Posted on 12/02/2011
In Africa, democracy is in dire need of depth beyond periodic multiparty elections. The post-election crisis in Ivory Coast banner, again, that universal suffrage is a superficial form of democracy. Indeed, elections expected in 6 years, presented as the sesame of peace have led to confusion in a situation unprecedented in the world featuring two presidents of the republic that clash. Everyone has to its credit irregularities. Everyone has reason to believe he was the winner of the polls. None had the measure of liability in a situation that is primarily harmful to people. The pride freeze the dialogue tomorrow when the growing number of dead could cause a flash of humility on the part of those leaders who forget they are the servants of the people they oppress.
Clearly, the Ivory Coast is totally suffocated by too powerful a state that reinforces alongside unashamedly religious forces to tap into their support legitimacy even as the country's constitution proclaims the principle of secularism. Corruption stifles the country, discouraging investment. It traps the poor in a dependency leaders failed, unable to create the institutional framework that would allow them to grow their tremendous creativity and land asleep, barren, abandoned without land titles.
Ivorians face of this decay had placed their confidence in the UN, these "guardians" of democracy, to supervise and certify the election. This international agency has yet warped by overstepping its mandate and by anchoring the confusion. The road to democracy has also closed. And what about when the international community is heading for a camp, ignoring the fact that in this case electoral responsibilities are shared between the two competing camps. Prisoner
their own state, handled by the UN, patronized by the international community, which way is there to share the Ivorians to take their destiny in a fight for freedom?
Politicians like to invoke the complexity of the world to explain it would be crazy to want to turn now, however the story accelerates. Across the continent inflamed, screaming his thirst for freedom. If the shock is so brutal, it's probably due to a painful history. Total deprivation of liberty in times of slavery and then under colonization, Africa is now the total decline in the ranking of economic freedom compared to the rest of the world. The example of the rich countries and the developing countries can not polemic people gripped in poverty and deprived of the freedoms that allow them to create their own wealth, condemned to wait for the progress of failed states and corrupt benumbed fear facing the demon of individual liberties. Indeed, an independent private sector of the state creates concurrent powers and thus a counterweight that worries leaders. Individual freedoms are likely to weaken their full power, yet they are not careful is the lack of freedom that will build the foundation of their downfall.
analyze the tremendous changes. Let us open our eyes to the continent. It shows an Arab world currently gripped wrest its freedom in dictatorships protected by international powers that profit from it. Contrary to popular belief, companies in the South, particularly Muslim, are compatible with modernity, and many of them are ripe for democracy. There are structural reasons for this: the rise of literacy, educational advancement, circulation of more intense information via diasporas, satellite television and the Internet.
Why cloud the issue? The future tends inexorably toward freedom. Many research works show that indeed most African countries are rich along the freest. The two most advanced liberal democracies in Africa, South Africa and Botswana, have per capita income much higher than the African average. In 2008, for example, the average gross national income per capita in South Africa and Botswana was $ 5,820 and $ 6,470 respectively. The average African was of $ 1,082 (1).
Furthermore, a study conducted by Professor Mamadou Koulibaly, president of the National Assembly of Cote d'Ivoire on one hand the index of economic freedom and, secondly, the importance of conflict in Africa, shows a clear correlation between lack of freedom and the importance of conflict. Peace and justice can not therefore be achieved without a context of freedom for people without private property and without free trade. Peace and economics are mutually supporting. But initially it is the economic freedoms which, by the recognition of rights property and free trade create the conditions for a peaceful and just social interaction. This society, in turn, stimulates political freedoms and stabilize into the base of the sustainability of peace. Economic freedoms and political construct the peace of nations (2). All the world's mature democracies are based on a market economy.
Africa is condemned to freedom? On the continent, obviously, all roads, even the most chaotic, leading to this release. This suggests interesting tomorrow for this young continent has to face him a Western ages, sleeping on its laurels, exhausted by a welfare state that gradually destroys social cohesion and inhibits its responsiveness to change.
Notes:
(1) The state of liberal democracy in Africa: resurgence or decline? Tony Leon
(2) Economics and Peace Conference held December 11, 2009 for the start ceremony of the Academy of Sciences Arts and Cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora (Ascade)
http://www.contrepoints.org/2011/02/12/13761-tous-les-chemins-menent-a-la-liberte-en africa-
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