democratic institutions could not, and still cannot, be said to be our true choice.
In any case, they were sworn in, and have been ruling over us ever since. The latest political crisis, the politics of impeachment, is taking place within the context of this minimum democracy. But just as President George Bush says that September 11 changed, not America, but the world, so do Nigerian rulers claim that the politics of impeachment affects all Nigerians and its outcome will affect the fate of all Nigerians. So, it is in the interest of millions of Nigerians excluded from the democratic process in 1999 and threatened with another exclusion, if 2003 comes, to join the impeachment struggle - on one side or the other.
With reference to Nigeria, the "majority vote" that Popper talked about in his abstract polity is the majority of direct electors or the majority of a legislative body that has the power to remove an elected official - from a local government Chairperson or Councillor up to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Focusing now on President Olusegun Obasanjo over whom Nigeria's minimum democracy has received the strongest test, the 1999 Constitution says that he can be in office - unless he is impeached - if he so chooses, for four years starting from May 29, 1999 when he was sworn in as winner in the "restricted" or "minimum" election as described above.
At the expiration of his four-year term, he can seek re-election and, if re-elected, remain in office for another, but terminal, term of four years - unless again, he is impeached before the expiration of the term. In other words, President Obasanjo's "removal from office" can take place, via another "restricted" or "minimum" election, only at the end of the current term of four years. The only other means of removing him from power - "without violence, without bloodshed and before too much harm is done" - is through impeachment which, we have all seen, is almost impossible, given the Nigerian political culture.
I think it will be fair and charitable to assume that when Popper spoke about majority vote, violence and bloodshed what he had in mind was the struggles between members of the "minimum" electorate or the representative institutions elected by the "minimum" electorate. He definitely would not consider popular revolts by the masses who, having been excluded by rigging and party registration from the "minimum" democracy, have nowhere and no means of exercising "majority vote". History has taught us that when people who are deliberately excluded from socio-historical processes intervene it is always with violence and bloodshed - which Popper feared. Popper's concern is therefore directed at the dangers posed by these people should the managers of our minimum democracy create the conditions.
Popper would also not want the conditions created for the alternative (or is it alternate) minimum electorate, the military, to intervene since their mode of intervention is violence, or bloodshed, or the threat of it. So, how can the Nigerian state restructure the polity so that it is possible for the minimum electorate to remove minority governments that are thrown up from time to time to rule over us - "without violence, without bloodshed and before much harm is done"? And, in particular, without the intervention of the excluded and cheated masses, or the military? That is the question before the Nigerian ruling classes.
But I think that Karl Popper, the eminent philosopher, was posing an impossible problem on behalf of capitalist ruling classes. You do not want democracy to be defined, or interpreted, or practically acted upon, as the "rule of the people" - the reason being that you fear the people. You prefer minimum, or restricted, or manageable democracy where political competition is between tiny but very wealthy groups, all firmly linked to the new imperialism, wedded to capitalist globalisation, all agreeing on the fundamental issues over which the masses are groaning. You want this tiny oligarchy to settle its quarrels over the wealth of the nation peacefully, "without violence, without bloodshed, and before much harm is done". Harm to whom", one may ask.
To members of the oligarchy? To the cheated and excluded masses? To the nation which, in reality, is owned by the oligarchy? How can predators be at peace among themselves? Can they fight their battles themselves. Don't they always invite these same "wretched of the earth" to do their fighting for them? In any case why shouldn't the masses exploit the divisions within the thieving oligarchy to liberate themselves by any means possible - just as the oligarchy uses any opportunity to sow seeds of discord among the people.
Who and what are the senior army officers -serving and retired? Are they not part of the ruling blocs? Are they with the masses? Have they, in our out of government, served the masses? Is their intervention in governance not a question of a power bloc employing their services, or allying with them, first against their immediate enemies in the other blocs, and then permanently against their masses? Knowing fully well that the people who are ruling under minimum democracy are not larger, or more credible, or less corrupt, or less selfish, than they are, why would some senior army officers not be tempted to make a come-back, directly or through the mechanism of minimum electorate and minimum democracy? As long as the Nigerian ruling blocs unite to defraud themselves, they should be left to settle their quarrels alone.
Oct 2002