The Economist has described the outcome of the July 4 parliamentary election in Britain as massive shifting of the political tectonic plates. The metaphor is apt as it paints a picture of an unprecedented quaking earth movement that swept aside everything in its wake. The Conservative Party, or the Tory party, that had been in power for 14 years, consecutively, since 2010, lost its commanding majority in parliament.
The Labour Party, once looking like it wasn’t ever going to come to power again, suddenly turned the party voters wanted and was swept into office in a way not expected or imagined. It won over 400 seats, beating the Conservatives to a distant second place – almost eclipsed completely. Reir Starmer, the man who engineered Labour’s dramatic turnaround, is now Britain’s new Prime Minister.
What interests me more about the election was not so much which party won and which lost. My interest is that Britain has made democracy at once so lovable. I remember, the trajectory of democracy’s poor performance in Africa inspired Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah to write the satirical novel The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. But Britain has disproved that by unveiling the beautiful face of that form of government. The last election went as naturally as a man eating a meal. He saw the bowl of rice placed before him; there was cutlery provided and he knew how to place the rice in his mouth. And the UK election was as easy as that. No fuss. No fixed season for it. The Prime Minister can call a snap election any time, but usually when he knows his party would easily win or, as in the last one, when the party is doing badly in the opinion polls.
There was no need for a new voter register. There exists already an automated database of voters, which is regularly updated to add people who have come of voting age and delete the dead. It is unlike our INEC that has to conduct a fresh register after every election and frequently remind people to pick up their voter’s cards whenever an election is to be held. This incurs a heavy expenditure, running into billions of naira.
British elections are not as wasteful as ours. Another difference, polling takes place in one day and vote tallies are quickly announced and results accepted across the party board. No complaints of vote buying, snatching or disfranchising anyone. In this month’s election, by the early hours of the next day, the new Prime Minister and elected new MPs were known. The old PM conceded defeat and promptly congratulated his successor. Nobody headed to court to challenge the result. All is well that ends well, according to Shakespeare.
In contrast, take our last presidential election. It was held February 25 2023. But no winner was announced until almost a week after. The delay gave rise to suspicion of under hand deals between INEC and politicians. And when the result came out finally, all roads led to courts. The legal contest went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was not until October 26 2023 that a wearied nation knew it finally had a new president. An election that should have cemented the bond of brotherhood left a country terribly divided and a-sorrowing. More than a year after, those who went into the contest have been unable to accept Bola Tinubu as president. The beautiful one hasn’t yet been born and never will be, some say.
A point of caution though. It is true, British democracy is more than 200 hundred years old. Ours, if we call ourselves a democracy at all, is just two decades plus. No basis for comparison here, is there? Probably, not. But the problem is that the “learning process” has gone on for too long. And it doesn’t appear like we are even learning anything. The democratic culture hasn’t advanced beyond the primitivity we started out with. No surprise. For as long as we see politics as a means of survivor, not a platform for offering service, the cut throat rivalry and violence that characterize our elections will persist.
People will continue to resist use of technology to improve the quality of elections because it will prevent vote stealing. But the truth is that Britain and America are seen today as the beautiful faces of democracy because they wholeheartedly embrace technology to make the system work better. There, it is possible for people to mail their votes days before polling day. Also prisoners now do have the vote. This is democratic progression. We can’t afford to be stationary and expect to be named among the real democracies. Nah, nah.
