Good, bad and ugly of the electoral process

CAPE TOWN - If free and fair elections are the bane of authoritarian and totalitarian rule, one would have thought that in democracies they would be spared the blushes given the rising trend of voter apathy and lack of trust in politicians.

Churchill’s alleged quip that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried” perhaps was more to do with his gripe after the British people voted him out as Prime Minister within months of “winning” World War II.

But the phenomenon has a habit of reinventing itself often as “the good, the bad and the ugly” of the electoral process depending on the poll and the country.

Metaphorically it often manifests as a tiresome Groundhog Day of political diet akin to the Spaghetti Western.

Electoral developments in the past few weeks in South Africa and Europe could not better articulate these shenanigans.

First the ugly! South Africans are being frogmarched to crucial but controversial nationwide local elections on November 1 – elections that were originally scheduled for October 27 and deemed to be the first acid test for the ruling ANC government less than three years shy of the next general election in 2024.

This after several applications by competing parties, which included one by the ANC to delay the poll to February 2022, culminated in the Concourt dismissing an application by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to delay municipal elections, ostensibly because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It ordered the vote had to take place within the legally stipulated time frame between October 27 and November 1. Semantics over the extension of the deadline for candidate nominations has raised some concerns over the impartiality – real or imagined – of the IEC.

Is this degeneration into an orgy of ugliness a sign of maturity of South African democracy in which political opponents can agree to disagree albeit through that very South African art of “lawfare” and leave it to the “Arbiter of Last Resort”, the “progressive” Concourt, to adjudicate?

It however raises questions as to who is the guardian of South African democracy – the elected Parliament or Concourt?

I shudder to think of the alternatives – more political polarisation and unrest like the riots in July.

Given it is a party in crisis, in near bankruptcy, entrenched in corruption and entitlement, it is not a question of whether the ANC will get a bloody nose in the local elections. It is to what extent that nosebleed persists.

Then the bad! Mammon and morality often go hand in hand. Politics is no exception! No sooner had the EU threatened to withhold €1.5 billion (R25.8bn) under its REACT-EU cohesion fund, several regional Polish governments passed resolutions opposing “all manifestations of discrimination based on sex, age, race, disability, ethnic origin religion, belief or sexual orientation”, repealing a 2019 declaration of being “LGBT Free”. They were taking a cue from the ultranationalist conservative central government which has been at loggerheads with the EU over gay rights.

In neighbouring Hungary, the extreme right wing ultraconservative government of PM Viktor Orban, a constant thorn in the EU’s progressive social agenda, last week tempted a similar fate by drafting a change to the country’s constitution that would in effect ban adoption by same-sex couples, even though same-sex marriage is illegal in the country.

Those two bastions of Mammon and conservative civility, Switzerland and microstate San Marino, a few days ago finally caught up with the rest of Western Europe when voters backed referenda overwhelmingly approving same-sex marriage and legalising abortion within 12 weeks of gestation respectively.

The latter move would overturn a law dating back to 1865, which has made San Marino one of the last places in Europe where abortion is completely banned.

The democratic deficit is implicit given that turnout for the referendum was a measly 41%.

Switzerland ironically this year marks the 50th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage having only granted them the right to vote in 1971.

Last, the good! Just as we thought that Iceland last week made history by electing Europe's first female-majority parliament, a recount showed it had just fallen short. Some 30 of the 63 seats (47.6%) were won by women, up from 24 seats in the last parliament. Iceland with a population of a princely 371 000 people, says the World Economic Forum, is the most gender-equal country in the world.

This leaves the 2021 German federal election last Sunday in which no party won an absolute majority and saw the centre-left Social Democrats emerge narrowly as the party with the largest number of seats in the Bundestag. The DNA of German democracy, thanks to its unique proportional representation electoral system imposed by the victorious Allies in its “rehabilitation” of Germany in the aftermath of its humiliating defeat in World War II, is coalition government. Negotiations are painstakingly drawn out and it could take months for the next government to materialise.

Which means that incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel will continue in her “Frau Mutti” (Mrs Mother) caricature caretaker role probably well into the new year.

So what, you may ask? For a country which not so long ago had the compassion to receive a million Syrian refugees, there always remains a new glass ceiling or two to be broken.

That privilege goes to 47-year-old Eritrean-born lawyer Awet Tesfaiesus of the Green Party who becomes the first African-born black female MP in the Bundestag, emulating her compatriot Ibrahim Omer who last year was elected as the first African-born MP in the New Zealand parliament as a member of the ruling Labour Party, led by popular PM Jacinda Adern. The omens were spot on! “Awet” in her native Eritrean Tigrinya language means “victory”.

* Parker is an economist and writer based in London

Cape Times