Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

In Africa's first independent country , home to Africa's first single-party state ,  Africa's first female president is preparing for the country's first democratic transition of power in over 70 years, but is accused of improperly interfering in the  first round of voting . The election, whose first round was held October 10, can be correctly characterized as the first step toward "the first time in recent memory that a democratically elected Liberian president will hand power to a similarly elected head of state," since the last time such a transition happened was back in 1944. Liberia's history as an independent country began back in 1847, making it the first independent country on the continent. Prior to that it was a colony of the United States , settled by free-born black Americans and freed slaves. Over the next hundred years, presidential transfers of power occurred on a regular basis, although the True Whig Party dominated politics fr...

Protestors have been active all year. The opposition says that over a million people in the 7-million population country have participated in anti-government protests. That's probably an exaggeration, but they likely number over 100,000, which is a big number for a small country. To set the stage - thousands protested in 2014 against President Faure Gnassingbé seeking a 3rd term, and when the president won re-election in 2015, the opposition disputed the results.  Here is some of what happened in 2017 - I might be missing some important events: In February, hundreds protested against the government shutting down two independent broadcasters.  In late February/early March, civil society groups, unions, teachers, taxi drivers, etc. protested and went on strike over increased gas prices and delays of compensations payments to victims of government violence from 1958-2005. One person was killed by the police breaking up the protests. By July , protestors numbered o...

Gambia held parliamentary elections in April. The United Democratic Party (UDP) won a majority of seats (31/53) with 37% of the vote. President Barrow was a member of the UDP, but ran for president as an independent, with support from the UDP and six other parties . In the previous election, in 2012, UDP and several other parties had boycotted, so a majority of seats was held by the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), which supported former president Jammeh. In April's election the APRC won just 5 seats. Other members of the Coalition that supported Barrow include the People's Democratic Organisation for Independence and Socialism (PDOIS), which won 4 seats, and the National Reconciliation Party (NRP), which won 5 seats.

I've been neglecting the blog for almost 6 months! Time to do a little catch-up. The last time I wrote about Gambia was January 3rd. (Now former-) President Jammeh had accepted his electoral loss  to (current) President Barrow, and then changed his mind and decided he had won after all, and was defiant toward ECOWAS, saying if they tried to invade, the country would defend itself. Nonetheless, ECOWAS troops (primarily from Senegal, Gambia's only neighbor) entered Gambia on January 19.  Jammeh declared a state of emergency but didn't put up much of a fight - he "filed an application with Gambia's Supreme Court to prevent Barrow being sworn in." That didn't work too well - Barrow was first inaugurated as president in the Gambia embassy in Senegal, and then after Jammeh agreed to step down on January 21 (after stealing $11 million in the intervening two weeks), President Barrow was inaugurated in Gambia in February. Gambia was the last ECOWAS co...

Ghana's democracy is robust compared to some other ECOWAS countries, including Gambia. On the same day Ghana's president Mahama accepted defeat, the first sitting president to lose an election in Ghana, the president of Gambia decided he didn't want to accept his electoral defeat after all. Ghana has had peaceful multiparty elections for 25 years, and Decembers's election marks the third democratic alternation of power between parties, but in other ways Ghana's democracy shows weaknesses, as described in a recent Monkey Cage post from Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis. The whole thing is worth reading but here are some highlights: During the campaign, a widely shared video showed Mahama allegedly “buying votes” — handing out money to women at a market. 71 percent of respondents in that survey said they prefer democracy to any other form of government — ... But the results suggest that despite Ghana’s impressive experience of open and competit...

... especially when you're counting ballots in a country where the president doesn't want to lose. From Reuters : The head of Gambia's electoral commission has fled to Senegal due to threats to his safety after declaring that President Yahya Jammeh lost last month's election, a defeat the ruler has refused to accept.

From Reuters last week: A man purporting to be the leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, denied the jihadist group has been pushed out of its stronghold in the Sambisa forest, but the army said the base had been captured. President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday said Boko Haram's last enclave in the forest, a former game reserve in northeastern Nigeria, had been captured in the "final crushing" of the group. Reuters has been unable to independently verify that the area was captured. "We are safe. We have not been flushed out of anywhere," the man identifying himself as Shekau said in a video ... "If you indeed crushed us, how can you see me like this? How many times have you killed us in your bogus death?" ... Nigeria's military has in recent years said it has killed or wounded Shekau on multiple occasions.  Such statements have often swiftly been followed by video denials by someone who says he is Shekau...

From Reuters : Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh accused West African regional body ECOWAS of declaring war, after it said it was putting forces on alert in case he refused to step down at the end of his mandate this month. ...