The Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has advocated good democratic governance and term limits to prevent unconstitutional overthrow of governments in Africa.
Dr Kojo Pumpuni Asante, the Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement, CDD-Ghana, said although the best antidote to coups d’etat were democratic governance, a disciplined security force, that respected fundamental human rights, African leaders must also demonstrate a rejection of constitutional coups by legislating against term elongation.
“There must be a deterrent to unconstitutional overthrow of government, and it is difficult to take military force off the table. Admittedly it is much more difficult to do in a multi-polar world. A recent example is Niger,” Dr Asante stated in his keynote address at the Second Stakeholders’ Convening on Governance, Democracy and Human Rights in Africa – West Africa in Accra.
The conference was organised by the Data for Governance Alliance (D4GA) consortium in collaboration with CDD-Ghana and the Afrobarometer, with funding support from the European Union (EU).
D4G’s core mission is to uplift African citizens by advancing governance, democracy, and human rights.
Speaking on the topic: “Democracy in Africa at Risk of Unconstitutional Changes of Governments,” Dr Asante expressed concern over the credibility and transparency of the outcome of recently held elections in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.
Dr Asante said all across Africa, they were seeing a high level of intolerance and closing of civic spaces and curtailing of civilian voices whether online or offline.
He said despite the bad experience of Guinea, African leaders continued to flirt with the idea of term enlongation, citing what occurred in Gabon leading to another coup.
He said some military leaders took advantage of unpopular governments, making unreasonable promises they could not honour, leading to a rising restlessness among the people and army, who were demanding answers to challenges of economic crisis, insecurity, joblessness, choice less democracies and hopelessness through protests online and offline.
Dr Asante said aside these issues were the expanding geo-political contestation between and amongst old and new powers in scramble for Africa.
He said an Afrobarometer Survey report indicated that a significant majority of African citizens expressed support for democracy and accountable governance norms, institutions, and processes; two-thirds (66 per cent) prefer democracy over any other system of government, and even more reject non-democratic alternatives.
The report showed that majority of Africans were in favour of constitutional term limits for the elected governments, he said.
Mr Paul Nana Kwabena Aborampah Mensah, the D4GA Programme Manager, said the convening was crucial and formed part of the broad strategies to achieve the objectives of the project, which seeks to strengthen the relationship between Pan-African civil society organisations (CSOs) and the African Governance Architecture (AGA) Platform members by creating a platform for interface engagements among them.
He said it was also to build capacity of pan-African CSOs to access and efficiently use data for advocacy on governance, democracy and human rights issues in Africa to support the 2063 Agenda to achieve the “Africa We Want.”
—BBC
