Commentary (by Elizabeth Ochola) - Redefine democracy to meet our needs

Ref; http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143982940&cid=15
Published on March 8, 2008, 12:00 am

By Elizabeth Ochola

The current political scenario is an eye opener to the challenges of multiparty democracy. The full benefits of such a system can only be enjoyed if the fundamental principles of justice, equity and accountability are upheld.

But these seem in short supply in developing countries including Kenya.

The battle royale between PNU and ODM provides insight into a pragmatic solution and the future political growth.

The country may never be ready for a multiparty system. First, is our diverse ethnicity against the backdrop of gravely skewed socio-economic realities.

Second, the challenges of multi-party democracy are many. In a real democracy, there are limits to popular will. Not everything is permissible in a constitution, even if it is the people’s will.

Democracy is designed at its core to be spiritually empty. The defining proposition of liberal democracy is that it mandates means – through elections – but not ends. Multi-party democracy did not deliver us out of the political stalemate.

Multi-party democracy brings variety and disorder, creating a sort of equality. It graduates into despotism.

Democracy also presupposes some degree of mass participation. But for much of the population, the whole liberal agenda represents no more than a collection of theories, which appear to have enabled the rich minority expropriate collective property. Indeed, democratic reforms are only possible in an open and accountable political system. Meaningful end to tyrannical rule requires a contract between old and new elites, and distribution of powers and offices. This remains a mirage in our country.

The democracy introduced in Africa is a political system built upon the West’s worldview, that people are driven by self-interest. In traditional non-Western societies, the notion that an individual is autonomous from the community, traditions, religion or the cosmos does not exist.

Such societies are organised on the basis of "fusional relationships" with no differentiation between community/individual, subject/object, inside/outside and supernatural/natural among others. Inequality, otherness, domination and hierarchy are not recognised, and are not acceptable in the name of hard work.

Two-party system

A man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, while at the same time his inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. We must therefore domesticate democracy to meet our needs.

My proposition is a two-party parliamentary system that would institutionalise politics through values, ideology and principles, for which leaders are held accountable.

The MPs would not have an opportunity to hawk their constituencies for personal convenience and greed. The different ethnic groups would learn to accommodate each other first at party level and then at the national level. Their main objective would be to ensure the sitting government as opposed to being inside the government – which has traditionally excluded others – adequately addresses their needs.

Their constitutional mandate would be to ensure that development priorities of their regions are presented in a memorandum to the party and adequately addressed in a policy document that is then used during campaign. This document would then sell the party and its presidential candidate and at the end of their term, the electorate would use it to audit their performance. The governing council would also be mandated, through a constitutional provision, to oversee senior appointments in the civil service and gazette for public audit.

This would ensure prioritised devolution of resources, check tribalism and nepotism and eventually achieve the much needed equity. The Tenth Parliament is duty bound to give this country a new Constitution.

This new document should sustain peace and check the current market place politics where the country’s leadership is determined by the highest bidder, ethnic manoeuvring and opportunism.

-The writer is a lecturer, Communication Skills, University of Nairobi.