*Zimbabwe: Nigerian Poll Exposes West, Again *
Posted: Wednesday, April 25, 2007

*The Herald* <http://www.herald.co.zw/>

*PRESIDENTIAL and legislative elections in Nigeria have come and gone, but
what they left is widespread disappointment and more questions than answers.
*

Central to the inquest is whether it is possible to speak of Zimbabwe and
Nigeria's elections in the same breath?

While we were not on the ground in Nigeria, reports of the loss of over 200
lives in poll-related violence, last-minute ballot printing, theft of ballot
boxes at gunpoint and the failure to deliver them to some stations leave us
with no doubt that the poll lacked credibility.

Even the outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo, whose party ostensibly "won"
the election expressed disappointment with the process, though he was
surprisingly amenable to the outcome. But what surprises us even more is
that while all observer missions have condemned the Nigerian process as a
disgrace, the response from Western groups and governments has been quite
muted when compared to the disgust from Nigerian and other developing world
observer missions.

We, however, must emphasise from the outset, that we do not believe that
Western countries have any right to bless or condemn any election on the
continent, particularly when they do not disguise their contempt for African
observers whom they do not even invite to their own countries.

But we would have thought the West, that always masquerades as a custodian
of democracy, would join progressive observers in agitating for a rerun.

The same goes for Obasanjo who was quick to join the Western bandwagon in
condemning Zimbabwe's 2002 presidential poll which can never be compared, by
any stretch of the imagination, to the sham that occurred across Nigeria
last week.

This is not to say we do not know why US President George W. Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair seem to have lost their voices where
Nigeria is concerned.

They have been benefiting a lot from Obasanjo's penchant to export crude
oil, and import refined petroleum products.

Obasanjo also served them well in their fight with Harare when he went
against African Caribbean and Pacific voices in the Commonwealth that had
recommended the lifting of Zimbabwe's suspension from the councils of the
Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth's gripes, we were made to believe, were over the way the
2002 elections had gone in Zimbabwe, which is also the EU's justification
for its illegal sanctions.

Today, we ask the same observers to hold the Zimbabwean process and the
Nigerian poll to scrutiny, and tell the world whether they have the right to
question the legitimacy of our own process. We ask, as a wronged people,
betrayed both by Obasanjo and his peers what the recompense will be on
Nigeria where 200 lives were lost and a key opponent only allowed to contest
just a few hours before the election?

Today, Obasanjo who had hoped to leave the scene under the halo of plaudits,
exits amid a cloud of shame, hoist by his own petard.

Let the Nigerian experience be a lesson to all, it is not necessarily the
credibility of a process that the West is interested in, but the
malleability of the regime that determines the Western response.

This is why we agree with President Mugabe that the only voices that matter
are those of our brothers from the developing world, we advise Abuja to
listen to their concerns.

As for the Westerners, they can go hang.

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