There was this book I used to carry when traveling as an undergraduate student – Engineering Mathematics by KA Stroud. On a very good day, someone would pay for your bus ticket because of your academic garagara seeing you with that BIG mathematics textbook. KA Stroud book was simply a mathematical initiation, extending the last year of secondary school Further Mathematics in a more fascinating way.
I am yet to read a better written Mathematics textbook ever. KA Stroud was indeed a teacher.
The interesting thing in FUT Owerri (Federal University of Technology Owerri Nigeria) was that senior students scared people about a section in that book – Ordinary Differential Equations. In FUTO, they called it ODE (“O di egwu” which in Igbo means something extremely fearful, mystical and challenging).
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Permit me to use ODE for this election result from Rwanda. Now, you have to solve it. You just have to ordinarily differentiate because it seems the electoral umpire is still partially computing! But I am not sure you will arrive at a different maximum number. Africa …what a people!
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The Rwanda election mirrors that of Russia. The only thing outsiders can do is to agree with the people that ‘voted’. If you say that the result isn’t a reflection of the will of the people, with which proof? It is not every rigging that needs to happen on the day of election, if you are contesting against extremely unpopular candidates, the election is already rigged beforehand.
If you go to Rwanda, you will likely be impressed with what you see, so what is even the end goal – having credible elections with subpar development and governance, or experiencing development and better governance from a ‘rigged’ election? It is becoming extremely difficult to enjoy both credible and free election alongside great development. It is a complex conversation, which requires higher thinking to make sense of how to enthrone and guarantee a working system.
We always cite China as example, but China is not a democracy, but we still love their development and what they contribute to the world economy. If you ask ordinary people their preference in the African countries that yammer about democracy, I am not sure anyone will be interested in cycles of elections every 4 or 5 years; they just want a working system.
Development over Democracy…