Hi panafrican,
Welcome to HabariSearch forums. 🙂
Well, you are right, but these issues are not only in Africa.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the 74 year old president of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, who has been in power since 1989 has just won 97.7% (!) of the vote in Sunday’s election, securing a new five-year term. This was announced by the Central Election Commission. There is hardly any opposition.
Not far away, in Uzbekistan, also a former Soviet republic in Central Asia on 29th March, Islam Karimov “won” 90% of the vote, his fourth consecutive term as president since 1990.
“Though the constitution limits presidents to two terms in office, the Central Election Commission allowed Karimov to run again, arguing that Karimov had only served one term since the constitution was adopted in 2002, and that his previous two terms before that should not count.” [Wikipedia]
We of course have Lukashenka in Belarus, referred to as “the last dictator in Europe” & a couple others in other former Soviet republics. Other than that, we have other countries with not exactly exemplary “democracies” like Venezuela, even after Chavez, Nicaragua, …, etc.
That is of course no excuse. If Africa is to move forward & develop, one of the areas that need to change is the political infrastructure. The problem is many of these leaders are actually dead wood and their politics is the very reason our countries do not develop and are stagnant, economically and in other areas.
