Zimbabwe: Nigerian Poll Exposes West, Again
Posted: Wednesday, April 25, 2007The Herald
PRESIDENTIAL and legislative elections in Nigeria have come and gone, but what they left is widespread disappointment and more questions than answers.
Central to the inquest is whether it is possible to speak of Zimbabwe and Nigeria's elections in the same breath?
While we were not on the ground in Nigeria, reports of the loss of over 200 lives in poll-related violence, last-minute ballot printing, theft of ballot boxes at gunpoint and the failure to deliver them to some stations leave us with no doubt that the poll lacked credibility.
Even the outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo, whose party ostensibly "won" the election expressed disappointment with the process, though he was surprisingly amenable to the outcome. But what surprises us even more is that while all observer missions have condemned the Nigerian process as a disgrace, the response from Western groups and governments has been quite muted when compared to the disgust from Nigerian and other developing world observer missions.
We, however, must emphasise from the outset, that we do not believe that Western countries have any right to bless or condemn any election on the continent, particularly when they do not disguise their contempt for African observers whom they do not even invite to their own countries.
But we would have thought the West, that always masquerades as a custodian of democracy, would join progressive observers in agitating for a rerun.
The same goes for Obasanjo who was quick to join the Western bandwagon in condemning Zimbabwe's 2002 presidential poll which can never be compared, by any stretch of the imagination, to the sham that occurred across Nigeria last week.
This is not to say we do not know why US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair seem to have lost their voices where Nigeria is concerned.
They have been benefiting a lot from Obasanjo's penchant to export crude oil, and import refined petroleum products.
Obasanjo also served them well in their fight with Harare when he went against African Caribbean and Pacific voices in the Commonwealth that had recommended the lifting of Zimbabwe's suspension from the councils of the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth's gripes, we were made to believe, were over the way the 2002 elections had gone in Zimbabwe, which is also the EU's justification for its illegal sanctions.
Today, we ask the same observers to hold the Zimbabwean process and the Nigerian poll to scrutiny, and tell the world whether they have the right to question the legitimacy of our own process. We ask, as a wronged people, betrayed both by Obasanjo and his peers what the recompense will be on Nigeria where 200 lives were lost and a key opponent only allowed to contest just a few hours before the election?
Today, Obasanjo who had hoped to leave the scene under the halo of plaudits, exits amid a cloud of shame, hoist by his own petard.
Let the Nigerian experience be a lesson to all, it is not necessarily the credibility of a process that the West is interested in, but the malleability of the regime that determines the Western response.
This is why we agree with President Mugabe that the only voices that matter are those of our brothers from the developing world, we advise Abuja to listen to their concerns.
As for the Westerners, they can go hang.
Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com
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