Why Rawlings and Nkrumah opted for democratic rule unlike Gadhafi

Smoke rising over Tripoli was the headline captured in the reports of BBC in 2011. The picture then, as was portrayed, did not bear any good development for the turmoil that was ongoing in Libya, whiles some observers both foreign and local made merry with the capture of Col. Gaddafi. The conflict was perceived as a very worrying situation to result in such a vibrant African economy blazing in fire.

Since Libya was not the first nation of the world to undergo such an experience and may probably not be the last, it was very important for global decisions on such uprisings to had been very clear and targeted to provide security for the people of Libya.

The most profound question that dominates the minds of the Africans that time was that, ‘what would make a man pull down a building that he has toiled to put up right from its foundation?’ The answers to this question will possibly give us a clue on the “Plight of every dictator”. It was that much complicated and helpless situation to see some African leaders turn against their people to whom they own security, responsibility, and protection.

African Imagination Network (Ainet) believed that problems don’t happen in empty space, but are rather driven by reasons. And the best solutions can only be arrived at, in the simplest manner, if we hold on to objective interventions from observers of African democracy, who do not share a personal interest in the scourge that they sort to efface, but are coming in out of sympathy, to help the situation during political upheavals.

Infightings within a nation, a group of people or within political party settings are already results of complications that develop within the given system. Interventions become very ultimate as a way of solving the situation. But in today’s global world it seems that interventions come to make the already existing conflicts and disturbance worse as in the case of Libyan, Sudan, Somalia, and Central Africa to mention but a few.

Most conflicts always arrived when liberal forces turn against an incumbent autocratic rule that ensconce its power over the people for a very long time. Dictators don’t are not people who are not patriotic, but people who take arms in the name of the people to attain power, and wish to rule in the name of the people.

Dictators wish to offer the people the best of governance and for that matter have to eliminate all obstacles that would prevent them from pursuing that good agenda. What makes them dictators is that they think for the people, decide for them, and give them absolute instructions all for their own interest. They cultivate the believe that power once acquired must be protected.

No wonder children see their parents as dictators because out of the greatest desire for their security they give them instructions and sometimes use force to compel them to observe them. Today’s freedom is a mixture of freedom with absolute irresponsibility. And freedom reaches it maximum definition when it attains this stage. It has come to a point where people seek the sword from authorities to kill themselves. Hence a ruler becomes a dictator when forced to tame people he considered to be working against their own security.

Why is Dr. Kwame Nkrumah tagged as a dictator when the marks of his Patriotism still remain indelible in the history of Ghana, Africa, and the world? If Former president Rawlings was not patriotic why has he being searching for constitutional rule after June 4th uprising. These Patriotic men at the same time wear the jackets of dictatorship. When patriotic men hate to see opposition and use all their might to eliminate it within a nation they automatically become dictators. Through this, liberal forces team together, merging up with external forces or interventions, on the move to topple the incumbent government.

Patriotism turns into absolute power corrupt when autocratic leaders fill streets with blood of the souls of their own people. In the case of Libya, they used their own hands to pull down whatever that they had toiled to put in place for the development of the nation. And involved in all forms of atrocities against their own people because they rebelled. There is no dictator after overthrow that has never cried over the disloyalty of his people against him.

In such up risings, there are always three players, who actually composed the situation; the liberal forces, the government forces, and foreign interventions (NATO). In the case of Libya as at the time the uprising was staged in 2011, was noted not be a signatory to the code that enacted the International Criminal Court in 1st July 2002 and therefore has the tendency not to withdraw its forces or keep Col. Gaddafi in Libya. And the NATO forces failed to cease fire and persisted till the capture of Gaddafi.

The situation projected the fact that destruction of Libyan economy was something that was to continue till Gaddafi was captured. Women, children, and the economy continue raging in fire till Gaddafi was arrested. The duration of his capture which was uncertain determined how long the carnage continued to happen in the streets of Libya. Wasn’t it bizarre for decisions to have stayed that way?

It is time for African Union, United Nations and European Union to put in place measures and decisions to manage situations of such caliber any time they occur than to always put the lives of innocent people at risk. In the case of Libya then, the position the former UN secretary suggested was that the UN should come out with a UN rapid reaction force. To this, I think, without all forms of biases and other parochial interest from some members of the UN for such interventions, the agenda of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and all global observers should stop the hard mode of intervention that add more to blood shared and demolition of state resources.

If the arrest of Gaddafi was the ultimate solution to delivering the people of Libya from dictatorship, liberal forces or rebels to the regime could have acknowledged to United Nation Security Council through the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for the arrest of Gaddafi, by the dictatorial charges label against him by liberal force than the No -Flying Zone that NATO Initiated as a mode of intervention.

What dictators must learn is that the world as a global village has enlightened cross section of citizens across all Nations over the power of social action. This makes people who leave under dictatorship to awaken to the call of global change, breaking the barriers of culture and religious restriction and submitting to democratic principles, whether the principles are perfect or imperfect. The Universal declaration of Human Rights(UDHR) sort to liberate people from dictatorial tendencies irrespective of culture, religion, geographical locations, believes and ideologies that infringed upon fundamental human rights.

Leaders who refused to accept this global change would have to become dictators and would eventually have to destroy everything that they have suffered to gain for their countries including innocent lives of Women and Children with their own hands when people start to call for more structured constitutional development.

By Abdul Ghafaar Naeem Ahmed