Hey Guys,
I totally love your posts about the State of the Union (political sarcasm dually noted) and the budget project that Chris has going on at school. Since you are interested and aware... I thought I would give you some conversation topics for you classes. Below are some observations of democratic (or semi-democratic) happenins in Benin and Haiti.... enjoy.
It's election season and the two countries that I am most in tuned with are holding elections -- Haiti and Benin. While cultural siblings, I find the manifestation of democracy and the general approach to government to be strikingly different.
In Haiti, carnaval (the biggest holiday of the year) celebrations have been canceled. UN peacekeepers are keeping watch with big sticks and mules loaded with voting machines are heading out over the mountains. Elections have been delayed now for several months due to low voter registration and lack of security. Most people are leaning towards the fact that Preval, an Aristide croney, will win and deeply, most people don't care that much. Its amazing to me how on one hand mass populations would rather just be done with the election business so that life could stabilize and on the other there are groups that insight violence and terror. Power without checks and balances can lead to very terrible things. I think in Haiti what we see a lot of is power without organized human capacity to balance that power among various branches of govt leading to democratically elected absolute monarchies who view the population not as constituents but as serfs. I hope that elections pass smoothly and that the newly elected official can at least bring the country back into a semi-stable peace that we saw between 2000 and 2004.
Benin on the other hand is vibrantly anticipating its election. People are glued to radios and televisions listening to campaign information and following candidates as if it were march madness. There were 37 candidates, reduced now to 25. The first round of elections will be held at the beginning of march further reducing the candidate pool to 4. From the 4 final elections will be held at the end of feb to choose the president. Candidates come from the various regions of the country and people hold political meetings to choose which candidate from their hometown has a chance. They then organize to send bus loads full of people back to the village to register to vote. Why go back to the village when you can vote in the city? Easy -- campaigning is down at the most grassroots level. People can't officially take down names and information about who is voting for who, but when you go back to your village to vote, its more evident who you voted for. The organizers can then prove that they got X number of people to vote.
Here's where it goes above and beyond. My friend tells me -- Elections are REAL christmas for Cotonou. Political candidates walk around to wads of 1 dollar bills representing a day's salary to most villagers and pass them out saying vote for me and get others to vote for me. Let me tell you, its way more effective than any radio campaign that I've seen. On top of that, many Beninese do not have ID cards or proper papers in the village -- some don't have birth certificates cause they were born at home. So, you don't really need ID to register to vote... You know what this means?? Political organizers go to neighboring countries -- togo, niger, bourkina faso and nigeria to get clansmen to participate in the election.
In some ways one would say that this election is currupt and flawed -- with non citizen voting and paying people directly for their votes. But is it less democratic than our system where companies and political machines are choosing the candidates, where voter turn out is low and huge sums of money are spent on campaigns. What I see here are constant meetings about how to strategize to decide on who people want to vote for and how to convince others to vote for that candidate. While this is mostly based on the hope that it will mean knowing someone in the govt and being able to get favors, it is still very participatory.
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