AFTER the electoral crisis that has dominated the aftermath of elections in Cote d’Ivoire, Robert Mukondiwa travelled to West Africa’s grandest economy to read the mood on the ground and determine the course of that nation’s political future.
THE threat of military action by African countries against another African country in the same geographic location was naive to say the least.
Ecowas, the West African regional bloc, led by Nigeria, decided to issue a threat that if incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo did not leave the presidency voluntarily, he would face military action to push him out.
This George W. Bush approach to dealing with one’s enemies was totally misplaced.
First of all, “Ecowas” had technically not made the call as is widely touted by the predominantly Western Press, but rather a mere FOUR countries led by Nigeria at the helm of the regional grouping.
These included minnows like Cape Verde, with Benin and Sierra Leone also being part of the call. Interestingly, none of the countries which share a border with Cote d’Ivoire ever publicly encouraged the military option. In fact, military regional superpower Ghana objected to the use of force saying it would destabilise the volatile region and hinted, through President John Atta Mills that no Ghanaian soldiers would be deployed should the military option ever be taken.
This stance flew in the face of Nigeria which had in a way unilaterally declared war on a fellow Ecowas member state without consultation and concise thought.
Secondly, any military action to resolve an internal political crisis, which had not and to this day has not breached the frontiers of Cote d’Ivoire would have been needless.
Had it been carried out, it would have been a disproportionate use of force where there was little or no need. Also, it would have led to the military destabilisation of an area that has finally collectively been experiencing welcome peace after a series of military and civil unrest patches.
Thirdly, and most importantly for Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, while the United States is believed to have been calling the shots for war in the region to oust Gbagbo, the commitment of troops would have been difficult.
France, the United Kingdom and the United States would not have sent a single foot-soldier as this was supposed to have created the semblance of a unified African force of “progressive African nations” fighting for democracy among other reasons. That would mean the able Ivorian army would square off with Nigerian troops predominantly. That would lead to body bags coming into Nigeria as casualties would be assured.
Nobody wants body bags and a body count from a needless foreign policy war in a year when Nigeria goes to the polls. These elections are also Goodluck Jonathan’s first real test at the helm of his party. He also was probably just talking tough in order to build the image of a strong regional leader ahead of a party nomination, preferring not to walk the talk later on, in order not to polarise his electorate.
Also, while military intervention has worked against rebels in foreign lands led by Ecowas in the past, this would have been the first time that they would have been involved in an offensive against a sitting government. Previously, they would take up positions easier when fighting rebels because they would be in countries after being invited to fight rebels.
They would enter and take up positions alongside that nation’s troops making entry into those countries easy as collaborators and not as aggressors. Jonathan, for all his famed GOODLUCK, would have met his Waterloo in southern Cote d’Ivoire.
The best way to make an offensive on Abidjan would have been to invade from the north alongside the rebels. That would not have been a pretty public relations picture for a leader headed for the test of the ballot.
Schoolboy error in diplomacy
The decision to bring in Raila Odinga by the civil service at the helm of administration in the African Union is akin to a schoolboy error in the corridors of continental power. Odinga is someone who has been at the losing end of a similar foray for power in an African country backed presumably by the same Western players backing presidential aspirant Alassane Ouattara. If anything Odinga should be recused from any post electoral tug of power discussion unless he is a complainant in the issue as he will soon be facing another election in Kenya.
The choice of Odinga, a person with perceived interests in this nature of deadlock, was naive. It was like having a child whose education was threatened when his father married a younger and sexier wife whom he preferred to the boy’s mother now being expected to mediate in a battle for equity between a senior wife and a newly married woman.
The situation is too reminiscent to his own which pained him and haunted him hence the possibility of a biased verdict is real rather than merely speculated. It is tantamount to having a rape victim preside over a rape case. The verdict may be of the word “alleged” before the word “rapist” in “alleged rapist” being deleted and confirmation of the accused as a sure rapist follows thereafter.
A “U” in geography for the AU
Kingmakers and destiny shapers in any political impasse are best drawn from the particular area as they have greater clout. In their “endless wisdom”, or lack thereof, AU Commission chair Jean Ping and others neglected that lesson from history with the embarrassing Odinga appointment.
For all his dignity, former SA president Thabo Mbeki has not had too much success, but had the wisdom to go into Cote d’Ivoire with a clean slate and agenda and as an African with wise counsel but not expecting to move mountains.
Odinga wanted to conjure up a magical resolution that ran according to a script that he had in his inside jacket pocket — a predetermined resolution that many sceptics believe he pencilled and indelibly etched onto a diamond tablet before taking off from Nairobi.
The cameo role he played in conflict resolution can also be likened to the not so successful trips to Harare by Olusegun Obasanjo and most notably Abdoulaye Wade at the height of Zimbabwe’s political crisis.
Only Mbeki managed to score a victory after all the attempts at carving up personal legacies had petered out into the quiet annals of history with Wade and Obasanjo’s attempts forgotten and along with their embarrassment.
For anyone with any understanding of African politics and its delicate crevices, Odinga was just a waste of time. Africa was as good as standing still with regards to time he “wasted” and resources that were poured down the bottomless abyss. The nature of African treatment for the alien moderator from far afield is well known.
It is hardly disrespectful, it is characterised by respect and all the perks that a visitor gets; warm water, food, a place to lay one’s head, toilet paper and water to drink. But their counsel, which is not in the context of the region and therefore not sensitive to the intricate fault lines in the politics, demographics, culture and underlying histories of the region is listened to and easily forgotten as soon as they leave the land’s sacred soil aboard their charter plane. And so it was with Odinga.
The mediation panel has also shown a bit of naivete continued by the AU. Anyone who has been in the tough post-election tangle or has had strongly pronounced opinions in a similar situation should be recused.
That means Zimbabwe, Kenya, Sudan, Nigeria Madagascar and definitely Botswana join the list of recused nations. But how Burkina Faso to Cote d’Ivoire’s north can be considered is as strange as it is shocking. What with the knowledge that most poll irregularities in Cote d’Ivoire were in the north where the militants and rebels are wreaking havoc.
And where do most of those people wreaking havoc come from? Why, they are the fruit of the loins of the Burkinabe mostly, no less! Also, there has always been an argument that Ouattara should be having his image on the ballot in a country other than Cote d’Ivoire; a country where his nationality is traced to by many historians. And that country is Burkina Faso!
Indeed, that is why it was easy for youth leaders including Charles Ble Goude to argue that there was a need to strike off the Burkinabe leader from the list of mediating countries in the Ivorian crisis.
Where power lies
Communist and socialist doctrine suggest that the real power for any revolutionary in a mass push for change lies in the people. “The people are the sea and we are the fishes swimming in the sea”, goes Maoist doctrine.
Crossing the fault-lines of influence and power in the Ivorian economic capital Abidjan reveals a voluntary and strong persuasion towards the doctrine that is being pushed by Gbagbo. The heart of the city at the sprawling La Sorbonne market is one such melting pot of ideas.
People from all walks of life, without being motivated to come out of their homes, follow the news and hold open microphone sessions in which they speak against a much loathed French “presence and interference in the affairs of a sovereign Cote d’Ivoire” in many of the speakers’ own words.
Power lies in the people and the people speak in sync with Gbagbo and his ruling FPI party. Therefore, the power lies firmly in Gbagbo’s hands. The economy is in his hands and while there have been efforts to label Ouattara’s coterie of hangers-on as a “government”, it hardly passes for anything anywhere near that word.
The very main point of entry into the country is manned by Gbagbo and his government. Their men are issuing the visas around the world and while anyone may want to disregard their power outside the Ivorian frontiers, they have to humble themselves and visit the “discredited Gbagbo” envoys around the world to get visas should they want to enter that country or not enter at all.
There is a tangible air of strong Gbagbo sentiment around the city where a talk to the youths and the aged alike reveals strong support for Gbagbo and what he stands for. Unlike the general norm where revolutions start among the youths and among the urban dwellers, it is here that Gbagbo is firmly entrenched and loved by the masses and hence with that on his side, Gbagbo is certainly not going anywhere!
He is a strong fish and is firmly supported by a massive sea that lets him swim in it with all the support he needs to nurture his political economy right down to its coral foundations.
Defence to the death
But the extent of the power that is propping Gbagbo should not be underestimated. While history is awash with people who have vowed to fight for their leadership and the doctrines prodded by their leaders, many always fail the test. Which is why a visit to one of the humble homesteads in Koumassi township in the still of the night proved insightful.
There, we were faced with the tale of a man who had made the most ultimate sacrifice for his beliefs. Fanny Kassoum had laid down his life after allegedly being killed by Ouattara supporters. Whether they indeed were behind his death will always be questioned by naysayers, but the number of people attending the night vigil in his honour at his homestead in a tense and dangerous time was alarming. “He was our leader and he gave his life for the struggle so we will honour him tonight,” said 35-year-old fresh university graduate Stephen from nearby Cocody.
Fanny Kassoum had become the face of this struggle for what is seen largely as the tipping out of the dregs of the repulsive concoction that was the brew of colonial oppression personified by Nicolas Sarkozy. When people are willing to die for a cause and even fearlessly congregate in a volatile place and time to honour their political martyrs, many who are opposed to them and their leaders have only one message they ought to accept — dethroning Gbagbo is not going to be a stroll along Le Avenue des Champs-Élysées!
Indeed, to the Ivorians who were here on this night vigil, taking turns to provide a guard of honour to the portrait of the late Fanny Kassoum, France was a foe. Their aversion to France was eerie, bordering on horrific. They wanted to chew a final bone with their erstwhile colonial power and put a conclusion to this colonial saga.
To them France was like some omnipotent jurisdicial entity which, from an imagined Mount Sinai, tended to want to bellow down orders and commands to the leaders of their sovereign nations and should those leaders prove errant, France wanted to actively etch its own name on the voters’ roll, dip her finger in indelible ink and vote for the Ivorian “natives”, as it were.
Finally, there must be more than a great message to anti-Gbagbo technocrats around the world. The Gbagbo presidency, as must have now been realised by political upstarts like Goodluck Jonathan, is a victimless crime on the Western world.
Why, unlike the Tunisian, Egyptian, Yemeni and Jordanian cases, nobody is mourning the “death of democracy” as the West is alleging has happened. If anything, the youth continue to organise pro-Gbagbo rallies with people like Konate Navigue and Charles Ble Goude at the forefront.
Indeed, somebody and some party shall give in to the Ivorian crisis, but it is great doubt whether that party shall be Gbagbo’s. The strongman is here for the long haul no less!
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