The Development Fallacy

The United Kingdom (and Northern Ireland) went to the polls on Thursday in general elections that were supposed to decide the fate of the country for the foreseeable future. This year, more than any other since 1997 when Tony Blair and New Labour swept into office, there was widespread interest in the elections revved by the global recession and its attendant misfortunes. Turnout was high and people divided over what party to vote into power. All the ingredients were in place for the transition of a highly- democratized society from one epoch to another through the legal expression of the popular will. Or so it seemed. What happened was that registered voters were turned away by ill-prepared staff at booths who cited time constraints and insufficient ballot slips among their excuses.

One has to wonder what might have been made of the same situation were it to have transpired in some sub-saharan African nation, or even in the Middle East or Latin America. Indeed one must consider how electoral 'malpractice' has been reported in the UK press when the malpractitioners were from these aforementioned regions. The general impression you get is of the untenable nature of such a situation. Any government stemming from these circumstances cannot be fruitful in the long run, rooted as it is in confusion. Yet, though it may not be completely true to claim that electoral fraud is a given in the UK or other parts of the 'developed' West, experience has proven that it is not uncommon to witness such disappointing scenes in the electoral process. In America, foul play at an even higher level has been reported. Al Gore took his case against George Bush all the way to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, when the infamous 'dimpled' chad had the President smiling to victory in the 2000 polls. And before that, the Kennedy- Nixon race as far back as the sixties introduced ballot-stuffing to the so-called Third World well before many countries in those parts had begun conducting their own elections.

In 2007, when the Nigerian Presidential elections were concluded with allegations of fraud jumping out across the airwaves, authorities in the UK were quick to weigh in with condemnation of the entire process. Nigeria would have to kick off the entire process again for it to be legitimate. Or so they said. However, it has been full three days since votes were cast up and down the UK and a clear Prime Minister is yet to be named by Her Majesty the Queen. Conversely, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua was declared as president swiftlyy and without kerfuffle, free to begin running his country without the distractions of a political impasse.

And these double standards- as they appear to be- do not begin and end in the field of electoral exercise. Countries in the Third World, labelled 'developing' countries, are so ranked due to a multitude of intersecting factors among which corruption which is the hallmark of bad governance, is of primary importance. The not-for-profit group Transparency International frequently gives vent to its discontent with the endemic corruption at all levels of Government in Nigeria. But if you consider the scale of corrupt behaviour exposed in the Westminster Parliament of late, with the discovery of elaborate schemes to fleece the public coffers under the guise of expense claims, you begin to wonder whether double standards are in operation in today's world where 'definitions belong to the definers' ( as so eloquently put by the Nobel prizewinner Toni Morrison). Because of their economic prosperity and their dominance of international organisations, the elite nations in the developed world are allowed to declare countries like Nigeria to be inferior.

Herein lies the contradiction: a nation like China consistently falls below average in its performance on factors that act as a bellwether for political maturity in the modern world yet itis still ranked as a developed country whereas Botswana, with its impeccable political institutions and economic management is considered otherwise. China with its human rights crimes and poorly developed labour laws, with its restrictions on fundamental freedoms, is ranked higher than Botswana which is the exact opposite. It would seem then that economic prosperity is, in fact, the only measure of development. Thus, every other matter of quasi-moralistic importance pontificated by the Western media and its governments needs must be discarded and the true measures of development (being GDP size and GDP size alone) put front and centre in this particular discussion.