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Around democracies, dictatorships die; or Jammeh’d still be boss

Friday February 03 2017

Democracies don’t go to war with each other. With the recent happenings in The Gambia, we could also say that a dictatorship can’t thrive in democratic neighbourhoods unless it’s led cleverly!

If The Gambia were surrounded by dictatorships or countries where incumbents are renowned vote thieves, it’s possible that Yahya Jammeh would still be president.

We came to this conclusion after the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), in an unprecedented move forced Jammeh out of office two weeks ago.

Jammeh’s crime was refusing to hand over power to the man who defeated him in elections despite conceding defeat and promising to hand over.

In truth, President Jammeh embarrassed both democrats and dictators alike. For dictators, they wondered how one of their own could fail to steal an election he had organised when he even had the option of deciding the margin of his victory before elections without anyone raising a voice. For democrats, they were angry for the shame the man’s antics visited on Africa.

Overall though, The Gambian political drama leaves us with two firsts: Never before has a leader or dictator organised election, got beaten, freely conceded, promised to hand over power and then, after a week, went against his word citing election malpractices. And, of course, never before has use of force been justified to enforce democracy or “the people’s will” on the continent.

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What’s interesting though is that while force was threatened, the man ran even before a single shot was fired! We could therefore say that Ecowas’s genius lies in comprehending the man’s cowardice and forecasting that in deploying “gun-diplomacy” it could achieve its objective.

For students of conflict management, this was conflict prevention at its best or “negotiation with muscle.”

So what does Ecowas and The Gambia example teach us?

The first and probably most important lesson is that, indeed, Africans can find solutions to their problems. And that for this to happen, we first need to make a proper diagnosis of the problems and the best available solutions.

That’s what Ecowas leaders first did when the political crisis broke out in The Gambia. That’s, they properly identified the problem to be Jammeh’s contempt for “the people’s will” and the solution residing in forcing him to respect it.

By properly predicting that threatening Jammeh with military force would persuade him to go, Ecowas gave us the second lesson. This teaches that, in conflict situations, before deciding the course of action, it’s best to understand the strength/weakness of protagonists.

By understanding that the only language Jammeh understood was one of threats and that he was internally weak, Ecowas reconfirmed what we have always known: Dictators are weak despite appearances of strength or claims to being loved.

Thirdly, we also re-learnt that, in conflict resolution, it pays to send a single and unified message to protagonists. For in informing the world that it was prepared to use force to ensure that Jammeh handed over power even before its leaders met him for negotiations, it avoided sending mixed messages that normally lead to belligerence or confusion.

Fourth, in resolving The Gambian puzzle without shedding blood, Ecowas confirmed that conflicts in places like Burundi or South Sudan haven’t been resolved only because leaders in the EAC or AU lack political will to do.

In showing leadership in The Gambia, leaders in Ecowas showed us what our leaders should be doing to resolve conflicts on the continent: Political will, leadership and decisiveness is critical in every case.

Finally, in democratic governance, it helps when the leaders in a region visited by political crisis are themselves not reputed to steal elections or kill opponents.

That countries such as Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia have recently been visited by the gods of democracy gave leaders in these countries confidence to tell Jammeh what they would otherwise not have told him if they were electoral thieves!

Thus, while it would be an exaggeration to say that The Gambian experiment puts other dictators on the continent on notice, it surely does set a precedent that could be wielded in future.

Christopher Kayumba, PhD. Senior Lecturer, School of Journalism and Communication, UR; Lead consultant, MGC Consult International Ltd. E-mail: [email protected]; twitter account: @Ckayumba Website:www.mgcconsult.com