Respect term limits for democratic change

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela’s recent referendum victory to change the constitution of his country to allow all elected public officials – including the president – to stand for more than two terms is both a blow for and against democracy. By 54 to 46 per cent Venezuelan voters voted to remove any limits. This means that the popular president may continue to stand for re-election till he dies.

It was a hotly contested referendum, especially given the highly polarised politics of this oil rich country with a radical, openly socialist and revolutionary president about whom no one is indifferent. He is a hero to the masses, but a villain to his internal rivals and former wielders of power and their external, predominantly US allies. Chávez’s opponents – with the full backing of the US – have for the past 10 years tried everything to challenge him. This has included assassination plots, investor strikes, campaigns of sabotage, a recalled referendum and also a coup (backed by Bush’s government) that ‘succeeded’ briefly (before the masses struck back, returning Chávez to the presidency), among many other failed attempts.

His continuing popularity is not simply due to defying the US (the hegemonic imperial power in Latin America), but also because his has been a revolutionary government that delivers to ordinary people, a people who have been victims of irresponsible political leaders with no loyalty to the country or any care beyond lining their own pockets and keeping their imperialist bosses happy. He is reversing the proverbial curse of ‘oil boom to the rich and oil doom for the poor’ familiar to many oil-producing countries, heralding a boom time for the poor with remarkable achievements in the areas of health and education. That is why ordinary people regard him as a Junior Jesus, while his enemies regard him as a Junior Judas for the very same reason!

Chávez’s foreign policy is not only militant in declaration but he has also been able to put his money where his mouth is. He never hides his revolutionary inspiration and desire to link to the Bolivarian and Cuban radical national-regionalist revolutionary tradition, nor the anti-imperialist, especially anti-American, struggle, South–South solidarity, and progressive internationalist alliances.

With Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, the return of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the general swing to the Left across the Americas, Chávez and his comrades have become global left-wing icons, proving that we all do not have to give in to the dictates of the West and that we can have different dreams and organise our society to serve our people’s interests. More importantly, they have shown that we can elect leaders to serve our interests and not those of outsiders

The rest of the world does not have to like such leaders, but they have to respect these decisions. For instance, the rest of the world did not like Bush but the Americans elected him – albeit under disputed circumstances – for a first term and with clear majority for a second. We in the world at large were forced to put up with him for eight years, years that have happily come to an end. Why then is it difficult for the Americans and their Western cousins to respect the democratic wishes of other peoples, whether it is in Gaza, Iran, Haiti, Venezuela, Bolivia, Algeria in the 1990s, or any other country? Democracy may not always produce the best outcome, but it is no less democratic because of this.

In demanding democracy in one place while turning the other cheek in areas more allied to selfish Western interests, the West’s hypocrisy, selective amnesia and opportunism continue to undermine democratic development globally. This unprincipled position has sustained a several dictators, who have successfully exploited anti-Western sentiments to remain in power. In many countries in Africa, Asia or Latin America being anti-West – especially anti-American and anti–former colonial powers (predominantly Britain and France, and to a lesser extent, Portugal, in Africa) – is a winning card.

However my support and admiration for Chávez notwithstanding, I think this referendum victory might in the long run prove pyrrhic. Sometimes an election may not be about democracy but a conspiracy against it. The principle of limiting the terms of office for public officials – especially the presidency – is about the renewal of democracy, giving the public effective choices, and preventing leaders from becoming complacent or undoing the good they may have brought about. It is about institutionalising change rather than personalising it around ‘great leaders’ that often create personal and family rule and fake dynasties. Many of our tired and tiring leaders in Africa, some of them ex-revolutionaries, who have changed their constitutions to perpetuate their personal rule in perpetuity (even if none of them dared put it through a referendum), will be standing side by side with Chávez, but this is the wrong kind of solidarity. A wrong cannot be made right because the perpetrator happens to be one’s hero.

The world has changed and so must revolutionaries. The conditions that produced and prolonged the regime of Fidel Castro are completely different from what obtains today. Also, Cuba occupies a very peculiar historical situation which cannot be used to justify other countries’ situations.

What are the compelling reasons for Robert Mugabe, for instance, to continue to hold on to power in Harare? Is it really true that Uganda would collapse were Yoweri Museveni not to rule the country till he dies? Would Ethiopia and Eritrea not be better off if there were limit on the terms that Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afworki continue to dominate them? Of what benefit is the long-term dictatorship of Omar Bongo to the people of Gabon? While Libya remains a prosperous country with huge benefits percolating down to the masses, is it sustainable that it cannot have another ruler but Brother Gaddafi? Is it not part of the problem of limitless and ultimately purposeless time in office that is making Gaddafi to despair of his own government? Recently he criticised his own government for being corrupt and failing the Libyan people in delivery of social services. He has recommended to the General People’s Congress to dissolve the government and give Libya’s vast oil fortune to Libya’s citizens.

Is this not an indictment of his own forty-year leadership as the ‘guide’ of the Al-Fatah revolution? Imagine what would have happened to South Africa had Thabo Mbeki been able to impose his will over the ANC and changed the constitution of the country to go for a third-term. What would Olusegun Obasanjo have done to Nigerians if he had succeeded in his third-term bid?

Limiting terms may not limit the suffering and oppression of countries’ citizens, but it is essential if people are to have any faith in the democratic order. Instead of leaders trying to perpetuate themselves in office, they should be seeking a legacy that ensures that their good practice and transformative agenda outlives them. This should as true in Caracas as in Kampala, Addis Ababa, Harare, Asmara, Yaoundé and countless other capitals across the African continent, where presidents delude themselves that they can occupy state power until they die, and indeed even after death through their fake dynasties.

What you cannot do as president in ten years you will not achieve in a hundred.

* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is general secretary of the Global Pan-African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda, and is also director of Justice Africa, based in London, UK.
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