In 2002 the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein won his re-election to the presidency by 100 percent. For all intents and purposes, he was not credited with being an exceptional campaigner or democrat after that magnificent result.
Part of the rationale for dismissing that electoral result as an unnatural landslide was the absence of inherent liberties in existing institutional conditions in Iraq at that time. Such essential liberties of democracy including press freedom and individual liberties were notoriously muzzled.
From that standpoint, it is logical to argue that an election is as much a test of a leader’s popularity as it is a representation of individual rights of choice. It is an illusion of choice when only one candidate is given undue advantage to stand unopposed at the ballot.
In other words, the right to vote is only noble if the electorate have the right to vote from among candidates of their choice. In fact, there is increasing doubt nowadays on the reliance of elections alone as a leading reflection of democratic liberty in most countries.
From observation, two thoughts arise: the first is the belief that the simple action and presence of elections entails democracy. Elections alone do not pronounce democratic choice – they are intended to be a furtherance of foundational liberties of a nation.
This leads to the second observation, which is that democracy, in its full maturity, depends on institutions of governance more than elections. The value of electoral mandates, therefore, is not in the dependence on periodic elections but the existence of equitable distribution of social, economic and political justice.
From a constitutional standpoint, electoral mandate is essential because it lends legitimacy to elected officials. It provides that by such mandate, the electorate and the nation at large, expect policies derived from their mandate to be national than regional, equitable than tribal, logical than subjective. This makes the judiciary a centrepiece of genuine democracy.
Justice is an essential component of democracy largely because it dictates how accessible constitutional guarantees are to citizens. If the judiciary is personalised either by those in power or their affiliates, then democracy has failed.
Hence, part of the reason the Iraqi election results of 2002 were doubted is because both legislative and judicial democracy were absent. Those important functions of democracy which are meant to be outward looking were reflective of the leader, not the people – much like Zambia between 1972 and 1990. In democracies that are reflective of their environments, the varying beliefs and intentions of the electorate typically mean a 100% outright landslide is clearly unattainable.
Recent examples are India and the Republic of South Africa (RSA). Both nations have near-similar parliamentary democratic systems.
This means that the respective executive leader is (s)elected among peers of the party with majority seats in parliament. The one advantage is that representative democracy is centred in the legislature; part of the weakness is that a leader is not directly chosen by the electorate.
South Africa’s ruling party, for example, has recalled incumbent presidents without recourse to the electorate.
This can be easily reconciled because the electoral mandate belongs to the party with parliamentary majority, not the individual. Elections in such democracies are led more from a political party vantage point than that of individual electorates.
What separates the electoral mandate in true democracies is that it can be withdrawn at the next electoral cycle. Political contestation in a democracy is a constitutional right. As such, the duty of any incumbent is to ensure the integrity of the constitution prevail pre, during and post elections. The duty of the judiciary is to ensure that the integrity of electoral mandate is applied with parity.
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