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| A voter casts her ballot at a polling station during a by-election |
Three years before the last elections, I wrote a book entitled Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Choices to be Made (Nairobi: Book talk Africa, 2019). In it, I argued that, in developing nations like ours with diverse ethnic groups yearning to use state power to facilitate socioeconomic development, and quite often very unfair to some groups, in meeting such expectations; a more pluralist political system, representative of the nation’s social diversity and accommodative to the politics of bargain with give and take is often preferable. Some scholars call this consociational democracy.
Between ‘presidential’ and ‘parliamentary’ democracy, I found the latter more preferable and urged Kenyans to change our current constitution to cater for an Indian type of government rather than the American type of government in time for the 2022 election so as to have fairer and better outcomes in our elections.
We did not do this, and the kind of problems that accompany elections in so-called ‘presidential democracies’ once more revisited us with abandon, having done so with grievous consequences in the two previous elections (2013 and 2017) held since the constitution was ‘reformed’ in 2010. Can Kenya continue to ignore the urgent need to abandon this presidential system for a parliamentary democracy?
I honestly do not think so. The current political and economic crisis in Kenya shows that competitive politics based on electing one person to be president simply kindles more inter-ethnic conflicts as ‘ethnic elites’ compete for the presidency to open up opportunities for those excluded in the winner-take-all game. By always waiting to get ‘our turn’ in the next elections through juggling with ‘appropriate’ ethnic alliances, we are simply being penny-wise and pound-foolish; this game will never end with any sense of fairness.
What we are likely to get, the others will lose. And when they lose, our so-called ‘gain’ that we flaunt around like a child playing with a toy, becomes a bitter chalice that the losers cannot afford to swallow! It is because the presidential system operates on a winner-take-all politics. Even when the so-called ‘winner’ has only one percent more votes than the so-called loser, the winner still takes it all. What can be more absurd than that?
No prosperous developing nation has been built that way in the twentieth century. If in doubt ask Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and he will tell you how his small island, with absolutely no known natural resources, rose from a third to a first world in our lifetime while we in Kenya, independent more or less at the same time, continue to languish in poverty while holding senseless and inconclusive elections every five years.
Let us accept it. Parliamentary democracy is more consultative and tends to give room to more diversity of opinion regarding government policies and options rather than focusing on how the pie of development is to be divided, even before it is baked, among ethnic groups with rigid pre-determined boundaries. National cohesion or nation-building, for whatever it is worth, will never be achieved that way.
Lee Kuan Yew bestowed on Singapore a parliamentary political system where electoral outcomes have systematically produced legitimate, popular and developmental governments since the 1960s.
In the case of Kenya, Okot p’Bitek, the illustrious poet known for his epic poem Song of Lawino, would perhaps provide the best description of our elections and their outcome when he writes:
And while the pythons of sickness/ Swallow the children/And the buffaloes of poverty/Knock the people down/And ignorance stands there/Like an elephant/The war leaders/Are tightly locked in bloody/Feuds/Eating each other’s liver
Daron Acemonglu, the Turkish-American professor of economics at MIT, with his colleague James Robinson, wrote a very interesting book not too long ago titled Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. In this book, the two professors make it very clear that it is man-made institutions which make some nations prosper while others linger in poverty. It is man-made institutions that are making us “eat each other’s liver” every five years rather than pursue prosperity for our nation.
Compare, for example, North and South Korea. These are the same people, with the same culture and more or less the same natural endowments. Yet, in the last five decades, South Korea has continued to languish in backwardness. Difference? Man-made institutions.
Though its government is modelled on the American system, South Korea has a much stronger parliamentary democracy with a dynamic multiparty political system where parties are policy-based and compete as such in elections. The government is accountable to the people and wins legitimacy through performance and not simple propaganda.
North Korea, on the other hand, has a rigid one-party state where the controllers of state power are more adept at seeking legitimacy through propaganda than performance.
Let us accept it. Parliamentary democracy is more consultative and tends to give room to more diversity of opinion regarding government policies and options rather than focusing on how the pie of development is to be divided, even before it is baked, among ethnic groups with rigid pre-determined boundaries. National cohesion or nation-building, for whatever it is worth, will never be achieved that way.
In form, Kenya appears to have a multi-party democracy. In substance, however, Kenya still continues to have a one-party political system in the way its government is formed every five years after every election. Why is this the case? Because electing a president with such enormous political power is antithetical to having an effective parliamentary political system. Period.
The government of the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) of 2002-2005 performed well and made tremendous progress in laying the foundation for reforms and development because the coalition believed in and practised parliamentary democracy.
President Mwai Kibaki, like Julius Nyerere before him in Tanzania, did not believe in using those enormous powers that the constitution gave him to the detriment of the nation. Others before and after him have done or did exactly that.
Remember what Mwalimu Julius Nyerere said as he was quitting the presidential seat? “The constitution of the Republic of Tanzania gave me so much power that were I to use them all I would have been the worst dictator in Africa.”
It is unlikely that we shall always get the likes of Nyerere or Kibaki as our presidents. Let us take refuge in providing constitutional frameworks that do not only rely on good men as leaders but also good rules of the game, laws and regulations that allow good men to govern democratically with developmental results.
We are just running around like headless chickens wasting away the golden opportunity to develop our nation. What is this political passion for under-developing our nation every five years?
This was the secret behind Singapore’s success. First, the parliamentary system of government provided the overall political framework and political culture in which leaders, qualified for their positions on the basis of meritocracy, pragmatism and honesty, scored high on legitimacy, public approval and productivity.
Second, Singapore also demonstrated that a properly institutionalised parliamentary system scores high on democratic governance and accountability, is better at managing cultural diversities through representation consultation, is politically more inclusive and is a reliable guarantor of civil liberties.
On all these scores Kenya has persistently scored poorly since the enactment of the 2010 Constitution. Notwithstanding the many good things in that constitution, the guys who went to Naivasha to bring us the draft constitution let us down badly.
Preserving the presidential system made a complete mockery of the good job that had been done. Attempts to amend that draft in Parliament never went very far. We are where we are now because we goofed in Naivasha. But it is not too late; we can still retrace our steps and recover lost ground.
My humble suggestion is the following. Let us not begin campaigning for the elections of 2027 without making the big decision today and not tomorrow. And I can put it in the form of a question. Do we want to continue with the present mongrel of a constitution or are we ready to provide a long-lasting political solution by establishing a parliamentary system of government the Indian type?
In India, they have a president as head of state. But the government is run by a parliamentary system where elections are held periodically to give political parties the opportunity to compete for votes with the winner forming a government headed by a Prime Minister. A country of over a billion people has never relied on observers from so-called development partners to act as prefects in their elections.
What makes us so wedded to this ridiculous presidential system of government that makes us a laughingstock of the whole world as we kill each other and spend months trying to decide who won the election? We did it in 2013. We bungled it again in 2017.
We have just had another bout of political bad manners by the IEBC managing the elections in a foul manner and bestowing to the nation yet another election crisis in 2022! And we are behaving as if we are getting somewhere. We are not.
We are just running around like headless chickens wasting away the golden opportunity to develop our nation. What is this political passion for under-developing our nation every five years?
We could as well forget about the goals of Vision 2030. With inconclusive political contests every five years, that document is no longer worth more than the paper it was written on. Adios amigos.
by ANYANG’ NYONG’O