Will any of Africa’s leaders dare to propose an AU rule which would set two terms for all presidents? asks Peter Fabricius.
Pretoria - Serving a third term is actually a positive thing, Eddy Maloka, adviser to the Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, tried to convince journalists.
He was briefing them about the 25th ordinary summit of the AU being held in South Africa this week.
Serving a third term refers to the efforts by African leaders to cling to power by manipulating or amending their national constitutions to try to get around the limits of two presidential terms.
Last year long-time Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore’s attempt to do so sparked a popular uprising which deposed him.
That sent a strong warning signal to several other leaders contemplating similar manoeuvres but not all of them got the message.
This included Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza who announced in April that he would run for a third term in elections due on June 26.
Burundi’s constitution also limits the president to two terms but Nkurunziza persuaded a tame and intimidated Constitutional Court to rule that his first term didn’t count because he had been indirectly elected by Parliament and not directly elected by the people.
That also provoked violent street protests and an aborted military coup. Eventually Nkurunziza agreed, under African and international pressure, to postpone the elections pending further discussions.
Similar problems are looming in the Republic of Congo, (Congo Brazzaville) and the Democratic Republic of Congo where presidents Denis Sassou-Nguesso and Joseph Kabila respectively are both suspected of trying to manoeuvre around term limits.
Sassou-Nguesso, who has already been in power, one way or another, for 31 years, insists he is not trying to amend constitutional terms limits.
He simply wants to scrap the constitution altogether as it no longer suits the times.
The effect, though, would probably be to give him two more terms.
Kabila wants a national consensus – which would probably take forever – to be held before presidential elections are held next year.
And few observers would bet real money on Rwanda’s strongman Paul Kagame, standing down when his constitutional final term expires next year.
As Maloka said at the briefing, “third termism” is likely to feature at the summit in South Africa this week, although how explicitly that will be, is hard to say.
Will any of Africa’s leaders dare to propose an AU rule which would set two terms for all presidents and sanction any leaders who flouted the rule?
The leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) tried to do that last month.
But such decisions require consensus and two would-be presidents for life, the leaders of Togo and The Gambia, blocked the plan, according to the ISS Peace and Security Council report.
“The best we can hope for is for those heads of states to stand up in a closed session and tell the others not to do it (stand for a third term),” the report quoted a senior AU diplomat in Addis Ababa as saying.
The report suggested that, in the presence of old presidents – like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe – even this would be difficult to pull off.
It was revealing that President Jacob Zuma first said last month that Nkurunziza should not stand for a third term but then seemed to retreat to a safer position: that the elections should be postponed.
So why is third-termism a positive development, as Maloka insists?
It’s because it is a reaction to the AU’s decision 15 years ago to suspend governments which come to power by coup, he says.
Since the AU has made the seizure of or clinging to power by brute force unfashionable, he suggested, leaders are now resorting to more subtle manipulations to do so.
Eventually third-termism would also pass, Maloka said.
Democracy, evidently, is a very slow evolutionary process in Africa, not to be rushed.
But, at least according to Maloka, it is happening.
Pretoria News