Revolts or revolution – that’s the question

What kind of democracy exists in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi; or in Britain and America under Tony Blair and George W. Bush when they invaded Iraq, ignoring five million protesters on their streets? Going by its popular definition – government of the people, for the people and by the people, democracy exists only in theory. […]

What kind of democracy exists in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi; or in Britain and America under Tony Blair and George W. Bush when they invaded Iraq, ignoring five million protesters on their streets? Going by its popular definition – government of the people, for the people and by the people, democracy exists only in theory. Disillusionment is the word and evident in the dwindling number of voters in the so-called established democracies. This situation justifies the snigger at the long-term effect of revolts currently sweeping across the Arab world, leading to the tumbling of regimes hitherto propped by western governments who, over the years, turned their heads at the stories of gross human rights abuses; profligacy and evils making headlines and turning hitherto quiet embassies into a market of protests.

The West has turned the other eye for so long, as it has done in the past – during the slave trade when it was okay to see people openly sold like commodities, or during the holocaust when Nazis exterminated millions of Jews. The cries of shock, the ebullient speeches being made by global powers etc are nothing but crocodile tears. What mattered to these countries and their leaders up till now were the economic gains. They cared not at what expense these gains were made and sustained. What did the millions of western tourists tell their governments as they went on pilgrimage to Egypt under Mubarak? That it was a paradise? When years of isolation failed to bring down the butcher of the desert there was a mad rush for investments in Libya’s oil in spite of the known evil that Gadaffi represents to his own people and the world at large.

It’s a big shame that usually, nothing is done to fight despotism as long as resources are available to feed the greed described as the strategic interests of the western world. The vulgarious reference to revolts as revolution by the so-called global media is a practical descriptive misnomer. What is happening across the Arab world is the revolt of a herd chased to the wall, but they are several notches far from becoming revolutions in any practical sense of the word. A revolution occurs when an organised people’s revolt leads to the overthrow of an inept status quo and the use of organs of the overthrown state for the overall good of the generality of the people. From Tunisia to Tripoli, Jordan to Riyadh there are popular revolts that would only replace an over bloated and nauseous group of kleptocrats with another set resulting in cosmetic palliatives that will not assuage the thirst of the people for change.

This is because the overthrown despots have been propped for too long with deep rooted revolution-cleansing sustained over decades that the opposition is nothing but another set of opportunists waiting in the wings. These new set of opportunists would provide nothing different, if anything, they have enough reasons not to perform – that the old system had destroyed too much for too long there is no tissue left to re-graft change. They would perform so poorly over the years to fill the people with nostalgia for the overthrown. Nigeria has classical example of performance inertia transforming ex-villains into heroes. Youths burning tyres in support of Mohammed Abacha’s candidacy in Kano; hitherto responsible men and women enrolled in the botched return of Ibrahim Babangida; fishing for an imprisoned Obasanjo to midwife democracy in 1999 and the clueless leadership that followed Obasanjo today seeking a term on ethno-religious sentiments with zilch on performance.

The western notion of democracy is so burdensome it is crippling the people. For instance, let us look at how much we pay the irrational National Assembly members and juxtapose that cash with the benefits we derive from the laws they enact or fail to enact and ask if that is justified expenditure. Let us look at the salaries of ministers, their allowances and other perks vis-a-vis the benefits to the people of Nigeria. Let us look at the damage that Iwu’s INEC wrought on our democratic march and place it side by side with the money spent so far on voter registration and the demands of elections under Attahiru Jega ostensibly aimed at sustaining kleptocracy and we see how within months Iwu might be coasting home with national and even global awards.

There can never be a democracy in the true sense of the word that would benefit the oppressed peoples of the world except they themselves engineer it. If there must be a revolution, it must not be by happenstance, it must be designed by the people and sustained by them given a scenario where candidates emerge from their ranks; are elected by their popular votes with the option of recall not being too cumbersome or open to manipulation. Since this is not the scenario across the Maghreb it would not be long when Tunisians begin to look back to having Ben Ali; Egyptians wishing they had been stuck with Hosni Mubarak or his son; Libyans with Gadaffi etc. If the people want change, they must drive it and be its author. Most of these countries have been under window-dressed ‘democracy’ or crash autocracy for too long that the ground was made infertile for the growth of credible opposition. The revolts are too sudden and linked with global recession to have a truly organised form that engenders revolution. Succinctly, there are potentials for revolution from Abuja to Tripoli, but the ingredients are not yet complete.