SECTION 39: THE TICKING ELECTORAL CLOCK

AYO OBE

Occasions do arise when Section 39 has to turn its gaze inward. Such an occasion is the firing by Mr. Segun Adeniyi, Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity of the first discreet salvo in the blame game that is about to be played out over the imminent failure of meaningful electoral reform in the country.

In the event, Adeniyi need not have been quite so discreet in his "Who's Afraid of the Uwais Report?" article carried by newspapers across the country recently. It was swamped by another statement that he finally made to the nation last week, namely that President Umaru Yar'Adua is suffering from acute pericarditis.

Adeniyi took care to advise us that the president "... is now receiving treatment for the ailment and is responding remarkably well." Unfortunately, the Thursday statement had been preceded by one that claimed the president had gone to Saudi Arabia for a routine medical check-up. Thus, despite Adeniyi's new presentation of the trip as "confirmatory checks" (an attempt to keep faith with the "check-up" theme) Nigerians, reading the tea-leaves of hurried presidential departure without even securing Saudi visas, and the body language of Peoples Democratic Party power-brokers (who must by now, have spent whatever remains of the nation's foreign travel budget on trips to Saudi Arabia) concluded that the president was at best gravely ill, and worst, already dead and gone!

Certainly few were fooled by ritual - and presumptuous - incantations about all Nigerians praying for the president's good health, especially when so much expertise on chapter and verse, section and sub-section of constitutional succession provisions (as well as schemes on how to subvert them in order to maintain the PDP's zoning formula) was on display.

So as the nation went into frenzy over the ramifications of the president's health, Adeniyi's earlier remarks about the Uwais Report, in which he laid the blame for any failure to enact electoral reform at the door of the National Assembly, were largely overlooked.

When inaugurating the Committee on Electoral Reform, the president himself gave December 2009 as the date by which he expected the electoral reform process to be completed.

As the deadline looms, the Presidency seems to be preparing to distance itself from the impending failure to meet it.

In fact there is enough blame for the president, the executive and the National Assembly. The president received the report of the Justice Uwais-led panel a year ago, on 11th December 2008. He sat on it for four and a half months. Finally, on 30th April 2009, he sent seven bills to the National Assembly, supposedly his administration's response to the Uwais panel recommendations.

Had it not been for the wave of condemnation that the Ekiti re-run election attracted, there was every danger that the dithering over electoral reform would have continued.

But having unwisely immersed himself in the Ekiti re-run maelstrom not once, but twice, thereby revealing partisanship and inability to remain above the fray, it became convenient and necessary for the president to wrap himself in the toga of concern about the importance of electoral reform.

We on the outside cannot know what effort the president put into explaining the philosophy behind his electoral reform programme to the National Assembly. But the hostile and largely uninformed reaction which started with the proposal for a Political Parties Registration and Regulatory Commission suggests that the answer is: little or none.

The National Assembly for its part, has remained in such gross dereliction of duty as regards the electoral reform process - taking months to even grasp the concept behind the urgent warnings that election-related constitutional amendments should be attended to first and fast, and squabbling over precedence between the Senate and the House - that it is only by remembering that most of them are beneficiaries of the discredited electoral process now threatened with reformation, that their behaviour becomes the least bit comprehensible.

Still, as the year's end approaches, it is a good idea to bear some stark electoral realities in mind.

To change the date of elections to hold them earlier than the present narrow 60-30 day window, the 1999 Constitution must be amended. Even without the hatchet job that was done on the proposal as relayed in Adeniyi's article, time is unlikely to permit the Constitution to be amended to this or any other effect, but if it were, we might be looking at elections in October/November 2010, not March/April 2011, unless there is a corresponding extension of the terms of office of the current incumbents - a dicey proposition even with a "hale and hearty" president.

There is no Independent National Electoral Commission at present. The president may be waiting until electoral reform legislation is enacted before making fresh nominations, but the result will be that the newly-reconstituted Commission will have only a few months to organise elections even under the present system, let alone implement any changes that may be required by the reform process.

However, there is much the president can do even without fresh legislation. This was recognised when INEC's funding was made a first line charge on the Federation account. Similarly, in constituting the fresh electoral management body, there is really nothing to prevent the president from making nominations that reflect the nation's gender character as well as its federal character, or including persons from labour and other civil society organisations or persons with disabilities in the new commission.

It is easy to take undeserved credit (e.g. Adeniyi's claim that the Yar'Adua administration has strengthened the judiciary while wittering on about separation of powers and how no influence will be brought to bear on the National Assembly). It will also be easy to pass the buck for the failure of the electoral reform process.

Doing something to strengthen the electoral process irrespective of possible legislative failures however, requires a little more effort and political will; probably a job for the Nigerian people, rather than their ‘elected representatives'.

Ayo Obe is a columnist for Next