No ‘Unity’

In response to President Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to cede power after losing elections in the Ivory Coast, the editors of the Economist warn against the African Union trying to foster a "unity" government to diffuse the crisis. "It is essential that Africa as a whole gets used to the idea that ruling parties bow out when they are rejected at the ballot box. So-called unity governments, installed with the apparently good intention of preventing further chaos after blood has already been shed, are as likely to lead to paralysis and patronage as to creative compromise."

Correct as far as this analysis goes, condoning such government "compromises" proliferates pernicious fruits. Praying on the naiveté and good-intentions of external influences, despots booted from power by the vox populii can cling to that power through the effusion of blood in the full expectation that it will make those influences so desperate to end the carnage that they will permit them to retain at least some semblance of the place in government they have lost any rightful claim to.

The upshot is bad precedent and the inception of a vicious cycle. Seeing that one entity booted from power by plebiscite was able to retain that power through this method, other entities are all the more likely to employ the same method – shedding the blood of their people – when placed in the same predicament.

Additionally, as the Economist begins to hint at, "unity" governments confound representative government in the sense that they terminate in utero the development of the norms and habits an organic society needs to internalize to ultimately become both ordered and free. Giving thugs like Gbagbo a free pass to disregard election results only makes the people of the Ivory Coast and Africa at large accustomed to government by those willing and able to utilize power in the bloody suppression of the masses.