Guinea-Bissau’s Constitutional Referendum: A Presidential System Won’t Cure Chronic Instability
However, the real suspense of the vote, according to a report from Le Pays, lay not in the outcome but in the turnout, as the opposition—or what remains of it—called for a boycott, arguing that the reform is not a cure but a maneuver to legitimize a power that came to office through arms.
The current semi-parliamentary system, the report notes, has often resembled “a car with two steering wheels, driven by two drivers who do not look in the same direction.”
By forcing a president and a prime minister with sometimes incompatible ambitions to coexist, Guinea-Bissau has given the impression of placing two captains on a pirogue already navigating troubled waters.
Yet, as the report argues, the problem may not be the pirogue but those holding the oars.
According to Le Pays, changing the regime, rewriting the Constitution, redistributing powers, and strengthening the Executive will not suffice to ward off the old demons: personalization of power, instrumentalization of institutions, contestation of electoral results, and rivalries between clans.
The presidential system is not a magic potion.
In a democracy firmly anchored in the rule of law, it can bring clarity and stability, but when checks and balances are weak, it can also turn the president into the almost exclusive owner of the national shop.
The real reform for Guinea-Bissau, the report contends, would not be merely constitutional. It should also be political, electoral, judicial, and, above all, cultural.
One must learn to lose an election without wanting to overturn the table, to govern without wanting to control everything, and to be in opposition without wanting to block everything.
A Constitution can organize the separation of powers and prevent a president and a prime minister from fighting over the keys to the palace, but it cannot, on its own, prevent men from clinging to power or manufacture democrats.
The report concludes that the real challenge is not to find a Constitution that works with men as they are, but to build institutions strong enough so that, even when men slip, the Republic itself does not fall.
Changing the rules of the game is not always enough to change those who play, and changing the steering wheel never guarantees a change of direction.
Source: Editions Le Pays