Tajudeen's Thursday Post card

Do we need those election monitors? Their collective verdict was predictable and need not have required a single shilling to be spent on air tickets THE recently concluded Presidential election in Uganda has again thrown into sharp relief the needlessness of the army of external monitors and observers. Hundreds of them from international NGOs, inter-governmental agencies and multilateral organisations trooped into town, a few days before the polls. Some of them were forced to stay longer only because the date of the election was moved. Their collective verdict was predictable and needed not to have required a single shilling spent on air ticket to arrive at. It is similar to their verdicts in several elections on this continent since electoral democracy broke out in the past decade of democratisation. It will seem that they just cut and paste, changing names of countries as they move from one country to the other in their multinational electoral safaris. It makes one wonder if all the money spent on their per diems, accommodation, tickets and other expenses are really worth it. The best argument in their favor is that they help in focusing the attention of the international community on the country and the processes thereby acting as a deterrence against the perversion of the electoral process. But do they? Any casual observer, let alone seasoned observer, of the electoral process in Africa would have told these international busy bodies that the bulk of electoral malpractices do not happen on the election day but in processes leading to the election and the campaigns. Most of the time they arrive a few days to the polls, stay in fanciful hotels, keep to tarmaced roads and on election day itself restrict themselves to voyeurism at a few polling stations, return to their hotels and log on to their e-mail boxes and bang away at their computers ringing out their pious electoral mantras. The best sanction against electoral malpractices are not these election tourists but the local citizens, credible opposition and vigilant local media. Most of the evidence that retired Col Besigye will adduce in his post election legal challenge at the outcome of the Uganda Presidential elections is not going to come from these international monitors but his agents, supporters and reports in the local media. The international monitors have since left Kampala and angling on their next election safaris! What this means is that when the chips are down it is the wananchi that can legitimise any political process. However, a combination of donor-driven agenda and resilient colonial mentality is making Africans to believe that these external forces can make a significant difference. We need to wake up. The other aspect of this election monitoring bonanza is the larger than life role that Western ambassadors and high commissioners have acquired in different African countries. Some of them behave like latter-day colonial governors. I guess having missed out on the real thing being an ambassador in our Banana republics give them illusions of grandeur. Just imagine, despite the Florida imbroglio, American ambassadors can still lecture Africans on electoral procedures! And they do this without any sense of irony or paradox! I was in Zimbabwe in February 2000 as part of a center for Democracy and Development (CDD, London and Lagos) monitoring team for the referendum process. Zimbabwe did not allow any foreign observers except the Commonwealth and the OAU. CDD's delegation was allowed because it has been monitoring the whole constitutional review process. We were able to observe the process in all the provinces of the country. Our delegation was composed mostly of people who were not visiting the country for the first time and had other links with both the government and the opposition and civil society forces which enhanced our capacity to be fully informed. I remember meetings we had with Western diplomats and the UNDP, which is now the holding company for Western and UN activities in many African countries. We asked them why they could not use their donor influence to cause President Mugabe to address some of the concerns they were raising with us. The UNDP man informed us that they had withheld a big fund pledged to support the constitutional process but another Western diplomat was brutally frank with us. She told us that they could not exert any influence because the Zimbabwe government had refused to ask them for any material help. What does this tell us? Western arrogance and know - all attitude is predicated on receiving financial aid from them. If you do not take their money they will have little or no say in your activities. It is a big shame that African governments who go to war without aid or IMF/World Bank conditionalities turn to Western governments when it comes to issues of national development and democratic process. We should get our priorities right in order to get these Western busy bodies off our back. Our Presidents are quick to find money for security issues. They must find the adequate resources to guarantee our electoral processes from the intervention of foreign powers. When this is done we will then be able to receive and send monitors on equal footing and in good faith. Ends Tajudeen28@hotmail.com