Hassan and his IEBC team must go before next polls

A government that’s oppressive is an unnecessary government. That’s why citizens have an inalienable right to resist — and overthrow — a tyrannical government. This concept — of the people’s power over their own government — is as old as idea of democracy. That’s because the government has no power except that which is donated to it by the people. So, every official — from the Head of State — to the office messenger — is in office because the people put him there. My point is that any official who exercises his power with haughtiness and arrogance conflates his delegated authority with personal power. That’s why IEBC chair Ahmed Issack Hassan — and his commissioners — must go. The people have revoked their donated power.

Let me elucidate the theory behind my conclusion. I don’t do so lightly. I respect and value constitutional offices, and treat them with reverence. That’s why asking an official in such an office to pack up and go home is a weighty matter. In 1849, American thinker Henry David Thoreau wrote the seminal piece “Civil Disobedience.” Mr Thoreau was deeply exercised over an American government gone rogue. As a citizen, he couldn’t abide a government that supported slavery and conducted wanton war against Mexico. He refused to pay taxes to an oppressive government and was jailed. Mr Thoreau argued that citizens shouldn’t allow the government to dull and atrophy their conscience. Doing so would make them agents of injustice.