Niger: beyond the elections, the institutions have proved their worth
Audio 04:12
Gilles Yabi.
Gilles Yabi Archive
By: Gilles Yabi Follow
9 min
This Sunday, December 27, the last electoral meeting of this year 2020 will be held in West Africa.
In fact, Nigerien voters are called to go to the polls for the first round of the presidential election as well as for the legislative elections.
State of play with Wathi.
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Gilles Yabi:
Yes, Niger is one of those Sahelian countries which are the subject of sustained international attention because of terrorism, various and varied trafficking, the role of transit for irregular migration.
Presidential candidates all insist that security threats in Niger are linked to the troubled neighborhood of its vast territory which borders with Algeria and Libya to the north, Chad to the east, Nigeria and the Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west.
It is clear that internally, Niger offers fewer loopholes than neighboring Mali, loopholes into which the actors of armed violence know how to rush.
But Niger remains fragile and vulnerable and the presidential election will be an important test for the consolidation of a democratization which remains recent.
It suffices to recall that this will be at the end of this ballot the first handover from one elected president to another elected president.
The results will also be interesting to decipher because in Niger, no presidential election has so far been played in the first round, which testifies to the existence of fairly well established political parties with regional electoral strongholds making domination difficult. without sharing a camp, even the one in power.
The candidate of the ruling party, Mohamed Bazoum, supported by outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou, is still the favorite?
Yes, even if the outgoing president respects the Constitution and will pass the hand, the candidate he supports enjoys the usual advantages of outgoing presidents: the continued presence in the state apparatus for years, the media exposure that goes with it. , the logistical, human, material and financial resources of the party which tend to merge with those of the state apparatus.
From the point of view of real political practices, Niger is in no way different from other countries in the region.
Videos of the electoral campaign bear witness to the distribution of brand new banknotes which encourage both the chansonniers during the meetings and the voters present.
It is clear that the capacity to spend is not the same for the thirty candidates in the race ...
But beyond the electoral cycles, you would like to salute the work of an institution which, according to you, has so far played a key role in the maintenance of peace, security and stability in Niger, the High Authority in Peacebuilding (HACP)
Yes, at the end of a year which has confirmed the dead ends resulting from democratic experiences reduced to their simplest electoral expression, it seems to me useful to show that the simultaneous construction of democracy, peace and that of the State passes through institutional innovation and going beyond short-term political logic.
In Niger, the High Authority for the Consolidation of Peace (HACP), created in 1995 to monitor the implementation of the post-Tuareg rebellion peace agreements, has become a permanent institution responsible for prospective analysis, prevention and crisis and conflict management through concrete activities.
In all the regions most vulnerable to insecurity, the HACP plays a crucial political role in maintaining permanent contact with local communities and local leaders and strengthening the credibility and legitimacy of the state.
Obviously, the institution would not have been able to obtain appreciable results over the long term if it had not been headed by strong, competent personalities aware of their mission of general interest.
The path of institutions of this type endowed with specific mandates and deployed outside capitals seems to me to be one of the most promising leads in all countries which wish to re-establish or strengthen the link between States and populations.
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