Elongating Term Limits for Politician has no Value for Africa’s Political-Economy

There is currently some public conversations in Kenya about the bill proposed to the Senate to have an extension of term limit for President, governors, senators, and members of county assembly from five years to seven years. This bill that hints at a brewing referendum to change the constitution or enact a new statute against the position the current Kenya constitution has brought about some public brouhaha and exchange in Nairobi.

Those for the bill are driven by politics of ethnic identity to sugar coat their arguments by pointing out that extension of term limits will give politicians enough time to deliver on their pledges made during campaigning period. This against the bill have all genuine and democratic concerns for the future of their country. Above all, this kind of selfish politics as evinced in the executive yearning for elongation of term limit is not only a dialogic preserve for Nairobi politics, it is also a question of contemporary geo-politics in Africa. Contextually, most of political leaders in Africa evidently want to occupy offices for a longer time, if possible for a life time in a hegemonic or hereditary fashion. However, careful examination of facts clearly shows that allowing politicians to occupy office for decades has no positive value for Africa’s political economy, if anything it only puts the continent into the social turmoil, and its people, into hotchpotch experiences of humiliation.

Readily available evidence shows that African leaders that remained in office for a longer time achieved nothing good for their countries other than visiting endless moments of sorrowing to the people in the lower echelon, the masses .If I can go by living examples; Yoweri Museveni has been the President of Uganda for over three decades, yet there is nothing good in Uganda under his rule other than police brutality, nepotism, poverty, rot in public infrastructure, public fear, poverty and outright failure of democratic systems that ruthless executes social dumbing to Kenya day- in-day-out ;

Paul Kagame of Rwanda has been in the office as the President of Rwanda for three decades, yet there is nothing good in Rwanda in terms of human rights other than very misleading propaganda reinforced by effective espionage, gestapo-like police brutality, use of criminal trial to terrorize citizens, long jail terms for those with different political opinion , overt death of media freedom , palpable death of freedom of speech and death other fundamental human rights like politically inspired gender based violence on the Rwandan women in politics .

Some decades ago, Africa’s tyrannies and oppressive leaders in the likes of Moi, Mugabe, Jomo Kenyatta, Omar Bongo and very many others in the ilk achieved to be dictators through remaining in the office for more than a decade or decades. The facts point out without wavering to the truth that Africa’s political leaders try as much as they can to remain in the office for a longer time not to do anything good for the people, but to protect the camarilla in corruption, to loot state property, destroy democracy and finally plunge the country or their nations into ethnic war the way Mobutu did and the way Museveni is now intending to do for Uganda through his earmarked successor and biological son, General Muhozi.

In contrast, evidence form history of good governance readily testify that a good leader does not need decades to achieve good results for the people or for his country or even for the entire world. Examples from globally sampled cases of success stories like Mwai Kibaki in Kenya show that Kibaki took only three years to pull Kenya from the abyss of poverty and semi-failed state to a middle-income economy. Nelson Mandela achieved to set a victorious foundation for unity and inclusivity in South African politics within the first three years in office as the President. This is also the same case to Barrack Obama, he registered a lot of democratic and social achievements for American politics within a short time of his first four years in the office as the President of USA. We still have very many other examples from across the world like what we are seeing in the current Brazil under Lula.

It is our collective obligation for we the living ones to be alive to the dictatorial syndrome that drive Political leaders to remain in the office for decades, this syndrome is to be identified as one of heinous social evils that must be fought by each and everyone concerned about good governance. This is so given the hinging phenomenon that taking a long time in the political office is not a resource for good governance in any way, but a primary stage for subsequent destruction of democracy. It is socially phenomenal that the longer the time political leaders remain in the office, the more oppressive they become. This observation is not only limited to elective democracies, it is also applicable to monarchical democracies. Monarchies also require political system that has a system that regularly carries out replacement of the monarch for the monarchy to serve people effectively.

Just as Karl Marx often dismissed the parliament as a jamboree of those that are anent in thinking, persiflage in public conscience, mutton-headed in thought system and selfish in the sense of preventing the genuine workers from enjoying their fundamental rights, I also want to agree that politicians in Nairobi have failed to maintain political thought system that can put the society on the course that befits modern demands. What I mean is that; the Nairobi politicians want to create strong men for their country but not strong institutions, they want to survive by using politics of ethnic identity but not service to humanity, they want to execute primitive accumulation of riches at the cost of ecology instead of working for both vertical and lateral ecological democracy. Nairobi, politicians glorify self-congratulatory thinking instead of listening to expert advice or voice of reason to inform public policy. The living thought for Nairobi politicians and as well as any other African politicians is the fear of not winning the next election, this is why some are now trying to use a legislative cajole to establish a law that will justify their occupation of political offices for decades so that they can have copious time to perpetrate tyranny and primitive piling of unjustifiable riches. Africa you must be woke to this kind of asinine political behaviour your leaders are geared to perpetrate on you.

Alexander Opicho writes from, Nairobi, Kenya