Africa must unite: But behind whom? 0
This July is again time for another African-wide election to be held during the 19th Africa Union Summit in Lilongwe, Malawi, between 15 -16 July 2012 that will be deciding who shall be manning the AUC (Africa Union Commission) for another four years.
Interestingly, with barely a month to go, the Ad hoc Committee of eight set up to present the 54 AU Assembly members with potential candidates have met first on the 17 March, 2012 and again on the 14 May, 2012 in Cotonou, Benin without a final outcome. It is even more interesting to know that the Ad hoc committee is planning for a final meeting on the eve of the AU election to decide who the AUC Chairperson candidates shall be, thereby giving the delegated electorates barely less than 12 hours to make a choice on who shall be the AUC Chairperson.
The four-year term of Jean Ping popularly referred to as ‘AU Era of Diplomacy’ came to an end in January 2012 and in his effort to seek another four years mandate to lead the AU, he contested the position with Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in a fierce election battle that ended with no clear winner.
After repeating the contest for the third time, Jean Ping ended up standing alone as the rivals stepped down and despite this, all that the incumbent AUC Chairperson was able to muster was 32 votes, 4 votes less than the required 36 votes to qualify for another four years term. The initial reaction of the AU Assembly to the election outcome was to appoint the Vice AUC Chairman Erastus Mwencha to serve as an interim Chairman of the AUC for six months until another election, but this was later reversed for the incumbent to serve the interim period.
Unlike any election ever held at the AUC level this inconclusive AUC Chairmanship election of 31 January, 2012 between the incumbent Ping and contender Nkosozana, exposed the significance of the office under contention in the business of the AU. In fact, the AUC Chairmanship as an office conferred on a single person confirmed itself as the most important and the highest single institution of all the AU institutions. This is different from whatever we have seen in the past 49 years of the Union’s history.
This recent election proved that if some slight modifications are employed in broadening the participation and the procedure of arriving at who occupies the highest single office, the AUC Chairmanship will easily assume equal status to the President of America or China or at the least, India. This then will be saving us all the humiliation of having the AU divided by member states leaders, as is currently the case with Professor Atta Mills of Ghana, Boni Yayi of Benin and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia running to the USA at the bidding of Barak Obama to seemingly be attending the G8 Summit.
Of course this tradition used to be the privileges of Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and Jacob Zuma of South Africa until they lost favour. But what does anyone expect from a people who are not controlled by anyone as none of us is united behind a particular person at the continental level despite our despair at the leadership vacuum across Africa?
Have we at all empowered anyone among us to discipline those who defy our set African Union standards?
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