Abdoulaye Wade's bow out was a déjà vu

Africa is the only continent blessed with so many natural and human resources yet ironically it is the most poorest place on planet earth. The logical question then is what accounts for this paradox? One obviously does not need to be a soothsayer or know rocket science to look into the crystal clear lens to determine. the cause of this malaise Africa's woes is largely attributable to bad leadership. It is a common knowledge among all leading humanitarian organisations fighting global poverty that placing special focus on working alongside poor folks to be equipped with the proper resources, will  empower to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty. By the same token, leadership is expected to inspire and provide direction for the entire country. Unfortunately, in Africa, the privilege bestow on the elected people is very often misconstrued to mean opportunity to oppress the poor and siphon state resources to line up the pockets of the elected officials. Due to this attitude, many African presidents whether elected or imposed, find it difficult to leave office peacefully when their tenure of office is due. They do all that they find convenient to manipulate the system to entrench themselves in office perpetually. 

Senegal is the only nation on mainland West Africa not to have seen a coup or civil war since independence. This sterling record was however dented and almost erased. President Abdoulaye Wade aged 85, began his career as president in 2000 with a sterling democratic reputation after several futile attempts to wrest power while in opposition but Wade drew criticism for seeking to extend his rule with a third term, setting off street protests in which six people were killed.Opposition activists had said Wade's quest for a third term was unconstitutional and some voters viewed him as yet another example of a long-serving African leader seeking to hang on to power.
The Constitutional Council, however, upheld his argument that his first term did not count because it began before a two-term limit was adopted. The ruling set off weeks of protests in which at least six people died.

When the election eventually came off, Wade fell short of the outright majority needed to avoid a run-off in the February 26 first round, with 34.8 percent to his main opponent Macky Sall's 26.6 percent. Defeated candidates then united behind Sall.

The term déjà vu literally means "already seen"  and is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", "weirdness" or "the uncanny". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past. Observers of the African political scene have said when a sitting president or a ruling party fails to garner the needed votes in the first round, the bandwagon effect always goes against them. The Senegalese election was the latest test for democracy in a region plagued by bloodshed and flawed votes, including Ivory Coast's which triggered a civil war last year. A military coup in Senegal's neighbor Mali last week demonstrated how quickly a democracy can unravel.

Early results from Dakar, where Wade has faced his harshest opposition, showed Sall ahead, including in Wade's own precinct in the Point E neighborhood with 417 votes to Wade's 120. Wade had no option but to admit defeat in the election just hours after the polls closed, as early results showed Sall with a landslide, confirming the bandwagon effect was indeed a déjà vu, done deal. Kokromti (thumb) power has eventually and finally spoken.

While hopes for a better future are running high among Senegalese, it remained to be seen whether Sall, who is a former Wade ally and served for years as his prime minister, would bring real change or his leadership too will be déjà vu.  

Ghana's "democracy is very fragile and can't be taken for granted"

The man who played the role of Simon of Cyrene in "The Passion of the Christ" movie, Swiss-born and Ghanaian raised Jarreth Merz has warned that Ghana's embryonic experiment with 'democracy is very fragile and can't be taken for granted'. Merz was explaining his reasons for putting together a documentary on Ghana's 2008 general elections aptly titled "an African Election" at one of its premiering nights in London. The movie documents events leading up to the 2008 general elections and reveals that the presently ruling party, then the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) was preparing to plunge Ghana into chaos if they had not won power. Listening to a clip played on BBC's Art and Entertainment programme Sunday 27 November 2011 (09:52), you could clearly hear the sound of the voice of Rojo Mettle-Nunoo (now Deputy Minister of Health, then a representative of the NDC at the EC) churning out blatant lies from the Electoral Commission's (EC) so-called 'Strong Room' live on to Radio Gold. Rojo was shouting at the top of his voice lying about Kwabena Agyapong (former Press Secretary at the Castle and NPP representative at the EC Strong Room) having fictitiously brought in new election result figures from a different fax machine. This was the very act which incensed NDC youth led by the NDC CEO, Johnson Asiedua Nketia wedging all forms of implements to invade the EC head office. They threatened to destroy the commission's office and create upheavals and anarchy in Ghana if then presidential candidate, JEA Mills was not declared the winner. This makes interesting reading especially coming in the wake of recent revelations that president Mills directed his Director of Communication, Koku Anyidohu to threaten the NPP presidential candidate to show him “where power lies”. “I am saying it today that Akufo-Addo should dare,” Anyidoho charged. “I know Gabby [Otchere-Darko] is in London and listening. Gabby you are my friend and I’m telling you that you and that your Akufo-Addo, if you claim to be men, make a wrong move in this country and you will see where power lies. We are waiting for them since they say ‘all die be die’.” JEA Mills has portrayed himself as a christian and at all times has admonished that insults and violence ought to stop in Ghanaian politics. Indeed, Mills is a president who sees no evil, hears no evil and does no evil. His opponents say this shows his double standard and hypocrisy.
Jarreth was inspired by the need to caution Ghana and other African states not to be in a self-denial as the country might not be a second-time lucky as she did in 2008 considering upheavals in neighbouring states including the most recent in Ivory Coast. Merz says "an African Election challenges the preconceived notion we have about politics in Ghana or Africa without hiding the brutal realities." In his view, the problem with Ghana's elections is not about ethnicity or other things which readily come to mind whenever the subject of disputed elections come up. The main problem in Ghana, he revealed in an interview on the aforementioned BBC programme, is the ability of institutions (EC) to stand firm and demonstrate that it is capable of conducting and delivering neutral general elections. This is something that many Ghanaians today would prefer not to talk about but are silently worried about the inconsistent posturing of the EC on putting in place a biometric voting system in time for 2012 elections. Many have found the EC fumbling on the question of verification aimed at preventing multiple voting. Recent remarks by the EC boss, Dr. Afari-Gyan if it did anything actually added to the confusion. He rumbled on verification with electronic voting. Is somebody watching an African Election unfolding towards 2012? I fear for the worse!!!
"An African Election" features Nana Akufo-Addo, John Atta Mills, Jerry Rawlings, John Kufuor, Afari-Gyan, Kwesi Pratt, Hannah Tetteh, Rojo Mettle-Nunoo and Kwabena Agyepong, among others, and it has received great reviews across the globe, with the Los Angeles Times describing the documentary feature film as “the gripping examination of Ghana's 2008 presidential contest on display.”
The movie portrays how perilously close Ghana got to unleashing electoral violence as it shows footage of young teenagers being trained as militias with wooden guns wearing NDC T-Shirts. 

It is a movie, which is likely to reignite the kind of sensation that gripped the nation after the cable releases from Wikileaks.

The 2008 presidential elections in Ghana serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind the scenes at the complex political machinery of a third-world democracy struggling to legitimise itself.
Some Ghanaians who had the privilege to preview the documentary have been giving their views on it.
One of them said "I watched the premier of the movie in Amsterdam early this year and felt it was a good one but for the fact that it is not very well balanced. Nonetheless there are interesting lessons for us all to learn. It portrays how we can easily turn the country into flames with the kind of passion we attach to elections and how we conduct ourselves as politicians, a people etc etc. We need to learn lessons from it."

Another also thought "this film is a nice attempt to say something negative about the 2008 elections.
We in Ghana know what is good for us and we have always been fighting for it.
We fight for survival
We fight for daily bread
We fight to get education (any education)
We fight to get medical care(if any at all)
We fight to get shelter over our heads
the list continues.
Countrymen and women, let us take what is good about this film and throw into dustbin what is bad about it. Lets not attempt to throw the producer with the film......" And yet others felt that "Merz has been most unfair.
You do not present such a one-sided movie, show some youth being prepared for war and say it is a success story.
These are the kind of people who just hate to see Africa progress. Ghana will continue to hold peaceful elections and people like Merz can continue to view violence and describe us as a "democracy struggling to legitimise itself".
Truly, he is still trying to run away from his roots as he himself admits."

Filmmaker, actor & director Jarreth Merz (1 May 1970, Zurich)

The movie director is Swiss-born Jarreth Merz who was raised in Ghana, Switzerland and Germany. He is also a filmmaker and an actor (you may remember him  in the role of Simon of Cyrene in The Passion of the Christ). As a director, his work is rooted in observing life as it presents itself in all its complexities -- as shown in this latest documentary.
Meanwhile reactions among the major political actors back home in Ghana since excerpts were shown on a local television network on December 20, 2011 have been mixed. The Electoral Commission of Ghana has expressed surprise at what has been described as a secret video recording which captured events in its strong room during compilation of results of the 2008 general elections.

The recording forms part of a movie titled “An African Election”, a production by a Swiss-Ghanaian documentary film maker Jarreth Merz.

Excerpts of the video which was shown on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana on Tuesday night featured Nana Akufo-Addo, President John Evans Atta Mills, J. J Rawlings, deputy Health Minister Rojo Mettle-Nunoo and Kwabena Agyepong, among others.

Officials of the EC say though they have not seen the footage, it is not a regular practice to allow private cameras into the strong room without authorisation.

Speaking to Citi News, the General Secretary of the ruling NDC, Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, said though he is not sure what the laws say about cameras in the election strong room, he believes it can promote electoral transparency.

Mettle-Nunoo, who is captured in the footage in an argument with the NPP’s Kwabena Agyepong over an alleged change of results, said documenting events in the strong room could be a useful exercise for electoral transparency.

Meanwhile, the NPP General Secretary, Sir John, who also described the video as revealing in an interview with Citi News said good lessons could be drawn from the video.

“It is a lesson for us to know what we should do next time when people are sent to the strong room of the EC,” he said.

The movie director followed the key players in Ghana politics for almost three months to provide an unprecedented insider’s view of the political, economic and social forces at work in Ghana. He built suspense by taking the viewer down the back roads of the nation to capture each unexpected twist and turn in a contest that is always exciting and never predictable. Throughout the film, Merz depicted the pride and humanity of the larger-than-life politicians, party operatives and citizens who battle for the soul of their country.
Merz's stepfather, a political player on Ghana, helped him get access behind the scenes; then Jarretth and his cameraman brother Kevin followed the presidential candidates in the unpredictable months leading up to the final night. In chronicling the rough-and-tumble process of a democratic election, the documentary becomes a meditation on the dream of democracy itself. Merz is now working on a “political safari” in Africa.

"Ban funerals in Ghana on the eve of December polls"

Kumasi (Ashanti Region) – 20 Oct 2008 - A retired military officer has suggested to traditional rulers to place a temporal ban on all funeral activities on the eve of the December 7 elections. Major Veronica Rita Akosua Nsafoah (rtd) told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that such a measure was crucial in ensuring that the citizenry had ample time to prepare to exercise their franchise without any hindrances. She said it was unfortunate that funeral activities in recent times had come to be associated with all sorts of challenges such as distance travelling, excessive drinking and merry making, which had its own negative effects which could prevent eligible voters from casting their ballots. “We should therefore find appropriate measures to curtail the disruptions that go with such funeral activities and that placing a temporal ban on such activities especially on the eve of the elections was significant in putting Ghanaians in the best of psychological and physical conditions for successful elections,” Major Nsafoah observed. She added her voice to calls on religious bodies especially the Christian community to suspend church activities on the elections day to enable their members to participate in the elections to choose a government of their choice, since government policies affect all Christians.The retired military officer charged leaders of political parties to lead exemplary lives by avoiding provocative statements that could inflame passions. Source - gna