Podcast Podcast Week

Coup d'état: the last ones to see it coming ...

In Mali, an ex-general who has gone into politics has openly suggested that, to reduce the suffering of the Malian people, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's " incompetent regime " must be ended . And since then, the notion of coup d'état seems to have become commonplace in the political discourse, and this seems to you extremely worrying. Why is that ?

Because the very notion of coup d'état is more ... radioactive, and must be handled with delicacy, extreme caution. In Mali, however, it tends to become commonplace in political discourse. And among the population, we use it now and again. This is all the more worrying because some people refer to it as if it were a political option like any other, to get out of the current difficulties in their country, which essentially revolve around the fact that Mali is confronted with terrorism, like so many other states in the subregion and around the world.

Also, when an ex-general of the Malian army suggests that to shorten the suffering of his people, it would be enough to put an end to the regime of a reelected head of state for barely a year for a five-year term, one wonders by what other means that a coup d'etat he hopes to achieve. And all of us know that if it is the military who are committing the coup d'etat in Africa, it is, in general, in the minds of politicians that the ideas that lead to it first emerge.

Must we understand that it is politics that pushes the military to take coups ?

In most cases, yes. If we exclude the ambition of a single man or a group of officers, the first case in point is when the soldiers find an unspeakable disorder or an unbearable injustice and organize themselves to act alone. In other cases, the military are discreetly approached by politicians, who can not wait for normal deadlines, or who, knowing that they would never come to power through universal suffrage, look for someone to make them short-scale. They convince them to act, " for the good of the people, " because the people are always the ultimate alibi, real or lies, because a coup must always be justified by noble motives.

Then there are the cases that have been observed in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Burkina Faso and, more recently, Algeria and Sudan: the people are exhausted from suffering an endless regime and are rising up. But to dislodge the despot, you need weapons, and the most senior officers (or the most daring) intervene, to complete the work of the protesters. And, as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Algeria and Sudan, those who finish work often tend to turn into third thieves, to confiscate power.

In Mali, did the ex-general need to talk about it, if that was really his intention? He could also act in secret ...

He was not hiding. But his "tweet" took the pretext of the massacre of forty soldiers by terrorists. And it is remembered that it was with the same humiliation that soldiers and junior officers had overthrew President Amadou Toumani Toure. This is probably why there was talk of incitement to revolt, even if all this seems to have no judicial follow-up. Because "IBK" is of a political level sufficiently subtle to understand that to stop an ex-general will especially publicize him.

To leave him alone is even a way to disappoint him and, perhaps, to signify that he has not played with finesse. Because terrorism is an evil that spares no one, not even the great powers. So, if the opponents, wherever terrorism is raging, should start chasing the President of the Republic, we would not finish. And, as general as he is, he can not guarantee that no more Malian soldiers will be killed if he comes to power.

To this must be added the declaration of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, on RFI, warned that the ECOWAS would not accept a possible coup in Mali ...

In essence, a coup is an unreasonable act. And those who commit it are not embarrassed by the principles laid down by a Cedeao which, itself, has so much trouble respecting its own rules. It is even better to remove from the virtual putschists all alibi for their pronunciamiento, rather than sheltering behind an organization that suffers more than it anticipates.

In general, those who are likely to be victims of a coup are the last to see it coming ...