String of Tense Votes Test Africa’s Democracies

Before the end of the year, voters in six more countries in sub-Saharan Africa will head to the polls, testing institutions in regional powerhouses such as Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Ghana and nations such as Burkina Faso, Niger and the Central African Republic, where conflicts are likely to constrain voting.

While most of these countries haven’t seen the ballooning coronavirus infections witnessed in the West, disruptions caused by uncertain election results could compound the severe economic damage wrought by government-mandated lockdowns.

The votes could reinforce a pattern of African incumbents’ working to cement their power by overhauling constitutions and passing laws aimed at silencing dissent.

“Democratic trends have reversed and there are now fewer democracies in Africa than 20 years ago,” Christopher Fomunyoh, a Cameroonian academic with the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, said in a September submission to the U.S. Congress Foreign Affairs Committee. “Many countries in Africa are falling short in their efforts to consolidate constitutional rule, in respect of presidential term limits…laws on elections, civic space and political party activity.”

Guinea’s electoral commission said the octogenarian Mr. Condé received nearly 60% of the vote in the presidential election, but opposition leader Cellou Diallo, a former prime minister who has already lost twice to the current president, insisted he was the real winner. He called on his supporters “to continue the combat” in defense of his purported victory. At least 21 people, including security forces, have died in clashes, according to state television.

Observers from the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States—often seen as reluctant to call out fellow African leaders—said the vote was conducted properly. The regional bodies and the United Nations are now trying to mediate the standoff.

Celebrated in 2010 as Guinea’s first democratically elected president, Mr. Condé pushed through a constitutional amendment in March that could keep him in power until 2032—when he would be 94-years-old.

In neighboring Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and one of the fastest-growing economies until the coronavirus hit, President Alassane Ouattara is also running for a third term that his opponents say is unconstitutional. Mr. Ouattara argues that a new constitution, passed in 2016, reset the clock on a legal two-term limit—a view that has been supported by the country’s top court.

Adding to the tensions, two of Mr. Ouattara’s most potent challengers—Guillaume Soro, a former rebel leader and speaker of parliament, and former President Laurent Gbagbo, recently acquitted of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court—have been barred from the Oct. 31 poll.

Their supporters have decried the decision to disqualify the pair, who each enjoy large followings. The remaining opposition candidates are threatening a boycott and have urged their supporters to engage in “civil disobedience.”

The government has tried to suppress demonstrations by opposition supporters. Clashes between protesters and security forces have already left more than 30 people dead. The violence has brought back memories of the civil war that followed Mr. Ouattara’s 2010 victory over Mr. Gbagbo which left some 3,000 Ivoirians dead.

The votes are happening as the pandemic is crimping the presence and activities of foreign observers, and Western governments are preoccupied with escalating virus outbreaks at home.

“The coronavirus has allowed many governments to be more focused on problems in their countries and not be concerned with foreign affairs,” said Thierno Diallo, a Guinean opposition politician and adviser to Cellou Diallo, with whom he shares a common last name.

The European Union, usually one of the most active monitors of African elections, is dispatching just four experts to observe the election in Ivory Coast, rather than a full mission of around 100 observers. Meanwhile, observers from the Carter Center—the human-rights and pro-democracy group founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter—met with civil society and other actors via video calls rather than in person, before sending a 36-person team to monitor voting.

Authorities in Tanzania, where President John Magufuli is almost certain to win another five years in office in Oct. 28 elections, never responded to an EU application to monitor the vote, according to a spokeswoman in Brussels. During the 2015 election that brought Mr. Magufuli to power, EU observers called out shortcomings in the way the votes were tallied and bias on the part of state media’s coverage of the vote that favored the ruling party.

The only sub-Saharan African country where the EU is deploying a full observer mission is Ghana, whose Dec. 7 general election is widely seen as the least problematic of the coming votes. Elections in Burkina Faso, Central African Republic and Niger in November and December will be monitored by two to four EU experts, if at all, the spokeswoman said.

Despite the alarming trends, the picture is far from uniform across the continent of 54 nations. Last year in Sudan, the 30-year dictatorship of General Omar al-Bashir was ousted by peaceful protests spearheaded by women and civil-society activists. In Malawi, the opposition in June won a rerun of a 2019 election after the country’s supreme court nullified the vote for irregularities.

Ken Opalo, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, said the absence of Western observers can motivate civil-society and opposition groups to work harder for more-transparent polls, as it did in Malawi. But, he said, voters turned off by widespread corruption and lack of economic opportunities can also be drawn by the promise of a strong leader.

In Tanzania, Mr. Magufuli—nicknamed the Bulldozer—used his first term to go head-to-head with multinational companies, pledging to win a bigger share of the country’s mineral wealth for its 56 million citizens.

In June, the World Bank upgraded Tanzania, which eschewed a strict coronavirus lockdown, to a lower middle-income economy. But Mr. Magufuli also passed laws making it easy to shut down critical media houses and arrest opposition politicians for attending routine party events.

“In many of these countries, the state’s ability to deliver on the promises of democracy did not pan out,” said Mr. Opalo.

Write to Gabriele Steinhauser at [email protected]