Without the political parties accepting the culture of democracy, the polity will continue to suffer a democratic deficit. The deficit manifested itself in last week’s party primaries. Based on what happened, the aversion to structured, institutionalised democracy is still pronounced.
This is bothersome. For democracy to strive, there must be strong institutions and the supremacy of the rule of law. This is in clear contradistinction to today’s stranglehold of the ‘strongman’. This situation cuts across all of the political parties, which tells its own sorry tale.
Last week’s primaries once again manifested a culture of entitlement. This unfortunate template was crafted by former autocratic President Olusegun Obasanjo. The time is long overdue to cast it off.
The accompanying culture of imposition has led to manufactured lists of ‘purported winners’ being sent to the party headquarters. Much of this does not represent the wish of the party members. The process has inevitably turned into a lucrative venture for those who are supposed to be impartial umpires overseeing the process. The accompanying reality is that those who eventually corner the tickets are loyal to a godfather rather than to the supremacy of the party. This inevitably builds in instability, which, down the road, will have a destabilising effect on the polity, as we have seen in the past one and a half decades.
It is unacceptable that 15 years on, we still do not have real political formations to match that of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa.
The ANC is a real political party sustained by the funds, energy and activism of its members. Even the secular saint, Nelson Mandela, was just a member and not a godfather.
This has a bearing on the entire democratic process. For it is hypocritical to expect the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct free and fair elections in a process already distorted by the political parties.
The lesson is obvious. To sustain our democracy, we must build real political parties; otherwise we will be putting the cart before the horse.