“We struggle very hard to remove one cockroach from power and the next rat comes to do the same thing. Haba!” – an African saying echoed by Egyptian protestors.
With Morsi gone, they should be reserved in their celebration. Beware of the military; it should not be trusted; lest other militaries may use the coup in Egypt to stage their own. The record of military rule in Africa is not a pretty one.
The military has become the scourge of Africa and the bane of its development. It has ruined and collapsed one African economy and state after another. Nearly all the serious cases of massive looting in Africa occurred under military regimes, as well as the wanton slaughter of the African people. Burkina Faso, CAR, Chad, Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Zaire, etc. – all ruined by military regimes http://bit.ly/TcG1NN
So, what went wrong in Egypt? 3 things went wrong. First, the military is the wrong institution to manage a transition to democracy. Each time the military manages such a transition, they often make a mess of it:
Military dictators simply manipulate the process, create their own parties (Ghana, Uganda and Myanmar),shoo in their favorite parties (Mali, Nigeria) or “civilianize” themselves by shedding military uniforms and donning civilian clothes (Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Niger). Nigeria’s transition by its military dictators was the most egregious.
George Ayittey
General Ibrahim Babangida began the transition in 1985. After frequent interruptions and devious maneuvers, he created exactly two parties for Nigeria in 1992 because the U.S. has two major parties. Then he wrote their manifestoes too: “One a little to the left, the other a little to the right.” And when the June 12, 1993 presidential elections produced a winner he did not like, he annulled the elections altogether.
Next to manage the transition was General Sani Abacha. He called a Constitutional Conference in 1994 with 396 delegates, who were “guests of the military.” A fourth of their number (96) was selected by himself. When in 1997 he finally allowed five political parties to be registered, they all immediately chose him as their presidential candidate!
General Abdulsalam Abubakar was the next to attempt constitutional engineering but he played “hide and seek” with the exercise. For Nigeria’s 1999 transition to democracy, he had TWO Constitutions prepared and held them closely to his chest. Which to release depended upon the election results. If the results went one way, Constitution A would be released; if they went the other way, Constitution B would be released. Thus, Nigerians went to the polls in March 1999 without knowing whether or not there was a Constitution, nor its contents.
The outlandish chicanery was matched by Myanmar’s (Burma’s) military junta of Than Shwe in 2010. The military wrote the Constitution, reserved a quarter of the seats in national and local assemblies for itself, created its own party, Union Solidary and Development Party (USDP), and blocked other parties from participating in the Nov 7, 2010 elections. Then three days before the vote, it declared “victory.” Similarly in Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forced (SCAF) so bungled the transition that street protesters started demanding its resignation.
Second, the hasty transition period in Egypt proved counter-productive. It took the US 13 years (1776-1789) to transition from independence to democratic rule. South Africa took three years. A short transition period – say, 6 months – does not give new parties time to organize while giving old opposition parties an edge – as occurred in Tunisia and Egypt.
Third, a distinction has to be made between a dictator and a dictatorship. After getting rid of the dictator, the dictatorship itself must be dismantled, which requires a whole battery of reforms that must be implemented. Dictators manipulate the Constitution and pack all key state institutions with his supporters and cronies. For a revolution to be sustained, the constitution must be revamped and institutions cleansed of the “nomenklatura.” Sadly, in many countries, real institutional reforms were not implemented, allowing the return of authoritarianism. With the dictatorship still in place, the new ruler simply co-opts or hijacks it to serve his agenda: Egypt (under Morsi). Ethiopia (under Meles Zenawi), Liberia (under Charles Taylor), Uganda (under Yoweri Museveni), Russia (under Putin), Kyrgyzstan (under Kurmanbek Bakiyev), Georgia (under Mikhail Saakashvili) and Ukraine (under Viktor Yanukovich).
I warned in my book, Defeating Dictators (on page 207) that the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are being hijacked and in this article http://nyti.ms/Ip9ARd
To avoid repeating the African adage, Egypt needs to learn from the experiences of otehre countries. Much bloodshed and disappointment were avoided when the transition was managed by a broadly representative body. For example, Benin’s 9-day “sovereign national conference” in Feb 1990 convened with 488 delegates, representing the broad spectrum of Beninois society and elections were held in 1991. South Africa employed the same vehicle – Convention for a Democratic South Africa or CODESA – in July 1991, with 228 delegates and culminated in the election of Nelson Mandela in March 1994. For Egypt and the Arab Spring, a Grand Majlis or a Loya Jirga as was the case for Afghanistan in 2003, would be more appropriate.
Second, serious institutional reform must be implemented to dismantle Mubarak’s dictatorship. The judiciary, the civil service, the electoral commission and even the security forces must be reformed. Otherwise, another rat will hijack the dictatorship and establish his own.