The BBC website on Friday night announced that “Ghana’s opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo has won Wednesday’s tightly contested presidential election. President John Mahama called Mr Akufo-Addo to concede defeat, a spokesman for his party said, as the Electoral Commission announced the result. Celebrations have broken out in the capital, Accra.
The website also reported that “Ghana has been a multi-party democracy since the end of military rule in 1992 and this result is seen as reinforcing its reputation for the peaceful transfer of power between administrations. Mr Akufo-Addo, from the New Patriotic Party, won the election on his third attempt to reach the presidency, after a campaign dominated by the country’s faltering economy.”
The election in Ghana that
witnessed the defeat of incumbent President Mahama appears to be following the trajectory of the wind of change sweeping across the globe and enthroning populist governments. The President- elect Mr. Akufo-Addo ran on a plan to provide free education in high schools and build one factory per local government. The details of the plan, I believe, would be unfolded in due course.
Jammeh, who came to power in 1994 as a 29-year-old army officer following a military coup, had won four previous polls. Barrow received 263,515 votes while Jammeh won 212,099, Alieu Momarr Njai, the electoral commission head, said in the capital Banjul on Friday. “.”Having received 263,515 votes of the total votes cast in the election, I hereby declare Adama Barrow duly elected to serve as president of the Republic of Gambia,” Njai said
The victory of Adama Barrow in Gambia was described as the biggest political upset in Africa. Mr Barrow, said his election was made possible by a combination of people’s mentality and social media. He promised wide ranging reforms to the electoral system, public service – where he plans to increase salaries and sustain job security, and of course improve agriculture the back bone of the economy.
From Italy, Prime Minister Renzi, would be leaving office after the crushing defeat of his proposed constitutional reforms in a referendum. The defeat at the referendum was led, in large part, by Five Star, a party founded by a comedian Beppe Grillo in 2009. The Five Star, which was an online party and perceived by many as a joke shook the Italian political landscape when it won the Mayoral elections in Rome and Turin. The mayoral victory in Italy’s largest and fourth largest cities signified the arrival of Five Star in the political landscape and signposted the rise of a new voting pattern.
We saw the same voting pattern in the UK when a referendum on European Union led to exit from the EU and resignation of the Prime Minister David Cameron. The result defied predictions and betrayed the wide gulf between the urban global elites and the rural citizens of the country. The exit campaigners won with promises of a resurgent Britain restoring the sovereignty of a nation losing its essence to globalisation.
The election of Mr Donald Trump, for years to come, would remain the apogee of the rise of the new voters. Polls failed. Expert opinion missed the mark. Traditional voting blocs switched sides enabling the election of an unlikely President. He promised to make America great again. He promised to bring back jobs lost to globalisation. He promised to focus on America and restore the exceptionalism that defined America’s ascendancy. The voters responded. They voted for populism. They voted for love of country to borrow the slogan of Leadership newspaper.
The Economist in an editorial endorsing Mrs Clinton described Mr Trump’s candidacy as a “symptom of the popular desire for a political revival. Every outrage and every broken taboo is taken as evidence that he will break the system…”. The Financial Times in its widely-reported endorsement of Mrs Clinton observed that “the uncomfortable truth is that both Mr Sanders and Mr Trump have touched a nerve among voters, tapping into a cynicism about politics which has been growing steadily in the US, fuelled in part by the legacy of the 2008 global financial crisis”. The paper also noted that “populism has staged a revival, supported by a media which have become more polarised than ever.
In the rise of the new voter, Nigeria was a pace setter. The 16 years’ reign of the PDP was ended by a popular coalition promising a new economy, restoring the value of the naira, stamping out corruption and creating new jobs. Like in Ghana, President Buhari was fourth time lucky. An incumbent President was defeated and his gracious acceptance of defeat transformed the perception of Nigeria and became a model for African leaders.
The rise of the new voters, the growth of nationalism, the advance of populism and the rejection of politics as usual are issues attracting the attention of analysts and academics. What is happening? A new trend? A push back on globalisation and its aftermath? Many have tried to analyse these issues and we hear talk of right wing nationalism against immigration. Some argue that the rise of social media has created a new level of consciousness empowering ordinary people with information hitherto unavailable to them. Many more analyses will yet emerge seeking to explain the rise of the new voter.
I believe that we really don’t know what is driving this wind of change but I have a sense of déjà vu. In the early 1990s we saw the fall of Soviet Union, the collapse of the Berlin wall and the wind of democratisation across Eastern Europe. Communist regimes collapsed from Bucharest to Warsaw and talks about End of History gained ascendancy. The march of globalisation seemed inevitable. A new world order became a common term in academic and media language. Today we are back to the starting block discussing the end of globalisation and rise of nationalism.
The Arab spring, the war on terror, regime change in the Middle East and the destruction of local economies through a distorted form of globalisation combined to fuel a new wave of immigration and redefinition of national borders. The proponents of the new world order could not have genuinely believed that a backlash or “whitelash” would not occur. Unfortunately, the voters may be in for another betrayal or a new equilibrium whichever happens the world would not be the same.
As voters’ world over raise their voice against political systems that ignores the majority, Nigerian voters need to guard jealously their new-found power. The days of incumbency factor is over. The politician of the future will reflect local issues, speak to the people’s fears and show effort in solving their problems. Promise of change is easy, delivering change is the challenge.
ref: http://leadership.ng/columns/563436/rise-of-the-new-voters
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