Peace and justice inseparable
Do not interfere with anything in the Constitution that must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. Abraham Lincoln.
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There are many who are legitimately worried that if the matter of the disqualification of some presidential aspirants is not resolved expeditiously, the timetable for this year’s general election could be disrupted. That is legitimate because the election is guided by law and any delay could affect the constitutional arrangement of handing over the presidency and parliament on January 7, 2017.
But while such apprehensions are legitimate, that does not mean that those who have gone to court to seek justice to what they perceive as injustice are nation wreckers. We must see their action as part of the effort to deepen constitutionalism and the rule of law. Indeed, the Electoral Commission (EC) said it relied on the law to disqualify them; therefore, they must also be encouraged to depend on the law to establish their claim. After all, the interpretation of the law belongs to the Judiciary, not the EC or the presidential aspirants.
We must begin to appreciate that while calls for peace are in order, there can be no effective and enduring peace without justice. As maintained by Dr Martin Luther King, “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If resorting to the court will ensure justice but affect the date of the election, it is a better option than to have the election and have the nation plunged into confusion because of perceived but unresolved injustice.
Going to court is a lawful and peaceful means of seeking redress and we need to encourage our people to resort to that path whenever they feel cheated or short-changed rather than recourse to impunity and violence. What is imperative is for all of us to appeal to those in charge of our judicial system to allow the national interest to prevail such that when election disputes come before them, they would deal with them with dispatch, mindful of the maxim that justice delayed is justice denied.
That is why we must congratulate the Chief Justice on not waiting for litigation to surface before designating courts to specifically deal with electoral dispute matters. Let us hope that the 17 courts and judges given the obligation will not let the nation down. Perhaps, because the date for the election is fixed, the courts would be more efficient so that the electoral calendar is not undermined to affect the constitutional order for the handing over of governance, especially in the case of Parliament, which appears very rigid as of now.
The time frame within which the Presidential Election Petition was resolved, as well as the four years it took to resolve two parliamentary election disputes does not necessarily inspire confidence in our people that electoral disputes could be handled efficiently. The difference this time is that the disputes have come before,not after the elections and ,therefore, the need to resolve them expeditiously is not in question, otherwise we could have a constitutional crisis since there is no real state of emergency situation.
Hopefully, all the suits could be consolidated into one as the grounds for disqualification appear similar; probably that some of the voters who endorsed the candidacy of the aspirants were unqualified to do so.
So far, we have not heard much about parliamentary candidates being disqualified. Thus, the EC could go ahead with balloting for the parliamentary polls and initiate the contract for the printing of the ballot papers for that purpose. That way, when the matter of the presidential candidates is resolved, we would have to deal with the ballot papers for the presidential election and that could be done within a shorter time than with the parliamentary ballot papers.
We must demand both peace and justice. We must not condemn those who are in court because there is the potential that their actions could derail our electoral calendar. We must allow the rule of law to prevail because that is the path we must pursue to deepen democracy and strengthen constitutionalism. Judicial decisions give certainty to the law and enable us to progress along the path of due process.
The fact that the EC disqualified the aspirants based on its understanding of the law does not mean that the aspirants have no remedy. Neither does the claim of the aspirants render the decision of the EC unlawful. The matter has to be determined by the court of competent jurisdiction. The court will interpret the law to enable us proceed from now onwards. The future will be clear so that we would not have to debate whether the EC or the aspirants are justified.
We must see peace and justice as imperatively inseparable to give meaning to our democracy.