PAUL KAGAME BECOMES A LIFE PRESIDENT [Ludicrous]

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: 'Herrn Edward Mulindwa' muli...@look.ca [Mwananchi] <Mwan...@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 31 October 2015 at 14:23
Subject: [Mwananchi] PAUL KAGAME BECOMES A LIFE PRESIDENT
To: ugandans...@googlegroups.com, Mwan...@yahoogroups.com

 

Rwandan Parliament Makes US Ally and Military Partner, Paul Kagame President for Life

By Charles Kambanda

Global Research, October 29, 2015

 

 

Rwanda has never, since its independence from Belgium, experienced peaceful transfer of power from one “elected” president to another. Each president that grabs power declares himself the only Rwandan capable of ruling. Each regime comes in power because they want to remove the dictator from power and hand the mantle of state power to ” the people.” Change from one regime to another has always been bloody in Rwanda.

In 1994 General Paul Kagame defeated General Habyarimana after a bloody four year civil war. General Habyarimana had made himself ” the father of the nation” and an irreplaceable president of Rwanda. General Kagame and his RPF/A waged the 1990-1994 war because General Habyarimana had closed all the possible venues for peaceful transfer of power. General Kagame and his RPF/A sounded determined to hand power over to ” the people” after the war. Over a million Rwandans perished during the war.

General Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party: More of the same

After the war and massacres that brought Gen Kagame and his RPF/A into power, Gen Kagame’s diagnosis of Rwanda’s problem was ” bad political leadership and clinging on to power. To address this problem, Gen Kagame and his RPF/A wrote the 2003 Rwanda Constitution. Article 101 of the 2003 Constitution provides, inter alia , ” no person shall be president for more than two terms”. Each term is 7 years under the 2003 Constitution of Rwanda.

Gen Kagame’s second and last term under the 2003 constitution of Rwanda is due to expire in 2017. General Kagame claims that no Rwandan is capable of leading the country and ” the people” need him to consolidate his “achievements”.

Constitutional amendment to keep General Kagame in office:

In a bid to legitimize his broad scheme to cling to power, Paul Kagame deployed his brutal security apparatus, at all levels of his administration, to compel ” the people” to petition Parliament to change the law regarding term limits. Millions of Rwandans, including those who cannot read and/or write, “wrote” to Parliament ” begging” for a constitutional amendment. The General then instituted a ” constitutional review commission” which ” consulted” the people before Parliament passed the constitutional review proposal on October 28th, 2015.

The new law of the jungle:

Parliament approved various amendments including Article 167 which provides that: Considering the citizen petitions preceeding [preceding] the coming into force of this revised Constitution that were informed by the nation-building achievements and creation of a sustainable development foundation, the President of the Republic completing the term of office referred to in Paragraph One of this Article may be re-elected for a seven (7) years term of office. The President of the Republic who has completed the term of office of seven (7) years referred to in [ ...] this Article may be re-elected as provided for by Article 101 of this Constitution.

Article 168: Senators Senators in office at the time of commencement. Article 167 comes under a Section termed ” Transitional Provisions”.

Article 101 provides that ” The President of the Republic is elected for a term of office of five (5) years. He/she may be re-elected only once.”

A most unusual law:

Article 167 read together with Article 101 has many implications.

First, the “amendment ” has created an exception for the current president and military commander of Rwanda. Article 101 will be shelved until after seven years – the exceptional term created for him after 2017 – when Kagame will start running for a five year term, renewable only once, giving Kagame a chance to rule for 17 years after 2017. This is confirmation that “some animals are more equal than others ” in this Animal Farm, thereby rendering the constitutional principle of equality before the law null and void.

Second, the law does not mention whether or not, if Kagame died or otherwise becomes incapacitated after 2017 but before 2024, Article 101 would come into force immediately. In any case, a constitutional provision ( the proposed Article 101) that shall not come into force until after 7 years is a most unusual law.

Third, the amendment creates ” transitional provisions” in a constitution without a provisional government. “Transitional provisions” without a transitional government prove that what Kagame’s junta has completed is a constitutional coup, not an “amendment to the constitution,” as they call it.

Charles Kambanda is a Rwandan American attorney, a former law professor at the National University of Rwanda, and an apostate member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, now living in exile in New York City. 

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Charles Kambanda, Global Research, 2015

 

 

EM

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"

 

 

 

 

__._,_.___

---

Posted by: "Herrn Edward Mulindwa" <muli...@look.ca>

---

Reply via web post

•

Reply to sender

•

Reply to group

•

Start a New Topic

•

Messages in this topic (1)

Join us at Mwananchi an African Forum at http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/mwananchi

Visit Your Group

• Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use

.

__,_._,___

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

Why no outrage especially from Kagame’s Western friends? Silent indignation is not enough. The silence is deafening.

 

oa

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[kenneth harrow]

agreed

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[Samuel Zalanga]

The author of the document raised some legitimate issues of concern. But given the world we live in today where American pragmatism and neoliberal globalization have taken over, I will liken the author's concern to the case of complaints against corruption. Corruption can and should be critiqued on moral grounds, no matter what. But some scholars argue that having said that, the major  problem with money gotten through corruption in many countries is that it is not invested productively in the society's economy. It is often either siphoned out of the country or wasted in ostentatious consumption. If the money were to be invested productively, while it will still create inequality and distortion, at least some people will get job. And for many, this is their main concern. We may think it is naive but when you do not have anything to do as with the youth in Africa, this is not something one can ignore just because they live in the West.

I do not see anything surprising actually with the situation in Rwanda. I attended two conferences where two persons who were not Africans, made presentation about Rwanda arguing that in spite of the genocide, there is some significant progress taking place in the country and it is now a sign of hope rather than despiar. Many Africans challenged the guys and the guys were not really trying to promote Kagame but just looking at some empirical evidence. The idea is that the country is trying to become a kind of Singapore or a hub for information technology in the region.

There is one documentary film I watched that I cannot remember now, whether it was Michael Moore's capitalism a love story or "Inside Job" but in the documentary an official of the Wall Street said without apology that an efficient market economy that is functioning is more important than democracy for people. I was not surprise when he said that because I am familiar with the different schools of thought about the market that Alan Aldridge summarizes in his book "The Market."  Here is the summary of the ideas of the group called market populists which I believe is relevant for understanding the silence of the West and the situation in Rwanda:

Market Populism:

a) Market populists see "the market" and "the people" as one and the same.

b) They believe that the market is MORE democratic than any of the formal institutions of democracy: elections, legislatures and government.

c) The market is free of ethnocentric boundaries.

D) The market abstractly sees everyone as the same and having the same desires.

e) The market claims to liberate us all.

f) Market populism presents corporations as being on the side of the people because they respond to the demands and needs of the people.

Market populists claim that if a corporation in a free market becomes a monopoly, it is not an abuse of power but the will of the  people who voted for it with their check books.

"The end point of market populism is to hold that the free market is an achieved democratic utopia" Aldridge, p.47).

In effect, Market populism which is the public relations part of market fundamentalism and neoliberal globalization, believes that everything about democracy is just public relations, because in true sense, they believe that the market is more democratic. The market allows  you to vote with your check book directly. You can vote in an election but once the officers are elected they go to the national capital and share the "national cake." Paid, lobbyist have more access to them than ordinary citizens who voted for them in large numbers. But if you have your check book, you have direct control over your "vote", choice or life. You can get what you want without the risk of a politician who divides and rule and forgets about you.

So from this perspective, and other historical evidence, it is expecting too much for anyone to assume that the West is so deeply concerned about democracy per se. In the "Commanding Heights" documentary, it was the military regime / government of Chile (military dictatorship) that was relied upon to implement neoliberal economic reforms. President Nixon resumed diplomatic relations with China and he sent Henry Kissinger to go in the middle of the night from India to China to arrange the visit when China was officially communist and calling the U.S. the great devil then. Singapore for as long as it has lived has been considered or classified an authoritarian state, but the country is run efficiently and so does the West care? President Clinton and many dignitaries attended the funeral of their founding president. As dependency scholars argue, the West has not permanent friends but permanent interests.

What is happening is what in the development literature is considered the competition or debate between "The Washington Consensus" and the "Beijing Consensus." Many in the ways have resigned to the fact that many developing countries will go with the Beijing Consensus and they not like that. The Washington consensus insists on combining liberal democracy and neoliberal economic policies as the best way forward.

Empirical evidence suggests that this is naive and it does not seem to work as suggested on paper. Amy Chua of Yale Law school wrote a book "The World on Fire" where she provided empirical evidence with case studies from Asia and Africa, that documents how implementing democracy and neoliberal policies do not always work together. Actually, they create a lot of tension because often the group that is politically dominant (numerically) in terms of democratic voting maybe the one far behind and losing in terms of the implementation of neoliberal economic reforms.

Thus the losing group will use their power to take away the opportunities of successful minority entrepreneurs, which will create political instability. Malaysia is a good example. Indonesia, Philippines, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania are all examples. There are successful minorities in all these countries. China refused to go with the approach of the West, and they developed the Beijing Consensus which focuses on promoting economic prosperity while maintaining an authoritarian control of the state. The West criticize that but see how they have rushed to invest in China. Why? Because the China is far more and better governed (notwithstanding Tibet and other cases) than many so-called democratic countries. There has been significant success in getting millions out of poverty even though inequality is widening. In some parts of Africa, they have democracy but both poverty and inequality are either remaining the same or increasing, in spite of economic growth.

Moreover, Herbert Marcuse will argue that this happens in the West through a process a calls repressive de-sublimation. In theory people are free in the West, but the culture industry bombards them with consumerism and sexual excitement to the point, the people become consumed with these and forget about the real workings of the political system and how it marginalizes them. The goal of the culture industry is to control the hearts and minds of people and distract it from focusing on the real issue of life in a democracy.

Today, if you ask many Africans to choose between an authoritarian government that is able to maintain law and order, provide electricity, infrastructure, reduce poverty etc, and a democratic government that just caters for a small percentage of elites who share public funds among themselves while ignoring the provision of public goods etc., they  will go for the efficient authoritarian government. And the West will prefer that.

 The real issue is if Kagame compared to other African leaders is really transforming Rwanda to a point where the people see some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of material prosperity. Do investors feel the country is stable and producing results or making progress along capitalist lines. Western nations and ordinary Africans will prefer Kagame even if he is authoritarian but he is really improving the country forward. If this is the case, to ignore that and be thinking just about democracy is simplistic and naive as it suggests not appreciating the history of what capitalism wants. Capitalism is not primarily committed to democracy. In many cases, democracy even here in the US. some would say is just like a public relations or "crowd control" mechanism to keep the masses calm, and give them an impression that they have a say but the substance of politics remained the same.

There are good reasons to want democracy, but for many Africans, if democracy does not provide concrete dividends, are they going to eat just the idea? Those of us writing from the West sometimes, need to imagine writing from the perspective of villagers in some interior of Africa. Such people do not know what the constitution of their country is all about. They vote but what do they get out of it. IN some cases, their votes are not even counted. They do not benefit much if anything from the government. So if you get a country like Singapore that is authoritarian but very efficient or credible on the indices of a well-run economy, who will be taking seriously the push for democracy that even when laudable in concrete reality, it makes no differences to the millions of the masses in Africa.

Singapore in the past has been characterized as draconian in terms of some of its public order laws but who cares? The real issue is: is it a good place to invest? Is there order, guarantee of property rights etc. Is there good infrastructure etc. Is there good investment in human capital (health and education). If they have that, who will leave that for many African economies where the elites just use democracy is if it is some kind of spiritual or miraculous experience that once you have it, it will change things even when you are doing everything wrong in terms of governing your country well.

There was a time I looked at the human development indicators of Rwanda and found out then that they were better than that of Nigeria. Rwanda went through terrible experience, but it may well be that if Kagame is running the country well and opportunities open for the ordinary masses and investors to trust the place, and there is good infrastructure, good investment in human capital, guaranteed of private property, the West will prefer that than a country where you have Boko Haram, Biafran mobilization, poor infrastructure, declining health care system and educational facilities.

If African countries want democracy to be highly admired, they must ensure that democracy truly produces results and dividends for the masses. For many, the government is a nuisance.

Samuel

--

Samuel Zalanga
Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive #24
Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023

[Bode]

Paul Kagame could eliminate term limits and keep running each time so that as long as he keeps doing a good job and winning through a fair process he would have a legitimate government however giving the immediate past history of genocide in Rwanda, he makes the possibility of war far more likely by imposing himself arbitrarily. Politics is war by other means and if the practice of politics were censored what you have left is war!

[kenneth harrow]

kagame has effectively stifled any meaningful opposition, to the point of jailing the last candidate who had a real chance, ingabire, and making it virtually impossible for other parties to mount campaigns.
other longstanding rulers in africa have also continued to end meaningful democratic elections, like nkurunziza in burundi or biya in cameroon. i celebrate each time a real election takes place, which you can see when an opposition candidate actually wins, as in senegal, although for a long time senghor and then diouf put in place mechanisms to thwart the electoral process.
ken

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

There is more to life and living than economic prosperity. Kagame is loved in the West and in the eyes of many there, he can do little wrong. He has a bloody past though and it is not certain that he is truly born again. The republic of Congo cauldron is still steaming. Kagame having become Rwanda’s president, seems to have chosen to build that country in his own image. Kagame is an acolyte of Uganda’s President Museveni who is all but an undeclared president for life. He seems to have learned all his politics from Museveni. Will Rwanda go the way Uganda has gone? That is the question.

I get the impression that the case made below is that the end justifies the means. So long as the political leader grows the economy, he should remain leader. Kagame may indeed be transforming Rwanda’s economy. Does the manner of this transformation and the real and perceived costs of this transformation to the majority of Rwandans who are not Kagame’s fellow Tutsi not matter?  I will argue that they do. Is there a worse way to transform a country than to exclude an ethnic  majority of the population- Hutus, talk less of the super minority Twa, from the real leadership of the country? Is this not a sure recipe for crises sooner or later? Rwanda’s recent frictional history should be instructive in my opinion.

Kagame as I remember, is an insurgent apparently in politics firstly, to protect his Tutsi people who were the majority of victims of the genocide in that country. Is he setting the stage for history to repeat itself even if not exactly? The lessons of the genocide and its causes should not be lost on him as he makes himself king in all but name. Rwanda has been on that journey- a long-term Tutsi dominated monarchy/government before and that journey did not end well.

The comparison to Singapore may be less apt than it seems. Singapore is a small country. Her population is less fractured and less restive than Rwanda’s. Her late autocratic leader Lee Kuan Yew’s Chinese people are the majority population. Rwanda is therefore different. She has a long history of the minority Tutsi oppressing the majority Hutu. Lee Kuan Yew did not amend the constitution to make himself leader for life I might add.

Kagame and some who speak for him seem to me to believe that man lives by bread alone. It was said a long time ago that it is not so. As important as economic issues are in every county, there are other equally important issues- political, cultural and others. Shared ownership of the instruments and privileges of institutional power is always important. Rwanda may need more political/social engineering that economic engineering at this time.

Kagame is advised to take full account of the short and long term consequences of the political course he has chosen for Rwanda, before he implants it. He may rule and die as president. What happens after, to his beloved Tutsi people, and also Rwanda is another question.

[Adeshina Afolayan]

"Today, if you ask many Africans to choose between an authoritarian government that is able to maintain law and order, provide electricity, infrastructure, reduce poverty etc, and a democratic government that just caters for a small percentage of elites who share public funds among themselves while ignoring the provision of public goods etc., they  will go for the efficient authoritarian government. And the West will prefer that." Samuel Zalanga I like this statement a lot, and it reminds me of one of the thought experiments i challenge my political philosophy students with: Where does political legitimacy derive from--authoritarian performance or democratic procedures? It is always a delight for me to stand back and process the heated debates in the class between those who are sold on the sentiment of democracy being the best form of government; those who think what the people need is just infrastructural benefits, and what matters which type of government makes it happen?; and lastly those who steuggle to untangle the conceptual dilemma between performance and procedure. Democracy has become too sentimental that it clouds analysis. And its cash value, to follow the pragmatists, is becoming suspect in Africa. When we say "democracy is the best form of government," i tell my students, it raises a lot of philosophical problems. Ditto: authoritarian government is anathema. Presently, i have been battling with the conceptual relationship between democracy and constitutionalism. Is that relationship a necessary or contingent one? If contingent, at what point does democracy really become a nuisance or a lame concept without an accompanying framework of legal compulsion? And at a moral level, how do you ensure that democracy becomes a moral force if it does not guarantee performance? It isn't surprising that you will find some Nigerians looking back wistfully and extoling some virtues of past military governments. Some remember that order was imposed, a la War Against Indiscipline (WAI); others remember that some infrastructural benefits accrued to the citizens. A colleague told me recently that he had some Chinese students on a visit to the department, and he was curious about the stability-democracy conundrum. Surprisingly, it wasn't such a dilemma for them because, according to the students, they have so much internalised the stability arguments that they even interjected the presence or absence of freedom into whether there is more stability or less. And stability comes with infrastructural dividends!  Thus, when we talk about democracy and authoritarianism, we should also take note of several contextual and philosophical implications involved. Plato didn't reject democracy for nought. Adeshina Afolayan Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android From:"Samuel Zalanga" <szal...@bethel.edu> Date:Tue, 3 Nov, 2015 at 1:06 PM Subject:Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - PAUL KAGAME BECOMES A LIFE PRESIDENT [Ludicrous]

[kenneth harrow]

the premise on which the statement below is based rests on a binary opposition which is questionable.
like, can't we also have a real democracy that also works reasonably well, and isn't just a plutocracy, which is what democracy is linked to in the binary?
isn't the autocracy inherently unstable?
isn't the platonic benevolent dictator really, ultimately, built on the dictator having to reward his friends--usually the police or military--in order to subvert democratic rule?
are the progressive features, like providing electricity, arguably distorted by the dictator to validate his rule? and if the press is stifled, how can you measure effectively his or her claims? how can you measure public opinion?

the argument simplifies the realities, distorts them, to the point where we are already given the answer by the way the question is framed.
ken

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[Bode]

the option is really between ballot or blood. I don't think there is stability in authoritarian governance. that stability if it exists at all is temporary, and whatever benefits its benevolence offers will be wiped away when a challenge is mounted to its power. this is because authoritarian governments do not and cannot eliminate the will to power as such. thus, those who seek power will each time forcefully overthrow or attempt to overthrow authoritarian regime. it will always end in martial music and bloodbath. Electoral chaos is much better than periodic bloodbath. democracy is primarily about how power changes hand. the option is between ballot or blood. 

[Adeshina Afolayan]

I agree about binary opposition and their distortion of reality. But so does the option between ballot and blood Bode proposes. The reality really is that there must be a possible space between the authoritarian and the democratic. And China stands before my mind as the solid argument for stability we can get. Can we fault the Chinese if s/he finds all s/he wants within such a context? Can we fault the African? If we can achieve the coincidence of performance and procedure, then i am all for it. 

I am intrigued by the reality which Samuel's statement aptly signifies: there are so many "democracies" that ain't performing, and so many autocracies that the people love! What's the middle ground between them? Kagame may have some economic achievement, but as Oga Ogugua pointed out, there are also some cultural and political deficits. But then, if Kagame manages to clear the deficit within a non-democratic regime, should we applaud him? More fundamental still: isn't performance and procedure also possible within an authoritarian regime? Again, i look towards China. And i haven't forgotten Tiananmen. But what does constitutionalism contribute to democracy if not the need for coercive stability?   

 

Adeshina Afolayan, PhD
Department of Philosophy
University of Ibadan

+23480-3928-8429

[Bode]

I think you are describing hegemony. Mao believed in perpetual revolution. He often joined in protest against his own government. This is going back to the whole Cold War debate on what Democracy means and whether the communist party is more representative of the people than western parliaments. Mao's term was "new democracy" So, the communist party would be the first to challenge your description of it as an autocracy. The hegemony of the communist party is different from what Kagame has going in Rwanda. We can predict from now if history is a guide that Kagame has increased the chances of a return to war.

[Bode]

In other words, in China, what we have in theory is a hegemony of an ideology, of the communist party, with its own procedures for the transfer of power, and not really the dictatorship of one individual or group that has no laid down procedure for the transfer of power (but is the cult of personality not dictatorship!?). my point is simple: wherever there is a mechanism for the transfer of power that enjoys broad appeal within a society, the possibility of bloodbath is greatly diminished and wherever that mechanism is undermined, there is violence in the horizon.  

[kenneth harrow]

excellent questions, all, shina.
i know mostly one side, the human rights side, for obvious reasons. i've followed a bit the economic and social; i've been asked to write letters of support for asylum seekers, pretty constantly.
i like your formulation, shina: a possible space between the authoritarian and the democratic.

the word democratic doesn't seem to me to apply terribly well to democratic states that are manipulated. i am not coming across here as a blind advocate for this, nor a realist pragmatist blah blah.
look, the democratic push to force africans to democratize came in the 1980s, as we all know. the results were,what? mixed? a mess in cameroon, but biya survived. pretty good in senegal. probably good for a while in mali? but an absolute total catastrophic disaster in rwanda, a factor that precipitated the genocide. a range, from egypt to tunisia.

and to call so-called democracies that are not at all, like rwanda or burundi (now, not before), etc., is also a farce. inbetweenness? between autocracy and democracy? absolutely, also cameroon; also zimbabwe, and lots of other countries i do not follow.

your linking this to china strikes me as probably wrong, because the conditions are just too different. i'd leave that aside, really. the economic conditions cannot be separated off from the political, right?

i am very shy of accepting strong rules of judgment on these states now. i'd much rather have an informed reading from those closer to the realities. so, nigeria. where does it fall in this conversation? we have all the expertise here to answer, on this list. only a small number can give an informed reading of burundi and rwanda; but what about nigeria? where does it stand in your equations?
ken

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

Are democracies that do not “perform” democracies? I am inclined to answer “No”. Not if a democracy as is popularly described is truly the   ‘government of the people, for the people, by the people’. What happens in many cases is that governments characterized as democracies are anything but. If they were, their purpose and actions would be to continually seek to achieve and advance the common good of all citizens, not mostly government leaders and a privileged select few, at all times. Many of the governments do not pass this test.

Democracy is more than elections, any elections involving a plurality of political parties. It is about free and fair elections. It is about securing the public interest, not private interest shrouded as public interest. It is about electing and empowering accountable  governments whose focal interest,  sincere commitment, and unbounded determination are ensuring the maximum good for all citizens.

Is China a democracy by the above characterizations? Can a government led by an executive president for life be a democratic government/? Everyone must answer for themselves.

Economic prosperity for citizens in a democracy should be a right along with other rights of equal citizenship. It should not be the act of discretionary benevolence of an unaccountable autocratic or other political leader. 

Rwanda has never, since its independence from Belgium, experienced peaceful transfer of power from one “elected” president to another. Each president that grabs power declares himself the only Rwandan capable of ruling. Each regime comes in power because they want to remove the dictator from power and hand the mantle of state power to ” the people.” Change from one regime to another has always been bloody in Rwanda.

• Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use   . __,_._,___

[kenneth harrow]

we need a word like totalitarian in our vocabulary if we are going to talk about autocracies grounded in populism.
europe is moving in that direction; so is the tea party in this country, the leading republicans that i've been calling neo-fascism. there is a totalitarian mode of populism on which mao leaned for the great leap forward and esp the cultural revolution.
god forbid we return to that monstrous phase. all you need to know about it is what people say afterwards, about the nightmare times.
or the east germans about being spied on by members of their own families!
ken

[kenneth harrow]

i don't know how many people follow what is happening in rwanda closely. how much of  police state of fear one would  accept to have the electricity flowing? on the surface, with the economic figures, everything looks neat and clean and impressive.
if one reads amnesty reports, human rights reports, irin reports--and if you really do know the history of east congo and kagame's role in instrumentalizing the fighting, with untold numbers of people dying, then the case might look different
many do fear what bode concludes with. but even without open war, there is a state of repression grounded in fear of police.
who wants to live like that?

ken

On 11/3/15 5:00 PM, Bode wrote:

[kenneth harrow]

further to bode's point: consider cote d'ivoire, after the big man died; consider congo after mobutu. even rwanda, after habyarimana; or mubarak, etc etc. his point is very strong if we really think about all that apres-dictatorship violence

[Adeshina Afolayan]

Oga Ken, Nigeria is a difficult case for political analysis. But Oga Ogugua has given us a good place to begin. First, we have to dispense with calling the Nigerian state a democracy since there isn't any performance trajectory to situate it as such. But then, since 1999 when we situate the coming of democracy, we cannot also say it has a technically authoritarian regime. And it does not stand in between. Of course, there are semblances of democratic institutions without an accompanying democratic ethos and values. We hold elections every four years with all the democratic funfair and fears, and after the elections, democracy closes down, and the people return to their informality. You only hear of "democracy" talk from the elites who have something to gain from the system. Ordinary Nigerians don't talk democracy; they do survival. I spent nine hours queuing for fuel yesterday and all you hear is just that...survival. "i just need five liters to power my generator tonight;" "i need ten litres to do a quick runs from Ojuelegba to Mokola so i can get money to pay my kids' school fees;" "please, allow me to jump in front of your car because i need to get to the hospital;" etc.  And my ordeal at the fuel station raises another issue about "Nigerian democracy": there is no underlying constitutionalism that i believe every true democracy must hang on. It is that authoritarian compulsion of the law and legal sanction that democracy rides on. It is totally lacking in Nigeria, beginning from the top. At the fuel station yesterday, my trauma wasn't only due to the physical strain of queuing for nine hours; it was also from the psychological torture of watching "fellow Nigerians" sneer at your values of not jumping the queue to quickly get the fuel and leave. Even the manager of the fuel station, a small place at that, couldn't manage the situation (which was far from being designated as tense or something). We had law enforcement agents around, but of course they were the first to jump the queue! People listened to my analysis of order and democracy and values, shook their head and drove their cars out of the line right to the front. I became a pathetic sight; an alakowe (book person).  It is here that i insist on constitutionalism as the first basis of any democatic regime. But then, constitutionalism itself doesn't guarantee good governance, but it provides a basis for it. Nigeria is impunity personified. Thus, what we need isn't democracy; it is an authoritarian compulsion that enforces democratic tenets and help us internalise the values.

Adeshina Afolayan Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

From:"kenneth harrow" <har...@msu.edu> Date:Wed, 4 Nov, 2015 at 2:42 AM

[kenneth harrow]

agreed. 100%
i remind people, i come from the great gerrymandered state of michigan. most of us in the majority (democratic) who are run by the minority (republicans) feel cheated in all congressional elections, in all elections dependent on these gerrymandered districts. and then, tell me about Citizens United.
democracy? what can we say?
ken

[Samuel Zalanga]

You and others seem to see the problem with democracy only in other places e.g., China, Rwanda etc. On a very serious note and with due respect, I will like anyone who cares to review the following documentary films in order to appreciate what they think is true democracy in the U.S. They will encounter highly respected men and women in this country who have taken time to pay attention to what is happening at the grassroots level and on that basis, explain the difference between what people assume about U.S. democracy and how it is really operating. These are people in the trenches, not those who rely only text book definition of a good democracy. The documentary films are:

1. GERRYMANDERING

2. HACKING DEMOCRACY (HBO documentary).

3. UNCOUNTED

4. ELECTORAL DYSFUNCTION

5. RECOUNT: THE STORY OF THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

6. PATRIOCRACY

All the people talking about democracy based on text book or academic definition should square that with how democracy functions in the U.S. concretely and then see how it will work effectively in countries that have in many respects less resources. It is not wrong to start with the academically defined ideals of democracy but we should proceed to the trenches and see how things work.  Even in ancient Greece, their democracy was full of contradictions. They denied many citizenship, and the democracy survived by colonizing other human beings. Socrates was sentenced to death through a "democratic process" that was not inspired by the pursuit of justice but envy and hate. This means democracy is not necessarily incompatible with the promotion of hate and envy, which have other consequences on society.

I will surely want a functioning democracy, but what I mentioned about people being more concerned about conditions that guarantee them their welfare is well-documented. There is a Nigerian Professor who wrote a preface to one edition of this book written by Professors  A. B. Assensoh and Yvette Alex-Assensoh: :

"African Military History and Politics: Ideological Coups and Incursions, 1900 - Present." I forgot his name, but he made a very important point when he said the greatest dictator in Africa is "POVERTY." Many people in this forum did not or have never had an encounter with POVERTY. I am not blaming or accusing them. But such an encounter if it is a serious one, can change one's perspective. I am sorry to say that poverty is the worse type of dictator of a human being's life. It takeover your mind, body and soul. It can kill. It can dehumanize you. I experienced it when growing up.

I will argue that because of poverty, the average intelligence of many Africans is lower than what it should be. I say so because all the conditions discussed in the literature that help in nurturing a person's intelligence and enabling it to flourish are negated by poverty. Poverty is a serious problem in Africa. In many respects, it is chronic poverty.  It is good to have democracy but I still maintain that if democracy will not produce true dividends that address the basic needs of human beings, such people will prefer authoritarian regimes than that.  Of course there are different types of democracies. The classification ins there in the literature. The substance of majoritarian and proportional democracy are for instance different even in developed countries.

Note that even under colonial rule which we describe as oppressive, there were many areas of Africa where people's day to day lives were not directly impacted by colonial rule becasue of indirect rule. By and large most of them continued with their normal lives. Of course in the case of Nigeria, Lagos was a colony. IN the same way, there are many authoritarian regimes that often in terms of the day to day functions, people pursue their normal lives and they do not notice any serious or notable difference. Of course the elites who are trying to compete for power will not experience that probably. For those that are from Nigeria, I will encourage them when they visit the country to visit some rural people or ordinary communities and ask them about how democracy is helping them. I did that and democracy for many ordinary Nigerian is organized robbery and deception. There is no emphasis on the provision of public goods; getting something depends on personal access or patronage which if you are not part of the machine, you will suffer.

 I was in Kenya two years ago and spoke at the chapel of a boarding school at Kibera. I was touched by the determination and maturity of the young men. But one of them told me that things have not been working, whether it is democracy or the simplistic idea that prayers are working, when people continue to do the wrong thing everyday. If anyone here wants democracy to be sincerely embraced, they should rather invest their energy in examining what can distort democracy and undermine it from helping people to address their basic needs. This is the great challenge.

 In my assessment, we will be underestimating and disrespecting the rationality of ordinary Africans, if we just assume that they should embrace democracy for its own sake when it is not working towards truly addressing their basic needs and human dignity. Indeed, we should be surprise if they did that, when it is not working for them. What is wrong with that. Is democracy God or their grandfather? It is about the substance of the political process, and not some general sweet claims. This challenge today in Africa is not an academic one of just making a case for democracy without substance or dividends. The challenge  is a practical and moral question. It is not just about having a good constitution. It is about the mechanisms of getting the results of good governance that creates an enabling environment for citizens to pursue their aspirations. If Kagame as an authoritarian leader can provide that, Rwanda will do better than African countries that have democracy but doing nothing to promote the living conditions of their people. This is not making a case for authoritarianism, but it is about observing how things operate on the ground. It will be unfortunate for anybody or any country to think of making their president more or less permanent like in Zimbabwe. But note that the 11th hour on Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America, after more than 200 years of democracy and Enlightenment and more than 2000 years of Christian teaching of love. But it sounds very uncaring to just tell people to go for democracy when it is not addressing their needs. Just look at the statistics of poverty or income inequality in the U.S. for decades and then ask  yourself, where did democracy go?

 I remember Winston Churchill saying democracy is the worse form of government but for the others. I am not against democracy, but freedom of expression is not enough because it is misleading. Check the documentary film "The Persuaders" and see how corporate media manufactures truth. How can one have true freedom of expression in a media system that is dominated by corporations with their own corporate agenda and often they want to manipulate people's thinking. You may have the formal freedom to express yourself but there is no guarantee that your voice will be heard. The authors of the book "Poor People's Movement" based on U.S. history show that the democratic system under normal circumstances ignores the poor. It is only when the poor or socially marginalized manage to do something so crazy that they draw public attention and then some of the elites pay attention and start thinking of making concession. Otherwise the system just ignores them.

I will subsequently send information that I will encourage all those who want to pursue this issue seriously to read. I want them to answer one question: why with all the democracy in the U.S., yet, over the years there has not been only widening social inequality but the bottom fifth or so of the population have lost grounds in terms of what they earn as part of national income for decades. Is that what democracy should be or are we also experiencing "repressive de-sublimation?"  Meanwhile the few at the top have become even richer. If democracy has CONSCIENCE per se, and after more than 200 years, why can't its conscience force it to amend these ugly realities that clearly indicate that American "democracy" is not working for all.

We can start with academic definitions of democracy or our personal wishes, but for me as a social scientist and sociologist in particular, empirical data and reality is very important. Whatever I believe as a starting point I will check the empirical world to see whether it holds.

I am also amaze at how some people embrace the talk about democracy in a very simplistic way and ridicule authoritarian regimes. Let me even push an argument further. The U.S. government especially in the South was up to 1964 an authoritarian regime, with rigid social structure based on what looks like a caste system. In theory it is a democracy, in practice, certain people were denied civil rights because of rigidity in the social structure. Women were denied access to certain spheres of the society. Blacks suffered segregation. Laws denied Blacks their rights. The U.S. presumably started making effort to become a true democracy since 1964 and unfortunately, when you watch the documentaries above, there is a silent takeover of citizens rights by corporations and ruling class interest. If it were not because of the push back of some civil society groups, the situation would have been worst.

I will encourage anyone interested to explore Herbert Marcuse's concept of "REPRESSIVE DE-SUBLIMATION"  which he developed to characterize a situation where people on the surface are free, but in reality, through the process of the way the system operates, they are repressed. The average American citizen has no time to figure out what is truly happening in the country. Even some professors do not. They are too busy. The ordinary American is bombarded with information and to even know the truth he or she will spend an inordinate amount of time to do that, and the system keeps him or her extremely busy working many hours for sake of increasing productivity, paying the bills etc, such that he or she is so tired. When he or she is tired, the little free time he or she has is spent resting or looking for entertainment provided by the same corporate system that kept him or her busy. The corporate media analyzes his or her mind with some lifestyle consumption that encourages him or her to work harder until they die pursuing something called "The American Dream" which for many has become a nightmare. C. Wright Mills long ago talked about how the media conditions the citizen on what to expect, what not to etc. etc. There is nothing I have said here in critique of American democracy that Robert K. Merton did not say in his theory called "Social Structure and Anomie." I read it as an undergraduate and thought he was calling for a socialist revolution, but the author of the piece said, it was just a liberal critique of American social structure.

Samuel

[Samuel Zalanga]

Here are two documents that were internally circulated within CityGroup analyzing the kind of social structure that characterizes American democracy and capitalism and indeed that of other countries in the global economy.

 This is not a document that was intended for the general public. But just read the first two or three pages of the document and you will see how even though CitiGroup would be considered politically conservative, they are yet, more incisive in admitting without hesitation that the United States and some other countries are not democracies but plutocracies.

 It is amazing that some of us are just seeing the possibility of plutocracy in Rwanda when conservative bankers have done their analysis and concluded that we are living in the U.S. in a plutocracy. Unfortunately, they do not see it as a moral / ethical issue or problem. For them, the main concern is how can they use that information to enhance their business success. They predicted that the rich will continue getting richer at the expense of labor.  You do not have to go to Africa or Rwanda to get elites that just care for themselves.

I am sharing this not because I have resigned to plutocracy or authoritarianism. For me, as someone who grew up poor, I want a political system that not just in theory but in practice, attends to people's basic needs and promote their human dignity in a wholesome way. I do not believe that neoliberal capitalism or liberal democracy in it is simplistic way of thinking is like going to address this. The path forward is not easy and as Piketty said, each nation will have to figure its won path.  Authoritarianism can work if the leader is disciplined and committed wholeheartedly to the people, otherwise, it is going to lead to failure, just as democracies that ignore the yearnings of their people do end up in failure. For more on democracy and authoritarianism and their possible role in economic development, please see:

Gerard Roland, Development Economics, Chapter 9

​Happy reading of Citigroup Plutonomy Documents​

Samuel

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

Thank You SZ.

My thinking is that it is not possible to have a meaningful conversation on democracy if there is no agreement on what democracy means hence my use, of “government of the people … by the people” as an acceptable working definition of it. I stated did I not, that many governments in many so-called democracies do not seem to me, to pass the test implied in the above definition. My stated position was that the dividends of democracy are a right along with other rights of equal citizenship in a democracy. It still is. I do not believe that the rights should be the gratuitous gifts to citizens, from a benevolent, autocratic political leader for life, such as Kagame seems to want to become. Ken identified some of the consequent costs of such benevolent political leaderships in an earlier posting of his. I will argue that in politics, the end seldom justifies the means.  

It seems to me therefore, and respectfully I might add,  that you may have misunderstood the true content my posting below. You may wish to read it again.

I do not see that we have a significant disagreement.

 

oa

[Samuel Zalanga]

Dear OA,

Your position on Kagame is something that I absolutely agree with. Using Plato's tripartite conception of the human person, I would not want my appetitive desires to take control over my soul and reason. And so this question of dictatorship or authoritarianism is something that takes place even at the individual level, and to me it is a kind of distortion. I will argue that many politicians in Nigeria for instance seem to be free but their appetitive desires have become dictators in their lives like Kagame wants to be in Rwanda. These politicians may not be dictators but their negligence has caused the death of many, even though it is not a genocide like Rwanda's

My argument is a nuanced one that is based on the data. But more relevant to what you are saying, even the concept of citizenship is problematic today. WE can talk about citizenship as it is done in political science text books. But from the literature dealing with empirical reality, there has been shift in elevating the status of the consumer over and above that of  the citizen through the backdoor. Citizenship even in the U.S. is not enough to guarantee one's welfare if it is not combined with an effective purchasing power, which often is achieved through one's status in the marketplace.

For example, people can have non-immigrant visa in the U.S. (i.e., not citizens), but if they have an effective purchasing power, they will live a decent life while many American citizens, who have all the rights they need, but because they are in strict economic sense "surplus people" live without accommodation or assured means of feeding themselves or having their medical needs taken care of.

 Under neoliberal globalization, on paper citizenship is still considered important, but in reality, having an effective purchasing power as a consumer gives you more voice, in so far as one is not a criminal. So even if we try to build the discussion on citizenship, the foundation of that conception in today's world is not so strong if we pay attention to the empirical world.

I agree that we are not too different, if at all, as I have said above, but there are some concerns that I have. Take for instance even the cost. If anyone does a serious examination of the cost of American democracy to the ordinary citizen, it is huge. But we never bother to focus on that. More importantly., after spending some time teaching Western humanities, I will argue vehemently that, all civilizations in world history are built on the back of some people. The only question is, whether the benefits of the civilization are equitably shared or some people pay the price for the creation and maintenance of the civilization disproportionately while others milk it. This is also a legitimate question.

 In many ways, Third World labor subsidizes middle class living standard in the U.S. or the West. I do not have time to explain that in detailed here but there is evidence through unequal exchange in trade and investment that this happens. The only debate is how different scholars explain it or explain it away.

And one way we can get out of this is that we should organize a revolution to wrestle such power from persons like Kagame or Nigerian politicians who are presumably democratic but never treat the uplifting of the welfare of the people as a passionate issue. . This is a possibility, and sometimes I do think like this is the only option for the poor. But then when one looks at the free rider problem in revolution, he or she wonders how it will work for many in Africa. The cost of the revolution is high and risky, but the if it succeeds the benefits will be a public good. That is why many will remain indoors hoping that when the revolution succeeds, they will benefit from it when it becomes a public good. Many want to enjoy the benefits of a revolution but do not want to risk their lives. I pray that there will be enough people willing to sacrifice, if for nothing, to persistent effort to improve the systems and elevate the dignity of humans beings..

Neither you nor me are supporting Kagame. But the choices that many Third World people make are under parameters different from ours. All rationality they say is bounded. I remember reading carefully research my economic anthropologists on the rationality of peasants which made a lot of sense compared to formal economists' position, which dismisses peasants as stupid people who refuse to change.

For anyone, not just Kagame to think of becoming a president for life, at least for me, suggests some serious problem even in the mind of the individual. but I know coming across some serious debate and concern expressed in the New Yorker magazine about how many Westerners are afraid that the Beijing Consensus may become more popular in the developing world than the Washington Consensus, thereby eroding western influence on the developing world. The problem is that even if we have authoritarian leaders, they may not all be like the late Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. And I read some material, a chapter in a book to be precise about the Tunisian Arab Spring and was so disappointed with the way the  youth were treated at the end. They gallantly fought for democracy but the result was a kind of anti-climax.

Thank you very much.

Samuel

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

SZ,                    

Hello again,

A citizen may be a consumer. A consumer may not be a citizen. The distinction is important if citizenship rights are not to be confused with consumer/marketplace rights. Equal citizenship rights mean no citizen has rights that any other citizen do not have. All citizens for example,  have equality of opportunity to choose, work for, and find happiness within the law, without let or hindrance of other citizens. There is however no guarantee of the equality of outcomes. The equality of outcomes in other words, is not a citizenship right.

I agree that the state should strive to alleviate and if possibly eliminate poverty. This state in my opinion, could not ensure effective purchasing power (EPP) whatever that means. EPP is not a citizenship right. Citizens needs and wants are different. One citizen’s EFP may not be another’s EFP. It is therefore not a feasible objective for the state.

A responsible democratic government will strive to ensure a minimum standard of welfare for its citizens. Is that standard necessarily or sufficiently guaranteed by EPP? I do not think so. I would argue that it is not reasonable to expect the state to guarantee welfare equality. A more reasonable and feasible expectation in my opinion is that the state guarantees a minimum standard od welfare for all citizens.

I agree that it is well to pay “attention to the empirical world”. We must do so in congruence not otherwise however..

[Ugo Nwokeji]

Well-said, Ogugua - spelt out like A B C.

Ugo

G. Ugo Nwokeji

Director, Center for African Studies

Associate Professor of African American Studies
University of California, Berkeley
686 Barrows Hall #2572
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel. (510) 542-8140
Fax (510) 642-0318

Twitter: @UgoNwokeji

Facebook: facebook.com/ugo.nwokeji

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/profile/view?id=243610869

[Samuel Zalanga]

OA,

One last comment. hank you very much. I understand full well all that you have said about citizenship rights. But what you wrote below makes me even have more concern given my strong interest in political sociology. We all have limited time and as for me, I am heading to Nigeria next week, and so I have to be wise with my time. Still I believe it is worthwhile even for the sake of greater inter-disciplinary hermeneutical understanding to to respond to some specific observations and assertions you have made. Let me highlight my concerns below please.

1.THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CITIZEN AND CONSUMER: In my view, this distinction is just conceptual, a kind of heuristic device, but in terms of concrete reality, the two are inseparable in a functioning capitalist economy. The citizen is a human being and for him or her to maintain his or her status as a living being, he or she needs to consume. For the citizens to consume, they have to have effective purchasing power. Without the consumer in today's capitalist society, there will be no enough taxes to be raised to maintain the state, and maintain the life or standard of living of the idealistic citizen you are thinking of. To appreciate how corporations shelter their taxes, check the PBS documentary film: "TAX ME IF YOU CAN."

 Moreover if the citizen is going to be a consumer in a capitalist society, there are a lot of people who will ambush him. The citizen's body and consciousness will be a crucible for different contestations. The market wants to control the citizen's body, mind and consciousness, just as the state and God want to. The question of whether the citizen can maintain his or her idealistic status as you presented it here is not guaranteed and there are many reasons to believe many of the citizens will not be able to do so. And if you are patient to read the work of Marcuse again, you will see that one of the main concern he had in "One Dimensional  Man" was how in advanced capitalist societies, even during his time, the substance of citizenship has been corrupted and subverted or undermined by consumerism or the market. That is a perspective.

2. SIMPLISTIC CONCEPT OF EQUALITY: There are numerous concepts of equality in the social sciences and in a conversation like this, one needs to be nuanced. Here are some: a) Ontological Equality; b) Formal Equality; c) Equality of Opportunity; d) Equality of Condition; e) Equality of Outcome.  I do not have the time to explain each, but they do not mean the same thing. The concept of equality you seem to be using and envision in a decent human society is the "equality of opportunity."  But equality of opportunity simply means, giving people the opportunity to compete to become unequal under presumably fair laws. The main concern of equality of opportunity which is rooted in a bourgeois vision of society, which many tend to ignore, is not to create a just and egalitarian society. In many respects it is better than what existed under feudalism.  Their main concern in this kind of equality is a society whose inequality is legitimate, no matter the consequences. You can fill all the libraries of  your country with books on equal opportunity while inequality is widening as we have seen in the U.S. Thus, people will compete under presumably fair rules, but whatever results that come out of the competition is considered legitimate. There will be winners and losers.

In a society that emphasizes this type of equality, the ultimate goal is a meritocratic society, which Michael Young in his book that is a social satire "The Rise of the Meritocracy" ridicules it in his dystopian book. In a true meritocracy, based on equal opportunity, people earn whatever they get or have. And the smartest people will be at the top and those that are dumb will be at the bottom of any social organization. My students often laugh when they hear that.

The problem is that even if people earn something based on merit, in terms of how societies function, we have no reason to believe that simply because they merit something, they are more ethical and moral. As public choice theorists would say, even if they merit their position, they may still be concerned about their self interest. Moreover, equal opportunity is not concerned about historical injustice. Often they just start somewhere and tell people to compete based on merit ignoring the historical injustice that some have suffered.

President Lyndon Johnson gave a speech at the 1965 commencement of Howard University (https://online.hillsdale.edu/document.doc?id=286)  where he critiqued what one might refer to as the simplistic view of equal opportunity because he said, it is not fair to have Black people live under oppression for hundred of years and then you sign the civil rights act and just tell them to go and compete and they will be ranked based on merit.  Those who are truly committed to equal opportunity i.e., presumably American liberals, have insisted on the need for equality of condition to support equality of opportunity.

Equality of condition is concerned about creating a level playing field. Without a level playing field, equal opportunity just treats unequal people equally, it is a rigged system. If by equality you mean citizens having equal opportunity, I think there are great limitations in this way of thinking. Indeed, equal opportunity in the way it thinks of citizenship is heading toward Robert Nozick's libertarianism as enunciated in State, Anarchy, and Utopia. You want minimal government that will treat all fairly, and any result that comes out of the competition maybe unfortunate but not unfair. But inequality does affect how citizenship is experienced in substantive ways if the goal of your analysis is not some abstract citizen. IN so far as equal opportunity is concerned just about legitimate inequality, it has little to offer in terms of how the emerging inequality of citizens as in the U.S. from the late 1970s to date, when the welfare state experienced great assault, impacted the substantive experience of citizenship. Indeed, without being concise about what you mean by equality of opportunity, you are not making a great effort to deal with substantive conditions of citizenship in my assessment.

c) CONSTRAINTS TO CITIZENSHIP: For a citizen to function effectively in a liberal democratic state, he or she should have a job, pay taxes, and be educated enough to hold the government accountable. If the citizen does not have a job, it seriously limits his or her independence as he or she will be on welfare and a ward of the state. People on welfare are citizens but their substantive economic situation limits their ability to seriously hold the state accountable because they are dependent on it. Thus, work gives the citizen some leverage over the state, so that he or she can participate effectively. Moreover, if the citizens because of their economic condition or situation cannot be fully educated and they live in a neoliberal state that privatizes the cost or access to education, they may remain ignorant, not because they are dumb but  because of the lack of opportunity. This is why most of the person who led the movement that help in transforming the lives of those who are citizens but on welfare, and not educated to understand the complexity of the system, are often persons of relative privilege but that have decided to commit class-suicide by helping the masses.

Citizens may have rights on paper but if they do not have an independent way to support themselves, it limits their ability to effectively participate in governance. One reason why there are no many strong civil society organizations in Africa is because in many countries, the great majority of the employees are government workers. This limits their ability to challenge sate excesses.

4) LIBERAL DEMOCRACY WITHOUT A MARKETPLACE? In the way that the leading scholars of liberal democracy conceptualized democracy, the marketplace is an integral part of their conceptualization and not an aberration. Many of them would think that there is a symbiotic relationship between a capitalist marketplace and liberal democracy. At least this is what is implied in the Washington Consensus. Takeaway the marketplace, it is like you removed a key foundation of liberal democracy for the proponents. The market is an essential component of the social construction of citizenship in a liberal democracy. There is a new world order that has eroded and continue to erode that concept of citizenship good as it is on paper. The market and state have fused themselves to discipline and redefine the meaning of citizenship.

5) CITIZENSHIP WITHOUT EFFECTIVE PURCHASING POWER: I am not sure what that means in a capitalist society other than you saying that either these people will be on welfare or on the streets. A component of a capitalist economy which we all presume in this discussion and especially in the libertarian tradition which you seem to be analytically comfortable with, is that there must be a willing seller and a willing buyer. So if the state has no role of helping to guarantee any outcome, how are those citizens going to operate. Capitalist accumulation is in many ways guaranteed or made possible by the state in liberal democracies if you check the laws and procedures. There is what we can even call corporate wealthfare.  Are the people  going to migrate or what? They either have to have something of value to sell or have to have the money to buy something which means they have to work. And with outsourcing and technological innovation, many of these citizens are rendered unemployed in western nations. They have their labor, they are ready to work, but it is not easy to find work, because their fellow citizens who are investors see them and say they are too expensive and they will invest in another place where they will get higher rate of return.

If they do not outsource to lower cost labor and low regulation country, they will introduce a robotic technology that will eliminate jobs. When all industries rationally pursue this strategy, this will result in what Weber calls, the irrationality or rationality. Even if the industrialists produce the goods, with high unemployment, where will they sell the goods. Will this not slow down the economy? I agree with you and based on sociological analysis, we cannot create a society where everyone is equal, but by the same token it will be socially irresponsible to ignore the question of inequality. Widening inequality has so many socially damaging consequences on society. It is Utopian to assume that the mere existence of inequality is not problem in so far as someone rights was not violated i.e., the libertarian position. Once inequality crosses a certain threshold it will have serious damaging consequences on society.

6. NEEDS AND WANTS ARE DIFFERENT?: Long ago, when I was on sabbatical and decided to focus on neoliberalism, I arrived at a conclusion that has bearing on this observation  you made. The only way you can arrived at this position is that you have probably not been very interested in how the market and consumption is taking place. Here is my explanation. At one point, I came to realize that when Maslow came up with his hierarchy of needs, it seems like U.S. society was very restrained in consumption. Thus there was a clear idea of needs and once the basic needs were satisfied people will move on to pursue higher order needs.

But if you observe what the culture industry is doing (as per Herbert Marcuse's analysis) and what the Persuaders (advertisers) are doing, you will realize that the only way consumer capitalism as we know it today can survive in America is to blur the boundary between needs and wants. What is really taking place is that there are Americans who never want some citizens to move up form lower order needs to higher order needs. People pursuing higher order needs are probably going to be a threat to a plutocratic system. So the idea is you keep them busy consuming and never satisfied. If they satisfy what you refer to as 'needs" then the culture industry will persuade them by converting  some wants into needs, and so now they cannot move up. The basket of needs will continue to expand by converting wants. There is no sense of contentment. Many of the things you consider needs today were wants long ago, and so the boundary between the two is no more as clear as you want to convey it. Just spend some time and observe what I am describing. And this kind of juvenilization of life is taking place even in the church (see; "The Juvenilization of American Christianity" by Butler.

7) THE STATE GUARANTEEING MINIMUM STANDARD OF WELFARE: This reminds me of those Christians who quote Jesus saying the poor are always going to be with you or us. In effect, keep them there. As far as you are concerned, you anticipate some people to remain permanently on welfare. Should we not ask why this is the case? Is their existence necessary as  a reserve army of labor with all its economic consequences? And is the state neutral as an institution. In any case where will the state get the money to do that?

 If some are going to work and pay taxes and then the money is used to maintain a minimum standard of living for others, you will end up with a bifurcated society. This will have serious implications for the politics and political participation in such a society. Politicians will mobilize those paying taxes against those on welfare as it happened during Ronald Reagan. He persuaded some democrats who were part of the New Deal Coalition to become republicans but they call them Reagan Democrats. Once you are a ward of the state, it limits your capacity to play your role as a citizen. And then now you are back to square one. For the state to perform this role very well in a capitalist, it has to ensure a dynamic economy, and that means the market becomes central to the modern capitalist state performing its role, which reinforces my earlier observation that to think of a functioning liberal democracy without seeing the existence of the market as central is problematic.

8. THERE HAVE BEEN LONG HISTORY Of DISCOURSES ON THE MARKET: There has been long tradition of suspicion about the relationship between commerce (read capitalism) and the state or society. This tradition is called "civic republican tradition" and one can trace it back to Aristotle. Aristotle was concerned that in the context of the Greek City States, citizens were expected to fully and unreservedly be loyal to their cities and served it. But he noted that those engaged in commerce, had no idea of what was enough to accumulate, which leads to distortion in aspirations or desires. But more than that, because they make a lot of their money outside the city state through trade, their loyalty to their city cannot be guaranteed.

This issue came up in Samuel Huntington's book "Who Are We? There is a place in the book where he said that wealthy Americans are less patriotic than Americans who have to stay here and have to work here. Because they have to stay and work here, if there is no work, they will suffer. But the capitalist investor sees the whole world as his or her domain of operation. They invest globally and so they are not so parochial in terms of just focusing on America. He is not saying that they are rebellious but based on their self, economic / social interests, which is global because of the nature of their investment, he contrasted them other workers. IN the medieval period, the church was concerned that commerce can capture the consciousness of a person and even distort his or her faith. All these mean that a dynamic capitalist economy may undermine the concept of citizenship in the traditional way you thought of it because the rich will look more alike than the rich in other countries rather than the ordinary citizens of their  own country. They may have the same citizenship but the substantive meaning of that citizenship is different for them. Dangote in Nigeria is a citizen but the substantive experience of his citizenship is different from that of a peasant.

9) PRESIDENT BUSH AND HOW THE MARKET AND CONSUMERISM ARE THE NEW WAYSTO EXPRESS YOUR CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM:

You may have forgotten this, but after 9/11, President Bush said that Americans should go out and shop in order to express their love for America or their citizenship, and in that way shaming Alqaida. Many people took note of that. Of course what he did not pay attention to is that the market can divide us just as it can unite us. Another part of the civic republican tradition is to grow your economy, consume a lot and express the greatness of your country. Again, it is impossible to separate the liberal democratic idea of the state  from the market. Bu the market is very evangelical. Just as the nation wants the loyalty of the citizen, similarly the market and consumerism want to colonize he human body, soul and desire. This is why religion, the state and the market are all competing for the same body. Thus the human body has become a political terrain and a crucible.

10.  THE LAW IS NEVER NEUTRAL: Some laws are better than others but it is fair to say that even where laws tend to be very fair, they are a reflection of the balance of power and forces in society. Whether it is in ancient India, China, Greece Britain or Africa, laws tend to reflect the power structure of a society or sociologically the social structure of society. It is in this respect that we should never take the law as if it is made in heaven and sent down us. Many of the laws we have today that protect our rights came as result of organized struggle by civil society groups. Without such muscle flexing, the laws will not be there. I find this book: "The Road From Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective" interesting in documenting how the neoliberal state assaulted the welfare state and many of the civil society groups that were balancing political power of the richer and powerful in society.

To conclude, I feel like your conception of state and society seems to not pay great attention to those at the bottom of the pyramid and you gave reasons for that. Time will tell. I have to stop. Thank you.

Samuel

[Bode]

It is interesting that Shina has depicted in his description of the long queues at the gas station the condition that is often cited by dictators and autocrats as the condition of their legitimacy and necessity. This is the condition of disorder. Well, if we want Kagame to become another Stalin, we must remember that Stalin killed as many Soviet peasants as died in WWII in the name of order and "performance." He gave Russia what she wanted, modernization, but at what cost? When he visited his mother at the height of his glory, the mother had told him she wished he had gone through with the seminary school to become a priest rather than become the monstrous head of the soviet empire. he wept like a boy. there are those who claimed Stalin became so paranoid that he killed his own wife at the end.  All dictators are monsters. There is order through stability and there is order through violence. We should be careful what we wish for.

[Bode]

Samuel,

Let me add to the thorough elucidation that you have performed here by simply stating that we are witnessing the use of the term "citizen" evolve as the replacement of the term "people" in the search for the concept that would legitimize and authorize certain forms of political discontent and agitation. I am thinking of Giorgio Agamben, "What Is a People?" in Means without End: Notes on Politics, how he described the origin of the term "the people" as a tool of political blackmail and legitimation by the emergent bourgeoisie. I'm afraid that because of the nature of the service to which this term is now being deployed, it cannot permit any nuanced analysis of the classical conceptions of the term as you are painstakingly doing here.

Bode

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

I agree.

Short term gain for long term loss. At what cost indeed.

Why did Stalin believe that his way was the best and only way to make the Soviet Union the great power that she became? Is Kagame’s way the only and best way forward for Rwanda? Why is Kagame so sure it is? He must be it seems to me, an ambitious, arrogant,  insecure, megalomaniac. Why else would he believe that he is the best president his country could have in his life time.

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

SZ,

 

The State lives off taxes, fees, and other income. Tax is paid only by individual and groups that  are eligible to pay- have taxable income. No taxable income, not tax to pay.  In some cases, a taxpayer (businesses for example), may qualify for a refund of some past taxes paid. The payment of taxes is therefore a qualified obligation of citizens. That a citizen does not pay tax should and does not detract from their rights to participate in the governance of the State just as the payment of tax does not and should not enhance the participation of a citizen in the governance of the State. Participation is a right that may or may not be exercised by the citizen as they please. The market or effective purchasing power may not be fairly blamed for this choice.

It is not in all cases that a State is dependent on the consumption activities of citizens for tax revenue. Nigeria would be a much poorer country if she relied on taxes paid by citizens and locally owned businesses. Her tax collection efficiency is poor, very poor. The bulk of her tax revenue comes from foreign companies in the oil sector.

The world is a competitive, complicated place. Opportunities may be plentiful but resources including knowledge and skills can be scare. Greed and self-interest are real. People and groups try to take advantage of each other. The State’s job is not to change the world such that it becomes what apparently it was not designed to be. Its job is to control/moderate/manage the dynamic of the many interactions that inevitably cross paths. This is why the State has coercive and suasion powers which make it the ultimate arbiter and regulator. Different people have different opinions on how much of and when, the powers should be exercised by the State.

Equality of opportunity is always a worthy aspiration and any law that is enacted to enforce it should be appreciated. There may be historical advantages that work against the full access to opportunities by all citizens. When that is the case, the State should know to  take measures to enhance access to access to equal opportunity. Affirmative action policies and programs, price discounts, and  supplementary investment in historically disadvantaged communities are examples. Will there ever be a  “level playing field” in the ordinary sense of the term? I doubt that there will be. What is possible in my opinion is a more level playing field. The State and all citizens can help to actualize this through the development and implementation of education, enlightenment, health, and other programs, and full employment policies among others.

Meritocracy is altogether a good thing. More people should be encouraged and supported to improve themselves. People have different talents, some more or better than others. Is there ever going to be a time all will contribute equally to any and every thing? No. People need incentives to continually contribute more than others to grow patrimony. Extra compensation is one such incentive. Should this extra be so excessive that the less talented are worse of? I would say No. The State has a role here but this role may not be such that the patrimony shrinks rather than grows. Some inequality including of income must be tolerated. The State works because everyone who can contribute does so in the right measure- fairly.

When President Johnson  spoke on historical injustice and equality of opportunity at Howard University, he was not telling anyone what they did not know already. He was trying to change minds. That speech and other speeches and actions of Johnson and others changed the U.S.A. in some ways.  The country is a fairer on for them. Will some continue to pay the price of historical injustices? Yes of course. Can the State ameliorate them? Yes of course. Will they end because of  State legislation alone? No of course.  More hearts and minds should be made to see “the light”. As I write, new injustices that overtime will become historical injustice may be shaping up. Life is what it is. All injustice cannot be legislated or regulated away. People and businesses break the law

There will always be constraints on citizenship. Some are external to the citizen. Others are not. The state usually guarantees citizenship rights  with some constraints. In some countries for example, convicted felons lose their right to vote in elections. There are cases also where the citizen in spite of their civic education, shirk their right to vote for example, for the reason of a lack of interest or despair. The state cannot legislate away, a citizen’s choice to be ignorant or mindless of their rights.

One may have been born into  poverty. Poverty may befall one because life happens. That is however not to say that all who are unfortunate as described may remain so. The state should develop and implement poverty alleviation programs so that as many citizens as possible are lifted out of poverty. Will all who are poor be so lifted? No of course. Could the maximum possible number be? Yes of course with effective targeted policies and programs. I am afraid the poor as Jesus has been reported to say, will always be with us. Should the state forsake them? No of course. This is what I meant by the state guaranteeing a minimum standard of living. Citizens who want better should do the work- always seek and find lawful means to command more resources than a minimum standard guarantees.

The market exists within the State. The State expects it to operate in such a manner that it adds and creates value that help to advance both private and public interests. Markets are never perfect. They sometimes fail. It is in this knowledge that the State puts in place, laws and policies that should prevent market failure or mitigate/eliminate their consequences when they fail. Does the State get it right all the time? No of course Should it always try to? Yes of course. The nature of the market is that consumers some of who may not be citizens, make private purchase decisions based on their different and changing needs and wants. The challenge for each  competing business is to figure out effective ways of winning the patronage of consumers within the law. The State should not and need not legislate on consumer (private) purchase decisions , just as the State should neither endow nor bestow consumer purchasing power.      

President Bush prayed Americans to go out and spend after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He had to. The economy was in the opinion of many at the time in near free fall after the attacks. President Bush had a persuasion challenge. How better to do it that to call on Americans to be patriotic. He did and rightly so because citizens are expected to love their country, especially in a time as that time was. Any other president was likely to do the same in similar circumstance.

Laws are made by lawmakers with parochial interests and conflicts but hopefully guided by the public interest. Laws are sometimes a reaction to events and society experience. They are seldom neutral in the sense that the law may not apply in situations or impact all citizens, in the same way regardless of the best effort of lawmakers. It is not possible for the law to take into account all possible situation that it intended to apply to. This is why laws are mostly characterized as fair and not just laws. The justness of law is determined in court and not in the books. The law I might add should not be about favorable treat of one group or the other in the country. It should be about equal treatment of all in similar situation. That I believe is what justice should be about.

It seems to me that you and I, will disagree on the role and responsibility of the State in society and to citizens. We may disagree also on how well, given the capacity of the State and the dynamic of how individuals, group, and forces within the state interplay. My thinking is that you want the State to be a perfect machine. It is not. It could never be because of constraints ( including individualism, history, politics, religion, resources, and self-interest are examples) that make the expectation or actualization of the State as a perfect machine unrealistic. What I believe is possible and achievable is a functional state that is determined, focused, and committed to making it possible for all citizens to have the best life possible for them at all times. Will there be complaints and conflicts ? Yes there will be. Does the State work better for some than others? Yes it does? If however it works well for the most part, it should be good and well enough for many.   

You do not seem to me to make the case that you do in full realization that informed citizens at least, should have no better than the expectation of best effort from the State. Do all States meet this expectation? Everyone must decide for themselves. Could every State do better? I believe they could. Every State at the end of the day, is a work in progress.

Thank you again.

[Bode]

"That a citizen does not pay tax should and does not detract from their rights to participate in the governance of the State " Ogugua

Don't people go to jail for tax evasion? And when that happens, don't they have a suspension of all political rights?

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

They may if they were eligible to pay tax and are successfully prosecuted.

oa

--

[Samuel Zalanga]

These are very good and legitimate questions. Although it is also true that often people who desire to lead a country have a larger than normal ego. Is that not true? Kagame needs to be held accountable. I am with you on that. But on the broader question of democracy equals development, and authoritarianism equals underdevelopment, the literature on these are far more complicated. I wish there were simple answers. I wish Nigeria was way ahead of Rwanda in terms of human development because Nigeria has been more democratic than Rwanda. I want some empirical data to be part of the discussion. The human development figures of some parts of Nigeria if dis-aggregated make democracy for many meaningless. The real question and challenge is how to make democracy really have dividend for all the people and not to argue the cease abstractly.

Jared Diamond in an interview he granted for instance after writing "Collapse" shows how China is able to make decisions often faster on important issues of development, while in the U.S., in the name of democracy, real problems that affect real lives are allowed to continue unattended to. Just watch this documentary "IS GOD GREEN?"  and you will see how politics affects U.S.'s ability to deal with environmental issues. There are legitimate reasons to ask, under what conditions can development help a country and at what stage. As I said, many parts of the U.S. was authoritarian up to the early 1960s. I have a documentary film where Robert F. Kennedy makes comparison between South Africa and the U.S. around that time.

[Samuel Zalanga]

On the question of how work and having a standing is important for one in a democracy, Carole Pateman has done quite some work on that. She demonstrates how exclusion on those levels was used to excluded women from full citizenship.

For many Americans, being tax payers gives them a sense of claim on having a say about the system. They have their rights as citizens but more than that, the system cannot function effectively without taxation. Who will pay for that and whoever does that should have some say.

 In places like Nigeria where most of the government money comes from selling oil, it is difficult for taxes to be an easy platform for mobilizing political action against a government that is not performing. In my own reflection after doing some work on this, I concluded that most of the states in Nigeria cannot survive if they were to extract the money they are "embezzling" from the direct sweat of peasant farmers or traders. In any case, the money is not there to be taxed and if the farmers and traders would be taxed in order to run the government,  it would cost a revolt and a direct sense of resentment against ostentatious elite life using tax-payers money.

Part of the arrogant of the Nigerian elite has to do with money coming from an enclave economy and not from the direct sweat of the majority of citizens. It is a national cake.

Samuel

--

Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Bode]

A distinction must be made here between democracy as a form of government in which the people elect their leaders, and the ideals of democratic governance in which government actually works for everyone and the democratic rights of everyone are protected. stage one: the ability of the people to elect their leaders is where my emphasis has been whereas the emphasis of others has been on stage two, which is the idea of government working for everyone. stage one is expected to lead to stage two that is the logic but it is not guaranteed. if stage two does not materialize, that does not invalidate the principle that informs stage one. what we need to do then is to ensure the perpetual repetition and refinement of stage one until it produces stage two. the ability to elect leaders also means you could remove them if they do not realize the objective of their election, which is to perform, to make government work for all. this is the accountability we are talking about, and this is the accountability that Kagame has forestalled. what then would be the incentive for Kagame to perform and make government work for all if he can no longer be removed from office by the people? the threat of his removal from office is the mechanism that is supposed to compel him to make government work for all. if that threat is no longer there, the people are at his mercy. this is what autocratic government really means: the people at the mercy of their leaders. i agree that it feels liken that in democracies where stage two does not materialize. this is why it autocracy and the failure of stage two democracy must together be always unacceptable. the failure of stage two democracy should not justify autocracy. it should make both equally unacceptable. China, to repeat, is complicated. the communist party has a way of choosing and replacing its leader from party hierarchy and delegates of the people that go all the way down to local levels. How each society make leaders accountable is left to them. some have argued that yoruba monarchs were frequently asked to go and commit suicide or go into exile by the council of family heads if the people reject their rule. the Chinese system does not necessarily contradict, in my opinion, the basic idea that the  leaders must always be replaceable if they do not meet the expectations of the people.     

[M Buba]

Dear Sam, Bode & Co, 

I've been wondering whether accountability is the infix we're looking for within the democracy-authoritarian continuum. Without it, democracy is a sham, and its presence, however slight, can induce benevolence into authoritarian regimes. Just wondering … 

Malami

Prof Malami Buba

Department of English Language & Linguistics

Sokoto State University

PMB 2134, Birnin-Kebbi Rd,

Sokoto, NIGERIA

[Samuel Zalanga]

I am sorry that I have to limit my time even though this is a very important discussion. The issue is not for me that anyone is supporting the emergence of a dictator. But effective democracy and governance are not achieved by simple theorizing. Nigeria has produced many educated people but as Professor Mamdani reminds us in his book "Citizen and Subject" --   many Nigerians at the grassroots level, even with local government reforms are just treated like subjects. For many in Africa, democracy is a like a "bait and switch."

Part of my concern also is that we are discussing this as if there is only one type of democracy or authoritarianism.  For instance in Africa, here is how one book I have classifies the types of democracies that we have:

a) Liberal Democracy

b0 Electoral Democracy

c) Ambiguous

d) Liberalized Autocracy

e) Unreformed Autocracy.

Some scholars add "competitive authoritarianism." There is a book with that title.

There are examples for each of the five types. But I do not have the time to provide further information. Each one of them has a problem. Kenya for instance is just an electoral democracy. I have attached a page that can help anyone interested to pursue the issue further. To understand why things are this way, we have to pay attention to the social context or structure of each society to know why things happen the way they do. Just focusing on the ruler as such, makes me feel like this is a kind of personality-oriented type of analysis since the focus is on the idiosyncrasy of a person called Kagame, and not the complex process that produced the person and the political situation.

Some scholars add "competitive authoritarianism."

There are different types of authoritarianism. There are democracies that are just in name. Even when elections are conducted, they do not really impact the lives of the people except to give them some kind of excitement along ethnic, religious, regional etc. sentiment. It is exactly the functional equivalent of what Marcuse would mean be repressive de-sublimation. The people are free i.e., de-sublimated but then they are made to channel their energies in ways that perpetuate their ugly situation i.e., a kind of repression.

Without religion in Nigeria, the country cannot cope for one month because people cannot just handle their problems without the country exploding. What is stabilizing the country is partly the way religion helps people not to focus on their real problems. Just imagine the religion industry is not working. The relative calmness of the country is not as much a dividend of effective democratic institutions as it is because of how religion encourages people to have some kind of mechanism of projecting their pains elsewhere, and in that way have hope. They learn to explain every bad situation using divine language. There is too much suffering. Much money was stolen in the name of democracy. The people in some cases voted for their exploiters or people who destroyed the means for them to thrive and flourish. If the "subjects"  flourish, they will not be subjects any more and the basis for personal rule, and patron-client relationship will be destroyed.  Let us hope that something will happen and the institutions will work to change the lives of the people.

The attached document (one page only) will help demonstrate that the problem of Africa is more than Kagame, much as he is an important case and issue of concern.

Samuel

[Kasim Alli]

Not paying does not mean you are evading taxes. People an businesses may not be paying taxes because they do not meet the minimum income threshold for tax liability.

Sent from my iPad

--

[Bode]

Certainly, Malami, and that accountability, I believe, begins at the most basic level with being able to change those at the levers of power.  

[Bode]

That means they don't owe taxes

[Samuel Zalanga]

Interestingly, there is a documentary film by PBS that focuses on the payment of  taxes by corporations.

It was an investigative documentary by H. Smith on how corporations evade paying taxes and in some cases receive rebate. The U.S. allows corporations to have two financial statements: often a bullish statement for Wall Street, and another one that represents business loses which is meant for the Internal Revenue Service, which shelters their taxes through arrangements such as "LiLO" i.e., lease in, lease out. As they said, these are sham transaction aimed at SHELTERING TAXES.

The fact that many corporations might not be paying taxes is a result of this deliberate attempt  to facilitate Tax Shelter made by reputable accounting firms such as KPMG.

Unfortunately the documentary film is not anymore available free online. But here  is a link to the transcript: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/etc/script.html

There is difference between genuine business loses and sham transactions.

Thank  you very much.

Samuel

[Samuel Zalanga]

Professor Buba,

Yes, indeed. Accountability is very important and very crucial. I will prefer such conversation that leads more to the concrete on how to improve things than merely talking about democracy.  In a sense when Plato highlighted the tension within the tripartite parts of the human being, (reason, soul and appetitive desires), for there to be balance, the three will have to hold each other accountable. This means accountability is central even to a sense of sanity and balance within the individual.

The problem sociologically is, what factors can enhance or make accountability realizable and what can prevent it? Are there things we can do to increase accountability? One can list many in the context of Nigeria  or Rwanda. In a sense, what this means is that it is not enough for us to throw the concept of democracy out there as a solution without paying attention to the process and specifics. People who are powerful and feel entitled to privilege will always try to circumvent accountability using many reasons: religion, gerontology, patriarchy, security as in Rwanda, etc,. etc. In the literature, one major thing that can make authoritarianism work well is if the autocrat is committed to a sense of vision for his or her people. We do not want autocrats, whether it is Kagame or whoever, but the reality is that many African countries have a long way to go if we look at the situation on the ground. Authoritarian leaders that have a sense of honor restrain themselves from doing certain things, while politicians that do not have a sense of honor can create conditions that destroy many lives. It is not that one loves authoritarianism but given what happened in Northeastern Nigeria, for anyone that cares to listen to the real stories, what does democracy mean to the people?  The people will prefer democracy of course, but, it has to work, it has to prove itself. That is why Thomas Hobbes said in the Leviathan that, without peace and stability, there will be no foundation for civilization. One does not have to be powerful before he or she can create havoc. They only need to be cunning as we saw with the insurgency in Iraq after U.S.declared winning the invasion.

Given the realities we face and the fact that some assume Nigeria is a democracy but actually it is in the ambiguous category, the time has passed when we can just be talking about democracy or check and balances in theory without paying attention to what specifically makes that possible. The average Nigerian politician feels once in charge, he or she can use his power and often, ignoring the constitution except in cases that are obviously unacceptable. Ideally, the citizens should rise up against that but in many cases as Charles Tilly argues, the process of modern state formation in Africa is different from that of Europe.

 Some disagree with Hamza Alavi (e.g., Colin Leys), but one of the important concepts Alavi introduced based on the Pakistani experience into this discussion is the idea of "over-developed" postcolonial state. The modern state was imposed on Africa from outside. It did not grew out of the natural evolutionary trajectory of African political development. Consequently, often except in some parts of Nigeria that are more advanced, politicians may violate the constitution and not experience furious reaction from the citizens.Fifty years after independence we have not educated many of our citizens in a manner that their rights will become part of their psyche. It is only egregious violations that draw reaction and often such reaction can just be grounded in simply being human.

Last summer I went to my local government to give a lecture and I was surprise at how the people reacted, for no other reason but because they felt neglected by their own elites that are close to them. I was not under obligation to do anything but I thought before I return I will go and give a lecture on something that deals with the challenges of the community and I chose maternal mortality. It is painful the way many Nigerians in the countryside are treated. Many of our leaders have no sense of joy in the legacy of serving the people well and transforming their lives.

In my assessment, the idea that no government is perfect is unacceptable for comparative sociologists like me who can use evidence to show that there are other countries under similar circumstances and they are human but did far better than Nigeria. Yes, we shall never become prefect but we can always improve. The two ways of framing the issue are different.   Again, let anyone interested read: Asian Tigers, African Lions: Comparing the Development Performance of Southeast Asia and Africa." Back home, the typical / average Nigeria will bring all sorts of arguments to excuse the country's poor performance. But he or she does not feel ashamed to order something from Asian countries that used to be lagging behind West African countries but now far ahead of us. There is good evidence that African countries can do better if we create the appropriate conditions.

Indeed, the issue that you have raised is similar to what I read in one book which makes this statement. You can have a person who has a great amount of knowledge or claim of truth, but because the person did not use it, he or she will have little to show for that. On the other hand, someone with just half the knowledge or claim of truth but with humility and sincere commitment to do the right thing, will achieve more.

This is the problem with Nigeria and many other African countries. As a country, Nigeria has many knowledgeable people given the size of the country,  and many Nigerian claim to have the truth but because many are not sincere in using what they know or have, the country has not accomplished much, except if we lower the bar. There are other countries with less but because of their commitment, they have achieved relatively more, while facing more constraints than Nigeria. History shows that with proper commitment to learning, we can draw profound lessons about what works best and what does not.

For instance, we may never have complete knowledge, but using the empirical method, we can draw solid lessons from past experience if we are sincere and conclude what have been the best practices and what have not worked. A good book that I use in teaching my course on the Sociology of Third World Development in Guatemala that uses this method is:

Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works Paperback – September 30, 2008 by Stephen C. Smith

What Smith did was to examine from around the world all the effort made to end poverty and on that basis draw lessons on things that worked best or that are considered  best practices; and those that do not. I do not want anyone in Nigeria to tell me that we cannot make inroads in eradicating poverty because of lack of knowledge. or imperfection of human beings; yes, we can never eliminate inequality but we can get people out of poverty and even drastically reduce inequality and Nigeria will be a better society. But it is defeatist for us to end the conversation by saying there will never be a perfect government. If this was simply the case, why did many of us leave Africa to come to the West? The westerners are equally humans with human fallibities. But they created certain institutions and processes that enable their societies to function relatively well or better even though they too have their own problems.

I believe that if there is accountability, the commitment, and passion among African  leaders to see all citizens are truly human with dignity and that it is a worthy goal to pursue in life to invest in them, we can make huge progress. If African countries can seriously take care of their domestic challenges that are within their reach but hindering development, it will make the continent feel like there is a global revolution in favor of the poor.

 I identify myself with those at the bottom of the pyramid and I hope and pray that we will get people committed to creating institutions that will help them achieve their legitimate aspirations. When one gets to understand it deeply, such an achievement has beauty like a well-composed symphony. Last year when the VOA Hausa section asked me to express my Christmas greetings to people in Nigeria, I did not even mention any person from my family, even though my mother was still alive then. I chose a list of people that are considered marginal in Nigeria, especially in the North: women who bake akara by the side of the road (my mother did that before); those who carry water around and sell it; those who go to the bush and get firewood in order to feed their family; porters, etc.

The goal was to encourage people to understand that beauty in life is not just about driving a huge SUV, or living a big palace in Abuja while treating other human beings like trash. When pursuit with moderation there is nothing wrong with those things, but as Aristotle said, when it reaches excess, then it is a moral issue. However, next, people go and pray in the Church or Mosque. Prayers in Church and Mosque should genuinely transform people's hearts, create a genuine sense of humility and make them respect the dignity of their fellow human beings. How long are we going to live?  Unfortunate as it was, I will rather die like Thomas Sankara than be the president of a country and enrich myself, while also allowing others to enrich themselves at the expense of other human beings that are citizens. Thank you very much.

Samuel

[M Buba]

Dear Sam and co., 

On the factors that can enhance accountability, two practical ones come to mind:

(1) Asking questions. One of the best means of keeping them/us honest is the simple but powerful communicative tool of probing why we say or do those things. I don't know whether this is cultural or the outcome of decades of authoritarian regimes, but this weapon, available to all Nigerians, is rarely used to find out the truth behind actions of public officials. From the 'take-a-bow' pranks of the Senate and nominees to the silence of customers in the face of bad service, we've lost the dialogic art of probing for underlying causes and effects. 'Yes' or 'no' questions (in any language) are excellent tools for getting facts and figures from verbose human beings. Even more powerful is to precede such questions with attributable statements.

I've noticed that questions irritate big people and small artisans alike. It's like touching a raw nerve, which is why I think Nigerians (humanity) must hold people in position of trust accountable for their actions by hitting them with the kind of killer questions that ordinary people in Britain are very good at throwing at ambushed public servants. 

Sultan Abubakar III (May Allah have mercy upon his soul) was famous for this killer one-liners. There was the (unconfirmed) story of the visit of (then) Gen Buhari to the Sultan's palace, where throughout his courtesy call, Abubakar III was said to have remained silent,  until Gen Buhari was about to leave the room, at which point the Sultan was said to have grabbed his hand, and asked Gen Buhari: 'Ina Turakina?' ('Where's my Turaki?'), alluding to the incarceration and whereabout of President Shehu Shagari (a titled kingmaker) after the coup of 1984(?). 

(2) Documenting it. The most heinous financial and other public trust crimes in Nigeria are committed by public officers who are pathologically aversed to paper trail - for good reasons! And it's not just crimes. It is also the blatant disregard of institutional practices and procedures, whereby willing lowly officials are almost always verbally instructed to move money, people or even structures (and cover the trail, somehow).  Mobile phones have been a 'god-send' to this awful lot! Whereever they are in the world, No. 1s in Nigeria will be handing out verbal instructions to everyone down the ladder, completely oblivious of the 2s and 3s they've left 'in charge' (as if!). 

Here too, it comes down to a question of questions: where's the paperwork? We have to strengthen institutional practices, such that 'the practice manual' is in the hands of every public servant, and that they are able to use it without the fear of No. 1s.  

All Nigerian No. 1s are morbidly afraid of questions and paperwork, and it is time ordinary people and elected representatives begin to use these simple, but powerful tools of keeping them (and us) honest. 

(Safe travel, Sam),

Malami

Prof Malami Buba

Department of English Language & Linguistics

Sokoto State University

PMB 2134, Birnin-Kebbi Rd,

Sokoto, NIGERIA