THE NATION WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2011
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EDITORIAL/OPINION EDITORIAL FROM OTHER LAND
COMMENT
A precarious balance
Appointing RECs •Jonathan must show more circumspection
T
HE nation can only get it right electorally if it takes concrete steps to correct the mistakes of the past. But we doubt whether this is being done, especially with the hullabaloo that heralded the reported list of new Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by President Goodluck Jonathan. The list is allegedly replete with names of men that cannot be said to have reasonably acquitted themselves in similar positions in recent past. In other instances, the president reportedly chose people with bad record or people with partisan standing. This has left us agape as to whether the government is sincere about its self avowed public statements regarding its resolve to enthrone, before 2015, genuine electoral reforms in the country. Nigerians have specifically expressed reservations about some of the re-nominated names from the just retiring 13 RECs whose five years tenure have expired. Two of the contentious names will do: Dr. Gabriel Ada is one of the 13 RECs who just ended their tenure. He supervised the controversial 2007 elections in Benue State. He was also the electoral overseer of Delta State’s January 6 governorship rerun poll and the April general elections in Delta State that have been objects of litigations, causing INEC to be accused of bias. Ada’s antecedent included being a
member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the same as the president that renominated him. He was also elected Speaker of Cross River State House of Assembly in 2000 and was removed in hazy circumstances. Austin Okojie on his part is reportedly one of the re-nominated RECs. He is from Edo State but served INEC in Imo State in 2007. He conducted in that year a governorship election that was cancelled without justifiable reasons, at least in the eyes of reasonable members of the public. Serious protests stopped INEC from using him to conduct the supplementary May governorship election in that state. Curiously too, INEC has shown crass insensitivity to the feelings of electionweary Nigerians by applauding, during its recent retreat, the ‘commitment which the RECs brought to bear in the discharge of their duties’. The unpleasant aftermath of past and recently conducted elections in the country was a sharp contrast to the electoral body’s position. At least, the above mentioned two from the 13 retiring RECs could not have been said to have creditably discharged their duties. Rather than allow them to go, it is sad that the president is reportedly tinkering with the idea of returning them as RECs. The REC is by law the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of the state. He appoints returning officers for elections held in the state and supervises INEC’s activities. He is responsible to the electoral umpire but can only be appointed or removed by the
president. So, we acknowledge the fact that the president has the power to reappoint any or all of the retiring RECs. But in invoking this power, we call on President Jonathan to show more circumspection. He should deploy this power in such a way that will show his concern for ensuring corrective approach to electoral mal-administration that is now routine in the country. History is watching him and the best way he could be positively judged by posterity is not by appointing or re-appointing people with tainted reputations or obvious partisan standings as RECs. If democracy must be deepened in the country, then, the president must start by getting people with impeccable character into sensitive positions in INEC.
‘We acknowledge the fact that the president has the power to re-appoint any or all of the retiring RECs. But in invoking this power, we call on President Jonathan to show more circumspection. He should deploy this power in such a way that will show his concern for ensuring corrective approach to electoral maladministration that is now routine in the country’
Beautiful Bahrami •A beautiful Iranian woman radiates even more beauty in shunning vengeance
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MENEH Bahrami could pass for an Arabian queen: fairskinned, lush dark hair, buxom, large eyeballs and the smiles of an enchantress. Ameneh’s physical beauty and elegance ironically turned out to be her undoing, as a certain Mojid Movahedi would not take ‘No’ for an answer. For Majid, if he did not have Ameneh, nobody else would. When therefore, Ameneh turned down his marriage proposal, he doused her with acid, damaging her two eyes beyond repairs and disfiguring her beautiful face. This happened in 2004. Iranian laws allow for retributive justice and in 2008, the courts allowed Ameneh to also cause Majid to lose one of his eyes through a medically supervised acid drops into his eyes. Last week, in an Iranian hospital, before live television, Ameneh had her chance to take her pound of flesh from Majid, the man who turned her life to an endless nightmare. Doctors were poised to drop acid into one of Majid’s eyes as he wept profusely like the coward he is. They asked Ameneh for a final go-ahead. In that brief moment that would have seemed like eternity for weeping boy Majid, a brief second on the cliff hanger when his life was set to explode in unmitigated pain as he received the fiery “eye drops”, a brief spell when his life was set to suffer partial eclipse, he was taught a les-
son in grace, forbearance and forgiveness. “I forgive him”: Ameneh told the doctors. With those glorious three words, Ameneh, despite her wrinkled and “ugly” face, glowed beautifully in the eyes of the world. The watching world erupted in ecstatic joy at her gracefulness and kindly heart. Her ability to forgive her wicked tormentor has been ascribed to her being a woman; some say it may be due to the holy month of Ramadan which has just started. But whether it was influenced by these factors, or that Ameneh’s heart is made of gold, the lesson is in what Mahatma Gandhi said long ago, that an eye- for-an-eye will only end up making the whole world go blind. Even Amnesty International had described cold vengeance as a form of punishment and torture that must be jettisoned by the civilised world. Ameneh has by her singular act, reminded the world that it is still divine to forgive, that it is the most beautiful and graceful thing to do. The other lesson is the relentless bestiality by men towards the women folk in this so-called internet age. Even as this celebrated case was going on in Iran, another young woman reportedly died from complications arising from acid bath in that same coountry. Her offence was the same: she declined a marriage proposal. According to reports, there is hardly
any week that young women are not given acid bath in some parts of Asia. Even here in Nigeria recently, a man reportedly stabbed his wife to death. Wife battering, widows alienation, bride burning, honour killing, breast ironing, forced prostitution, dowry death and all sorts of physical and psychological violence are still meted out to women even in this age in alarming proportions. The equality of man and woman under God and under the law is a long-settled issue and for any man to think or act otherwise is to seek to turn the hand of time. Man and woman are made to perfectly complement and to regenerate our common humanity. Only in mutual respect can we live happily together and achieve this divine purpose.
‘I forgive him: Ameneh told the doctors. With those glorious three words, Ameneh, despite her wrinkled and “ugly” face, glowed beautifully in the eyes of the world. The watching world erupted in ecstatic joy at her gracefulness and kindly heart’
P
AUL Samuelson, the great economist, observed that Wall Street indexes had predicted nine out of the last five recessions. It is tempting to hope that big falls in world stock markets this week are also driven by exaggerated fears of renewed downturn. Unfortunately, whether or not they are ultimately realised, the fears are plausible. The global economy is in its most precarious state since the banking crisis of 2007-09. Policy debate has been dominated by the risk that the world economy might fall into a double-dip recession. Yet there is a realistic possibility that something still worse will happen: a “lost decade” of growth. Such as Japan suffered after the bursting in the early 1990s of a huge bubble in the stock market and in property prices. Figures released yesterday showing a reduction in the US unemployment rate sparked a brief rally in stock markets, but it was short-lived. Equity prices have fallen dramatically in the past two days. The main reason is that the eurozone debt crisis resists efforts to resolve it. Investors do not believe that European institutions, notably the European Central Bank, are strong enough to bail out the heavily indebted countries of Southern Europe or to stabilise these countries’ financial markets by buying their sovereign bonds. The inherent inflexibility of the currency union compounds the problem. The financially weaker members of the eurozone, such as Greeze and Portugal, face a painful adjustment in their living standards, which might have been made easier if they still had the option of currency devaluation (which by raising import prices would reduce real incomes). But the fundamental problem of the Southern European economies is that they have been living beyond their means. And this is by no means a recent or a novel phenomenon. The Western banking system collapsed three years ago under a cascade of bad debts. Financial markets periodically undergo booms and busts (as with the bubble in technology stocks in the late 1990s), but this time was different. The asset that had experienced an unsustainable boom in the early years of this century was not a segment of the financial markets, but credit itself. Banks and other financial institutions had lent profligately and indiscriminately to borrowers who turned out to be poor credit risks. Banks assumed that the development of new and complex financial instruments had reduced the risks of lending. They were terribly mistaken, and their balance sheets suffered huge damage. The remedial measures – low interest rates and big budget deficits – that policymakers put in place after the colllapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 managed to avert a repeat of the Great Depression. But these policies have had big costs and global recovery has been weak and fitful. Invstors are concerned that financial weakness might merely have migrated from the private sector to sovereign borrowers. The evidence is worrying. The US came within a day of defaulting on its national debt this week. The integration of national weaker countries to larger ones. Commodity price inflation is squeezing living standards and depressing consumption and investment. And there is a big additional question: whether the banking crisis has enduringly damaged the Western economies’ capacity to grow. Policymakers’ options in this crisis are limited. Interest rates are already very low. Fiscal stimulus has been tried with only muted effect. The underlying problem of the Western economies remains: there is too much debt. No painless way out of the crisis is available, but the most direct route to stability is to get a grip on borrowing and thereby restore the confidence of financial markets. Much needs to go right. Governments can help most by first tackling what has gone wrong. – The Times
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