By Dr Mohamed Gibril Sesay
Museveni, the President of Uganda, to fight off multiparty democracy, designed a movement system - where persons would only contest elections on a nonpartisan basis. But that ruse to prevent multiparty democracy was seen for what it was – and the Ugandan rebel leader turned President could not get on with it.
Sierra Leone is testing the waters of that non-democratic path by proposing nonpartisan elections at the local level. This is nothing but an attempt at one party rule by another name; a route to dictatorship by another name - an attempt to divide and soften the people: to turn local councils into institutions too febrile to stand up for local instruments and very malleable to central government manipulations.
Democracy builds up from the local – it is at that level that people start aggregating interests and concerns, and seeking to get on to some form of power to implement their vision. It is at the local level that people’s rights to assembly, to belong to groups that they want, including political groups, are manifested.
Already, if people don’t want to join political parties when contesting elections, they can do it at the local level, and even at the parliamentary level. So nothing stops independents from running for office. Why then must this bandied-about policy propose that people who want to associate with political parties or to form political parties or groups to contest elections should not be allowed to do so?
President Kabba recoiled from that nonpartisan route because he knew it claws back from people’s right to assembly, to form associations for political purposes, to contest elections on the basis of those political organizations. That is the essence of multiparty democracy.
Our multiparty democracy can’t be consolidated by letting political parties to only hang on to elections at the national level – this is akin to parties not having feet on the ground, it does not enable parties to build up better, to engage at the local level in order to build on and harmonize local issues for national attention.
Sure, partisan elections have their challenges – but must the challenges of multiparty democracy and elections be solved by banning parties from contesting elections? Only persons in authority with dictatorial dispositions would push that. The constitution guarantees multiparty-ism, and multiparty-ism is about the rights of citizens to contest elections or vote in elections on the basis of political parties. Anything short of it is like seeking to do a Museveni on Sierra Leone.
Dr Mohamed Gibril Sesay is a former Minister of State 1 in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Copyright © 2020 Politico Online
