/ 27 November 1998

IEC should not cry `wolf’

A degree of chaos was almost inevitable where the organisation of the 1999 elections is concerned. Its arrival is confirmed with the start of voter registration this weekend. The populace is now urged to rush out and register to vote in the district where they will be on election day. But, as election day has not been announced, how on earth are they meant to know where they will be?

Of course the country has been through it all before and no doubt we will muddle through in the end (after all it must be acknowledged that the vast majority of the population knows it will be in much the same place every day next year). But for all the stoicism we cannot help but feel a degree of concern.

The fine art of sabre-rattling has become something of a popular pastime in the new South Africa and it is perhaps understandable that the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) should have joined in by creating a sense of crisis over the impossibility of registering all voters this weekend, which it suggested was the only way of doing it.

Its backdown – allowing that there would, in fact, be more opportunities to register early next year – was not only predictable, but sounded suspiciously like gamesmanship. The point it was apparently trying to make was that it had been badly underfunded by the state. It also smacked of the patronising notion that the best way to get the electoral sheep – the voters – safely into the pen is to inculcate a degree of panic in its ranks at an early stage. Mob psychology, marshals tend to call it.

If either charge is wellfounded we would urge the IEC to tread with care. The fate of the boy who cried “wolf” too often hardly needs elaboration. And the unpleasant way sabre-rattling can backfire was demonstrated by the outcome of the IEC’s protests over funding. The government, to help them out, volunteered the services of large numbers of civil servants to assist with registration. But (surprise! surprise!) the civil servants proved to be less than civic-minded, as a result of which the South African National Defence Force has had to draft 10 000 troops to fill the gaps amid the handmaidens to democracy.

The mobilisation of troops has unfortunate connotations, particularly on the African continent where they have come to represent a tendency to shoot a problem when it shows an inclination not to resolve itself. So that step fuelled the impression that “crisis” had hit South Africa.

The democratic process is very precious to the new South Africa. It was, after all, the sight of the massive and determined queues of voters in the 1994 elections which finally brought it home to the world that something akin to a political miracle had taken place in this country. But, so strong was that image, that any hint of chaos will have the contrary effect and with similar force – persuading the international community that the miracle was a mere sleight of hand, that the “reality of Africa” is now showing through.

And that is too high a price to pay, whether it be for bungling, or gamesmanship.

Punish the bastards

As if in a penalty shoot-out, the British Law Lords on Wednesday teetered dramatically on the edge of saving Chile’s former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, before deciding that after all he must answer for his crimes.

It was a historic judgment by any standard. In human terms, it gives the victims of the murderous coup which brought the general to power a sense of retribution as well as a fleeting glimpse of the justice which has eluded them for so long.

The Law Lords’ majority decision accepts that actions by heads of state which do not fall under the heading of their normal official duties are subject to criminal law. Torture is not part of a head of state’s duties any more than, in Lord Steyn’s quaint phrase, “murdering his gardener”. This is a vital distinction which means that those countries like Britain which have signed the various conventions on human rights now have to act on them. It also sounds a warning to all future dictators as well as retired leaders, such as South Africa’s PW Botha or Indonesia’s Suharto, that they will not be able to travel abroad freely. The deterrent effect of such sanctions may not be great but they are a major step towards the globalisation of higher standards of executive behaviour.

Politically, this week’s judgment may have a beneficial effect even in Chile. Every authoritarian system ends differently. The transition which led to the demise of racial supremacy in South Africa produced a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as a chance to prosecute some of the torturers, though not yet the leaders. In Argentina the military regime was so weakened politically by the time it left office that at least one ex-president went to prison.

Chile’s compromise was softer, allowing General Pinochet and other army leaders to escape scot-free. He has never shown remorse and, as the statement he issued from his hospital bed two weeks ago made clear, he still peddles the nonsense that his coup saved Chile from a Soviet-inspired tyranny. He does not even argue that the end justified the means. He simply ignores the torture and murders which followed the coup, not just in its first hours, but for months and years thereafter.

It is perhaps too much to hope that the Law Lords will make him reflect a little deeper. But it may help the other apologists for the Pinochet dictatorship to think harder.