Share the Pork, Be President for Life

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/opinion/share-the-pork-be-president-for-life.html

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NAIROBI, Kenya — The Republic of Congo’s ruling party just joined the long list of regimes in Africa that are pushing to change constitutions to alter term limits and permit sitting leaders to extend their stays in office. The country’s 2002 Constitution limits the number of presidential terms to two. Now the Congolese Labor Party has had second thoughts, and is seeking to amend the law so that, the opposition says, President Denis Sassou Nguesso will be able to run for a third term.

In January, Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the giant country next door, tried a similar fiddle — and lost. The country erupted in violent protests, in which at least 40 people were killed. Mr. Kabila didn’t surrender; he only retreated. It is widely expected that he will make another stab at staying in power before his term runs out in 2016.

Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, seems to have outfoxed a weak opposition and is expected to get a third, unconstitutional bite at the apple in June’s poll. In Togo, President Faure Gnassingbé is lining up to run for a third term in April, and has that race all but sewn up. So, too, does President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan.

Africa is such a rich hunting ground for leaders who want to hang around that only a handful of countries have seen presidents try and fail to remove term limits — notably, Nigeria under Olusegun Obasanjo, Zambia under Frederick Chiluba and Malawi under Bakili Muluzi. In Burkina Faso, in October last year, President Blaise Compaoré went too far. After 27 years, he still hadn’t had enough and sought to give himself more years at the top. Angry youths and women wielding wooden spoons ran him out of power and out of town.

By contrast, 11 countries — starting with Burkina Faso back in 1997, and including since then Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Namibia, Niger, Togo, Uganda, Algeria and Djibouti — have all seen presidential term limits changed or scrapped altogether.

At first glance, it seems like familiar African Big Man politics is at play here. It isn’t.

Term limits were introduced in the wave of political reforms and economic liberalization across Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s, following the end of the Cold War. Military dictatorships or one-party governments all over the continent fell like dominoes in that period, and the smarter actors adapted and civilianized.

The roots of some of the prosperity that has led to the “Africa rising” mantra today can be traced to the changes in that period. They opened up African countries to international investment, and by introducing term limits, they brought predictability and stability to its politics. These reforms actually worked. Old-style one-party rule is all but dead in Africa. The coups and counter-coups of the past are infrequent.

Elections are plentiful. In 2014, across the continent, there were at least 15 national votes. And unprecedentedly, four incumbents lost power and went home, mostly willingly: in Malawi, Mauritius, Tunisia and the semiautonomous Somali territory of Puntland.

This year, there will be about 14 or 15 presidential elections. By my count, two will most likely be free, maybe eight half-free, and possibly as many as five stolen outright. Still, for all the shortcomings, those are more elections than took place during the entire course of the 1970s.

The very reforms that made these improvements possible, however, created the conditions for reversals. When state-owned companies were privatized, for example, many were sold at favorable prices to businesspeople with links to the governments of the day. Then, nearly every African country established an “investment authority,” whose job was to grant incentives like tax holidays and procure industrial land for foreign investors.

A result is that the liberalized economies that emerged in Africa were based on systems of patronage. Even though they relied far less on the old command economics of the Cold War era, their success often became dependent on incumbent regimes. The emergent private sector, and new foreign investors, thus developed a vested interest in the continuity of the regimes of the day.

Over time, ruling parties also became vulnerable to being toppled by rivals. Back when they still had millions of members, they didn’t use to demand subscription fees. But when they started levying fees, the membership fell away, and party finances suffered.

With censorious-eyed foreign donors keeping a watch on government finances, however, it got more difficult to raid Central Bank vaults without provoking funding cutbacks from institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — a form of censure that would, in turn, spook private investors. So political parties turned to friendly businesses for help with their finances. Of Uganda, for example, United Nations researchers recently noted: “If businesses finance the ruling party they may be promised tax exemptions.”

That explains how we have a situation in which presidents, whose governments are running huge deficits and can’t pay public service salaries, are still able to raise large sums from private-sector allies and buy votes. In the past, if the national treasuries were bankrupt, leaders would be unable to fund campaigns. And because of these free-market reforms, many opposition politicians also became rich, because they, too, were free to do business. Just look, for example, at how the opposition veterans of Kenya, Raila Odinga, and Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, have prospered.

Since pork no longer depends exclusively on holding the reins of government, the struggles for political power have actually become less of a life-or-death matter in most of the continent. Since opposition figures are already getting a slice of the pie, the incentive to push back against the Big Men when they tinker with constitutions is reduced. That, in turn, allows incumbents to get away with their term-limit extensions more easily.

It is counterintuitive, yes, but for the next few years, the richer Africa gets, the less democratic it will become. I suspect most African voters, though, are happy to go to bed with a full stomach — rather than with an empty one but a head full of high ideals.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is the editor of The Mail and Guardian Africa.