Democracy and Civil Rights: Securing Political Closure and Western Responses

Against the backdrop of the hostility towards multi-party democracy displayed by all three liberation movements before they seized their states, this chapter examines how the regimes which emerged from these movements then went on to monopolise political power. The methods they adopted included constitutional revisions extending the terms in office of leaders, the gradual merger of party and state, the manipulation of elections and supervisory bodies, the use of repressive legislation to silence dissent, restrictions on the operations of the free media and organised civil society, and when necessary the use of violence to hobble opposition parties. All three regimes adopted ideologies and definitions of democracy such as no-party Movement Democracy in the case of Uganda, Revolutionary Democracy in conjunction with Ethnic Federalism in Ethiopia and Consensual Democracy in Rwanda. These are analysed specifically in terms of how they served to legitimise and entrench their systems of political governance. The chapter examines the highly negative reports produced by successive Western election monitoring teams on the extent of manipulation of elections, and the uneven electoral playing field faced by opponents in all three countries, as well as the reactions of Western donors and the continuing flows of development assistance notwithstanding such findings.