AUTHORITARIAN AFRICAN LEADERS WITH A THIN VENEER OF DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY

ANN GARRISONMAY 30,2015

Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza is seeking a third five-year term in office, despite violent street protest, and a failed coup détat. Nkurunziza was elected by Burundi's Parliament in 2005, and he now claims that the Burundian constitution allows him to run for election twice by voters enjoying "universal suffrage," and the Burundian constitutional court has upheld his claim. The US, EU, and Western media have, nevertheless, relentlessly decried Nkurunziza's decision.

Western powers and press fail to note that neighboring DR Congo's President, Joseph Kabila, was appointed in 2001, not elected by universal suffrage, that Kabila then ran and claimed victory in 2006 and 2011, and that many were killed in election violence both times. They also fail to note that neighboring Rwanda's President Paul Kagame was appointed in 2000, not elected by universal suffrage, and that he then ran and claimed victory in 2003 and 2010, after imprisoning or terrorizing all other viable candidates. Nkurunziza is claiming the same right that Kabila and Kagame claimed, but Western powers and press who didn't blink at their third terms have relentlessly demanded that he step down. This doesn't make Nkurunziza's decision right or wrong or politically wise or unwise. It simply puts his barrage of bad press in perspective.

Why is the US demanding that Nkurunziza step down, after so graciously tolerating both Kabila and Kagame's claims to the constitutional right to be elected twice by universal suffrage? Why has the US made no comment on Kagame's faux people's campaign to have the Rwandan Constitution amended so that he can run for a fourth term, or more likely, for life?

And why hasn't Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's announcement that he will run again in 2016, his thirtieth year in power, alarmed the West? Museveni, the really big "big man" in the region, is already jailing anyone trying to hold a public meeting about electoral reform or boycotting next year's election. In 2011, Museveni had so much money printed to buy the election that it caused drastic inflation in Uganda and inspired the Walk-to-Work protests, during which Human Rights Watch accused security forces of "firing randomly into crowded areas and throwing tear gas at people or into houses."

In an essay published in Global Research, Gearóid Ó Colmáin writes that Nkurunziza has fallen out of favor with the West by striking a deal with a Russian corporation to mine Burundi's nickel reserves, and that the US has engaged in a low intensity campaign to destabilize Burundi and the surrounding region. He blamed foreign funded media, especially private radio stations, for frightening the population to destabilize the country. And, he wrote that Nkurunziza might not be the USA's choice to manage Burundians' memory of their own suffering. "The US government is acutely aware that if the people of Burundi are to know the truth about the US-backed genocide of the Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi, it could jeopardize their foreign policy objectives in the region."

John Bugnacki, writing for the webite of the American Security Project and International Policy Digest, accuses Nkurunziza of following in the footsteps of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang, whom he calls "personalistic, authoritarian leaders with a thin veneer of democratic legitimacy. "

No mention of Rwanda's Kagame or Uganda's Museveni, Nkurunziza's immediate neighbors to the north, both longstanding US allies and "military partners."

- See more at: Authoritarian African leaders with a thin veneer of democratic legitimacy | Black Star News



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