The African Union has just suspended Egypt from the body because of the recent removal of former president Mohammed Morsi from power. According to the African Union, it is unacceptable to remove a democratically elected president from office. Well, newsflash to the African Union - the rules of the game have just changed! Perhaps we should say that the rules of the game have been elevated - democratic elections are not the sole basis of democracy.
Most African leaders have been ruling under the pretext that conducting a so-called democratic elections is all that is needed for a country to be called a democracy. Thus, but for the fact that regular sham elections are being organized, most African presidents are dictators. They have engineered constitutions to circumvent every democratic means of living in a country. In a country like Cameroon, for example, the government appoints what is called government delegates to supervise mayors of big cities, even though the mayors are elected by the people. Elections for the senate were just held in Cameroon. However, the president has the authority to appoint a number of members to the senate. That is, a senate that is supposed to be made up of democratically elected members will have many members appointed by the president. These are just the few means by which African leaders circumvent democracy while conducting elections as a cover. President Morsi was well on his way to making himself the same kind of democracy. The Muslim Brother Constitution that he engineered and his desire to put himself above the law - in fact, most presidents in Africa are above the laws of their countries - were just a few signs of how he intended to create his own version of democracy in Egypt.
The main difference with the Egyptian situation is that Egypt has a very vocal and restless populace as opposed to the rest of Africa. After having successfully removed Mubarak from office, they came to see that people power can remove dictators from office. With the help of the army, the people have removed a dictator from office. And that is how it should be. One other difference in much of Africa is that the army often supports the dictators so that many of the governments are military dictatorships passing for civilian administrations. This is the case with countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Congo, the Gambia, etc. These countries are military dictatorships in disguise.
Thus, no one can take seriously an organization made up of dictators such as Paul Biya of Cameroon, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, etc., when they suspend a country for the removal of a dictator in the making like Morsi. That is why no one takes the African Union seriously when it suspends Egypt from that unremarkable body. The Egyptian authorities should lose no sleep over this.
Most African leaders have been ruling under the pretext that conducting a so-called democratic elections is all that is needed for a country to be called a democracy. Thus, but for the fact that regular sham elections are being organized, most African presidents are dictators. They have engineered constitutions to circumvent every democratic means of living in a country. In a country like Cameroon, for example, the government appoints what is called government delegates to supervise mayors of big cities, even though the mayors are elected by the people. Elections for the senate were just held in Cameroon. However, the president has the authority to appoint a number of members to the senate. That is, a senate that is supposed to be made up of democratically elected members will have many members appointed by the president. These are just the few means by which African leaders circumvent democracy while conducting elections as a cover. President Morsi was well on his way to making himself the same kind of democracy. The Muslim Brother Constitution that he engineered and his desire to put himself above the law - in fact, most presidents in Africa are above the laws of their countries - were just a few signs of how he intended to create his own version of democracy in Egypt.
The main difference with the Egyptian situation is that Egypt has a very vocal and restless populace as opposed to the rest of Africa. After having successfully removed Mubarak from office, they came to see that people power can remove dictators from office. With the help of the army, the people have removed a dictator from office. And that is how it should be. One other difference in much of Africa is that the army often supports the dictators so that many of the governments are military dictatorships passing for civilian administrations. This is the case with countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Congo, the Gambia, etc. These countries are military dictatorships in disguise.
Thus, no one can take seriously an organization made up of dictators such as Paul Biya of Cameroon, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, etc., when they suspend a country for the removal of a dictator in the making like Morsi. That is why no one takes the African Union seriously when it suspends Egypt from that unremarkable body. The Egyptian authorities should lose no sleep over this.
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