Democracy and Its Discontents

ENGAGEMENTS BY Chidi Amuta

In his most recent book, Liberalism and its Discontents, leading American political philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, throws light on the imminent crisis of democracy.  The historical logic of democracy’s development is leading liberal democracy in particular towards a disastrous unraveling worldwide. But the unfolding catastrophe of democracy will impact nations according to the stage at which they are in their individual democratic development.

The advanced Western democracies have since coupled democratic freedom with individual rights of choice in order to qualify as liberal democracies. “I choose for myself, therefore, I am” seems to be the cardinal axiom of liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is therefore the highest form in the development of democracy. In a liberal democracy, citizens are first recognized as free agents entitled to the fullest expressions of democratic choice and rights. But in addition, those rights are rooted in the individual’s freedom of choice as an individual that is different from all other individuals. In liberal democracy, the individual’s choice is not encumbered by tribe, tongue, faith, ethnicity, region and skin colour. It is that free entitlement to subscribe to democracy as an animal of choice in a liberal context that distinguishes liberal democracy from other stages of democratic development.

However, significant parts of the world like Nigeria and the new democracies of the developing world remain stuck at the level of just nominal democracy. They merely swell the number of nation states that are adjudged democratic simply because they choose or change their political leadership through periodic elections. By counting nations that hold elections, the percentage of the world population living under democracy is swollen. Triumphal advocates of the victory of the liberal international order can order a beer and be happy!

These nominally democratic countries restrict themselves to the right of citizens to troop out in periodic electoral rituals to select new leaderships or renew the mandate of old leaders. The rights of individuals living in the society are hardly recognized let alone respected by the state. In such nominal democracies, the observance of the full freedoms and rights of individual citizens living in society is left for another day, an indeterminate future that no one can fathom.

A third version of ‘democracy’ has recently established itself as an instrument of leadership legitimation. It is a tool for the domestication of authoritarianism  to make it acceptable in the more distinguished company of free societies. This is illiberal democracy which is a version of  nominal democracy sustained with the tools of authoritarianism: suppression of free speech, police brutality, controlled judges and a frightened populace fed official propaganda by the state. In recent times, illiberal democracy has come to shunt itself into the broad ranks of ‘democracy’. Autocrats in disguise use a rough combination of sham elections and jackboot pretensions to law and order to gain and maintain legitimacy. The claim is usually that each society adopts a form of democracy that is ‘appropriate’ to its circumstances!

Countries as far flung as Russia, Hungary, Iran, Syria, Rwanda and Uganda are in this sense also democracies because their leaderships are selected or renewed through periodic elections. Like in the other nominally democratic countries, individual rights and freedoms are kept in the back burner. Literally, freedom is not predicated on the individual’s right to choose but rather on the freedom to vote because everyone else is trooping out to vote. Otherwise, the state decides and enforces what is ‘good’ for the individual. The institutions of a free society are securely tucked in the back pockets of the state and its managers.

The thrust of Fukuyama’s argument in the new book is that liberal democracy is the highest form of the democratic enterprise because it combines freedom of individual choice with respect for the rights of individuals as citizens to decide and choose for themselves in matters of politics and other aspects of life. But in its full liberal manifestation, democracy has evolved to enable  forces that now threaten its very foundation and survival.

New forces such as right wing extremism, left wing identity radicalism, micro nationalism and outright militant challenges to the state have emerged. Hidden under the canopy of the multiple individual rights allowed by liberal democracy, these forces are the new threats ravaging the state in many places. Before our every eyes, even the most hallowed traditions and institutions of democracy are being assaulted and desecrated. All manner of fringe groups with wild conspiracy theories are creeping out of the wood work. Some of the extremist groups are armed with dangerous weapons to do harm to fellow citizens, assault the institution of the state and challenge its supremacy of force and  authorized violence. From the right, Trump’s QAnon and Proud Boys and other White Supremacist groups are out on the prowl. From the left, Black Lives Matter and sundry militia factions have erupted.

Recently, Donald Trump, the enfant terrible of America’s democratic deviance has called for an abrogation or total scrapping of the US constitution in order to allow for the kind of lawlessness that will allow for his revalidation as the winner of the 2021 presidential election. Unsurprisingly, his followers have echoed his anarchic advocacy even as mainstream American democracy forges ahead with maintaining the dictates of democratic decorum and order.

Only last week, the world was shocked when Germany witnessed a real coup attempt.  At least 25 Right Wing extremists representing a broad spectrum of professions, occupations and callings have so far been arrested for planning a coup to overthrow the German government.  Among those so far arrested include a judge, some soldiers, an aristocrat, medical doctors, some far right anti-establishment militants and theorists. It was a real attempt to breach the parliament, arrest and handcuff key legislators, declare themselves as the new government of Germany with the aristocrat as leader. The plan was so elaborate and grotesque that the coup planners even had one of them being responsible for ‘spiritual’ affairs. Another was the group psychic, responsible for psychic vetting  of prospective members of the group to determine their suitability for group membership. Clearly, the last has not been heard of such attempts in the advanced liberal democracies.

Even nominal democracies are not immune to the prevailing discontent with democracy around the world. Electorates are becoming bored and frustrated with repeated cycles of electioneering that re-cycle the same set of leaders. More worrisome is the fact that the citizens are getting frustrated with periodic elections that do not bring about tangible changes in their lives. Elections take place every four years but the percentage of poor people keeps increasing. Living conditions worsen. Hopes dim and expectations are dashed. The rituals and institutions of democratic reality become fixtures in a ritual landscape. Nothing changes for the better. Everything remains the same or changes for the  worse.

Legislatures frustrate executives. Judges mangle justice and rule in favour of the rich. In the process, citizens are overwhelmed by a sense of stasis and despair. In general, there is increasing frustration with democracy as a means of bringing about the changes that citizens are urgently demanding. As a consequence, nominal democracies are witnessing shock waves hitherto unknown. The nation state in such fragile places has come under the pressure of sundry forces and threats. Militancy, banditry, terrorism, cartels, rackets, organized crime  syndicates masquerading as government, monumental corruption etc.  Those elected through the rituals of nominal democracy occasionally try self -help in desperate search of  solutions to urgent social and economic problems plaguing those who elected them into office. Yet, no one has quite found a replacement for democracy as a system of government.

In Peru, a democratically elected president has just overthrown himself in a foolish constitutional coup. Pedro Castillo, a monumentally incompetent  president on December 7th announced the dissolution of parliament and the convening of a new one with powers to write a new constitution and hand down a new code for judges. The coup attempt failed as parliament ousted him with a vote of 107 to 6.  The police moved in to arrest the errant fleeing president for rebelling against the state. He is under house arrest , replaced with his deputy. Street mobs on both sides have overwhelmed the capital in protest on both sides.

Castillo was only staging an amateurish version of the 1992 episode in which  the elected president, Alberto Fujimori, rolled out military tanks to stage a coup that sacked parliament. He succeeded in securing himself 8 years if unperturbed rule as an autocrat. Fujimori was a competent and astute politician. Castillo was a political idiot!

In fragile nominal democracies like Nigeria, the greatest danger to democracy is the assumption that the fever of an election season reflects the popularity of democracy or its universal acceptance by competing elites. In a place where democracy has not yet permeated the cultural fabric of society, it is futile to assume that every faction of the elite is anxiously awaiting the next election and its outcome. Far from it. Partisan divisions are merely intra elite schisms dressed up as democratic options. There are no options. There is only a feverish  scramble for access to the keys of the presidential lodge. This may be the situation in Nigeria as the nation preps for the 2023 elections.

In today’s pre election Nigeria, the major current of public expectation is that the 2023 elections will go according to plan. The logic of this optimism is the hope that the presidential election will be peaceful and a peaceful transition of power will proceed therefrom and culminate in the swearing in of the next president on 29th May, 2023.

But listening closely in recent weeks, there is a hint in the utterances of significant public voices, we have reasons to worry about the fate of the elections and the future of the nation. Chief of Defense Staff, Mr. Lucky Irabor, is an eloquent soldier of not too many unnecessary words. Speaking to journalists at the State House in Abuja on Thursday, he made an inconvenient disclosure. The Nigerian military is under pressure from unnamed quarters to compromise the 2023 elections. Soldiers are being tempted with inducements to possibly compromise the democracy train by unnamed forces. The alarm is not strange in Nigeria’s political history.

Yet, it was a convenient  opportunity for the Defense Chief to reiterate the extant fact of the subordination of the armed forces to the primacy of civil authority as a cardinal guardrail of democracy. It was also an opportunity to emphasize the imperative for security forces to remain loyal to and obey President Buhari’s  injunction for the armed and security forces to remain neutral in the prevailing season of partisan political frenzy.

Less than a fortnight ago, President Buhari himself had cause to reiterate the obvious fact that he will hand over power to a successor administration come 29th May, 2023. On the surface, this reassurance looked unnecessary and superfluous. It is a restatement of the obvious that was coming from nowhere. But the president is the ultimate receptacle of all high intelligence. Taken together with Mr. Irabor’s alarming warning, there is reason to suspect that the high expectations about the outcome of the 2023 elections may have come under greater scrutiny. The president has himself readjusted his political rhetoric from a rabid “APC by all means” to “Nigerians are free to vote for any party or candidate of their choice” earlier this week.

There has been a more consequential expression of concern about the 2023 elections and their outcome. At a public lecture in Abuja recently, former INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega, had cause to sound a note of concern and dire warning. Jega was deeply concerned about the undercurrents of the election and the possible outcome. Given his experience in managing what would have been Nigeria’s most catastrophic election back in 2015.

The spate of violent attacks on INEC facilities in the South East especially does not make things any better for our nominal democracy. Other separatist factions and their militias are no less dangerous. INEC has itself  warned about the consequences of these episodes of violence for orderly polls.

In fractious states like Nigeria, the risk to nominal democracy are magnified if nothing binds political contestants with the electorate and general citizenry. The survival of democracy is often underwritten by an elite consensus on the urgent indices of national survival. Election campaigns become a means of securing citizens’ buy -in into that consensus.  Elections have meaning for as long as they will guarantee the survival of the nation and a minimum level of security, peace and orderly life.

Brazil’s last presidential election illustrated this poignantly. The tenure of Jair Bolsonaro tilted Brazil in the direction of catastrophic illiberal democracy. Bolsonaro  was deriving his model from the Donald Trump anarchy in the United States. But a national consensus on Brazil’s dire economic situation and the worsening climate change consequences of the destruction of the Amazon created a national nostalgia for a return to the social welfare strides of former Lula da Silva. Brazil voted for national survival and returned Lula to power to save the country.

Nigeria’s survival as a nation state has become tied to whether it survives as a democracy. The 2023 presidential election is in many ways a referendum on whether Nigeria survives as the imperfect union that we have come to know. Therefore, all those covertly scheming to subvert the election must come to terms with the existential imperative that if 2023 fails, Nigeria falls into pieces.