Party supremacy or parallel government -By Lewis Obi

Muhammadu Buhari during the inauguration day.

At the time the leader­ship elections were held in the National Assembly last week, the political parties ought to have been superfluous. In the United States, no one would be blaming the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the snafu. Everyone would be blaming the APC Sen­ate Caucus.

Issues like this keep remind­ing everyone that we still think presidential but act parliamen­tary, confirming that the West­minster system cannot be purged from our political psyche. It also shows the fundamental difficulty of operating the presidential sys­tem in Nigeria. Everyone knows the system is essentially corrupt, even in the least corrupt places, but it has the redeeming feature of being practical. It works. And in Nigeria’s particular circum­stance, the country is corrupt from the bus stop all the way to the parliament, and on top of all this operating a system that is greased by corruption.

In the United States, the Senate Minority Leader has a good chance of emerging Sen­ate President if his party final­ly wins and becomes the gov­erning or majority party. But it does not disqualify other members of the Senate from running. It is the same situa­tion in the House of Represen­tatives. Ambitious members of parliament begin to sound out their colleagues as soon as the election is over. Then the House or Senate caucus of the majority party meets and con­ducts a n e lection. W hoever emerges becomes the official candidate of the majority party. So, when the Senate or House convenes, therefore, the elec­tion of the Speaker or President is usually a matter of formality because the caucus has decided who gets the big chair.

It is not as if many members of the APC caucus are unaware of the regular way of choosing legislative officers. But unable to convene a credible caucus meet­ing of the APC senate, they fell back on the party to do the hard work for them, which turned out to be embarrassing to everyone, including President Buhari who vehemently refused to be part of the exercise but was caught in the middle when it became a national embarrassment for the APC.

The wisdom of keeping the party distant from the govern­ment seems not to have any meaning for Nigerian politicians. From the First Republic to the 2nd Republic political parties were used as tools for corruption, to obtain kickbacks and to funnel money into the political parties themselves. Old habits die hard and the Peoples Democratic Par­ty (PDP) apparently continued the old habit which the APC has now reaffirmed. The vitupera­tions against those considered to be disobedient to the party and threats of all manners of sanc­tions against them ensures that no one crosses the party in future and that the fear of the APC is the beginning of wisdom for its members.

While this may be good for party chieftains, in the mind and perception of the average Nige­rian, the APC is now, like the previous ruling parties before it, a parallel government. I t has backed itself into double jeopar­dy. It has now to defend two turfs whereas Nigerians have now two outfits it suspects of all the usual kinds of political malfeasance.

The American systems is free of this anomalous situation be­cause as soon as the primaries end, the convention holds, and elections are concluded, no one remembers the party for two reasons. First, Americans don’t have national parties. Party dis­cipline is enforced by the elected executive who is the party’s flag-bearer; in the legislature by the party whips. To get to these elected positions, the candidates would have satisfied the voters about their faith and conformity with the party’s planks and man­ifestoes. They don’t need to be double-checked.

Republicans are having a prob­lem choosing from a crowded field of 16 and counting presiden­tial candidates for 2016 election. Unlike the Democrats who boast of a ready-made overwhelmingly favored candidate in Mrs. Hillary Clinton, the Republican field will take a while to crystallize. Even Governor Jeb Bush whose father and brother had been presidents don’t seem to be having a field day. Indeed Americans are won­dering how many presidents they want to get out of the Bush fam­ily.

A Black brain-surgeon, Ben Carson, is making some im­pression; the young Senator of Cuban descent Marco Rubio is also receiving attention, both are Obama wannabe’s in the GOP. Donald Trump announced last Tuesday boasting of his $9 bil­lion in assets. Senator Ted Cruz has excited many Republicans, a very eloquent man. Senator Rand Paul, like his father, wants to close all US military bases abroad and stop America being the world’s police man. Mil­lions of Americans would love to try such a foreign policy, but Republican primary voters won’t let him survive Iowa. I t will be a miracle if he makes it to South Carolina.

This stage of the campaign at­tracts mostly the primary voters who now do the screening them­selves. On the side of the Demo­crats, Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) runs to the left of Sec­retary of State Clinton, like Gov. Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island), the so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party. After |Ralph Nader’s independent can­didacy which practically elected George W. Bush and defeated Al Gore in 2000, Democrats are now wary of far left candidates who might lure away vital votes from mainstream Democratic candidates. To that extent I think the progressive wing is a no-hop­er in this cycle.

I think the American system lets the party to wither away af­ter the election. If a man can go through hell and high water to get elected president, as Ameri­can presidents do, it would be un­reasonable second-guessing him on matters of ideology, in either the right or the left. To a large extent same applies to Congress men and women. Occasionally, Congress men wander off the reservation and had to be pulled back by the party whips. But every vote cast in Congress is recorded, so you cannot afford to wander off too many times or else you might be inviting a pri­mary challenge. And the fear of the primary challenge is the be­ginning of wisdom in American politics.

Half of the top echelon of the APC was of the PDP in their first life as politicians which under­lines the absence of any strongly-or delicately-held beliefs about anything. T hat is probably why the APC could afford to spend time grieving about its misman­aging its own legislative officers selection and making the country pay for it. But whatever happens it has left the impression that it intends the party to be a parallel government and must be ready for the consequences that come with parallel governments.