The best know how to pass the baton

Audio 03:58

Jean-Baptiste Placca, columnist at RFI, in 2020. Pierre René-Worms

By: Jean-Baptiste Placca

8 min

Wherever heads of state seek a third term or life presidency, they develop all kinds of arguments, the best usually being the completion or consolidation of what they see as their work.

Except that no nation has ever been entirely built by one man.

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In Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire, opponents display a worrying determination to prevent Presidents Alpha Condé and Alassane Ouattara from granting themselves the third term that each of them is seeking, in this month of October.

How to explain that the two heads of state remain so confident, while their people and opinion, in Africa, tremble

?

You know, of course, the quote: " 

The gods drive crazy those they want to lose

 ."

It makes you wonder if the gods do not first deaf and blind the political leaders they want to lose.

Because finally, nobody can reasonably think that this frantic ride towards the third mandate ends otherwise than badly, in Guinea as in Ivory Coast.

Chaos and / or war will not necessarily arise the day after this presidential election, and more!

But, even if they immediately feel like they've won the game, the consequences, sooner or later, will come, and they will probably be violent, certainly dramatic, not only because this quest is politically against. nature, but also because it has its roots in far too many injustices.

But African political leaders are still confident, until the worst happens.

How many politicians have lost, or even perished, for having thoughtlessly believed that the mere fact of achieving power increased their IQ tenfold.

Why are you so certain that, even elected, these two leaders will end up losing this battle

?

Because they will lose her.

It is all the more distressing that they will, at the same time, tip West Africa into a general tendency to systematically cheat with institutions.

Change the Constitution so as not to have to respect it.

Changing the Constitution for your personal benefit, and suddenly believing yourself to be exempt from the limits that the previous one imposed on you, is not good.

When we change the Constitution, it must be to improve it, in the general interest.

And not to slip in what suits you personally, pretending to be concerned only with items acceptable to all.

This annoying, and even very boring, way of cheating on the Basic Law, the mother of laws, was once cryptic.

It is done, now, with its face uncovered.

We can hear you.

However, some succeed in their ends ...

Yes.

But that never benefits them in the long term.

Tanja Mamadou, in Niger, ended up being overthrown in a coup.

Abdoulaye Wade, in Senegal, was beaten by the determination of the Senegalese youth, and thanks to the integrity of the men in charge of the institutions managing the elections.

The Guinean and Ivorian opponents precisely doubt the integrity of the men who embody the institutions.

Not to mention the propensity of the bodies in charge of validating the results to flatten themselves before the authorities.

Africa has not forgotten the pathetic spectacle of the President of the Constitutional Court who validates the victory of Laurent Gbagbo, before returning, a few weeks later, to validate that of Alassane Ouattara.

In one case or the other, he has shown cowardice, if not weakness.

To take a country and say that we will not let go until we have finished developing it is a vain claim, which even the immense Nelson Mandela did not have.

Because, a thousand years after him, there will still be a lot to do to bring the work of development towards the near-perfect.

And, often, when a leader persists, under the pretext of consolidating his work, he rather undermines its foundations and, sometimes, puts the nation in danger.

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  • Guinea

  • Ivory Coast

  • Alpha Condé

  • Alassane Ouattara