IVORY COAST: THE REAL STAKES

by Le Magazine de la Diaspora Ivoirienne et des Ami(e)s de la Côte d’Ivoire | 22 décembre 2010 2 h 05 min

RebellesIvoiriensOnu

What is really happening in Ivory Coast?

How to understand so much mediatization, reactions and divergent voicing of opinions on the case of this country of western Africa which suffers since near a decade of an endless crisis on the background of clichés and of hasty interpretations on behalf of the so called « international community »?

It is important to underline here that beyond an opposition between two » presidents » takes place quite another part. It is about the colonialist will of France, which is incensed for years to establish on Ivory Coast, a leader who will serve at best their interests. It is a question for France of not losing one of the biggest bastions of the dying » Françafrique « .

Why? Because since his arrival to the head of this country, Laurent GBAGBO opened the doors and the market to the Eastern European countries, to the Asian countries and also to the Arabic and South American economic powers. This is why Mr Chirac yesterday and today Mr Sarkozy are really unhappy.

How to explain otherwise what Ivory Coast has been enduring since all these crises? Crises which, let us underline it, here are all bound and connected to the person Mr Alassane Ouattara. Does this mean that this » angel of the west » suffers from the wickedness of all the Ivory Coast presidents who succeeded one another (Henri Konan Bédié with whom the confrontation was very strong, Robert Guéï who died in unexplained circumstances, and today Laurent Gbagbo who was the only one among these three to give him the access to the Government)?

No, Laurent Gbagbo is not the farcical dictator whom the French media make every effort to depict in a simplistic and unprofessional way. Let us speak about all the actions and the concessions that have been imposed on Laurent Gbagbo since his arrival in the president’s office in 2000:

He was the first president of Ivory Coast to set up a government opened to the opposition
He was the relentless inspirator of the 1st Forum of National Reconciliation to reunify all the inhabitants of the Ivory Coast after the death of Félix Houphouet Boigny
He gave in to the inequitable international constraint to give a territorial and political strength to the armed rebellion which violently attacked the country in 2002, and who caused thousands of deaths
He gave in to the international constraint to give up all the control of the Independent Electoral Committee (Commission Electorale Indépendante, that is independant only in name) to the opposition and to the same armed rebellion
He even agreed to organize the presidential elections on the whole territory, while the obligations for the rebellion were not filled, while the North part of the country was occupied by the armed rebels
etc.

It seems evident that this country is in the heart of a fight which does not say its name. That is why the inhabitants of the Ivory Coast in Ivory Coast and worldwide, supported by the millions of African shout their revolt and their legitimate thirst to finally reach their economic, ideological and social independence.

The United States of America have been known for centuries to place over everything, the national institutions, and especially the Constitution, the supreme text which can not be scoffed. Why does President Barack Obama join in Nicolas Sarkozy’s pedantic logic, blinded by his personal friendship (who is ofcommon knowledge) with Alassane Ouattara, and so trample the honor of an independent country???

Why all this « West » pretends not to hear the shouts of revolt of the African which just demand the equity and the justice, following the example of all the independent peoples???

More highlights in texts below.

Table des matières

La désoccidentalisation du monde

The desoccidentalization of the world

In Le Nouveau Courrier N°158 20 December 2010 by Silvie Kouamé (extracts)

We can choose to look at the Ivory Coast crisis through the warping glasses of the majority of the international media, which chose to tell a simplistic and Manichean story. Roughly, it is about a country where king Negro hangs on to the power. While he lost the transparent elections validated by a » international community » necessarily honest, virtuous and moved by his civilizing and « democratizing »mission. Not violent, carrier of hope, his opponent called » the people » to come down peacefully in the street, but the soldiery in the orders of the outgoing president raged. Since, the western powers try to make the universal values prevail …

This beautiful fable does not resist either the more complex, Ivory Coast reality, nor the cold logic of the international diplomacy. The process which brought the West to impose the thesis » victorious Ouattara » is neither legal nor justifiable. It is not the independent electoral Committee (CEI) which broadcasted temporary results in his favour; but only his president, member of the RHDP, within the HQ of campaign of Ouattara (editor’s note: settled since October in the now notorious Golf hotel.

The frauds about which the Gbagbo camp speaks, and which many people try to make inaudible by a din of « certifications » of international organizations and NGOs all coming from the same source, are turned out. They can be noticed on thousands of irregular statements which, in a contradictory dialogue, can not be (rejected by a simple annoyed backhand. They took place in a part of Ivory Coast living under the medieval ferule of warlords dedicated to ADO (Alassane Ouattara), the champion of a cause which they consider as that of the North.

The » media democracy « , the new intervention weapon of the West

Those who are interested in the international current events in a continuous way will never believe that Paris (and Washington) fight in Abidjan for the triumph of some democratic absolute ideal.

The examples are many which tend to prove that the western countries have a selective and manipulative understanding of the democracy, which works only as far as it contributes to their interests. So, when the Palestinians choose to vote for the Hamas, the Islamist party held in contempt by the rich powers, are punished.

The » elected representatives of the people » are not recognized by the » international community « , who refuses to sit down at the same table as them. When Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran) are declared victorious of the elections, the western democratic arbitrators of the elegances, relieved by powerful media, shout in the fraud and put their channels and tools at the disposition of the opponents – no matter if these opponents are right or wrong. On the other hand, the western powers closed eyes on the recent electoral frauds in the Gabon, in spite of the proofs which they hold (cf. the revelations of Patrick Benquet’s documentary on Françafrique). They sanctify the pétromonarchies of the Gulf and the hereditary transmissions of power in Françafrique, as they settled dictators instead of progressive leaders in the past in Chile (for Pinochet against Allende) or in Democratic Republic of the Congo (Mobutu to counter Lumumba). Nothing new under the sun…

The » media democracy » instrumentalizes beyond reason the human rights; and the organizations which defend these rights – in order to dry them up and unlegitimate them, in the opinion of a big part of the worldwide public opinion, which is not fooled. Financed at great expense by foundations and States which have interests to protect, big NGOs for the defense of human rights sort out the deaths, to extract those who go in the direction of their demonstration. The International Criminal Court (CPI) becomes a scarecrow intended only to cause frights to the Africans.

Arnaud Montebourg has already asked that Gbagbo is dragged in front of the CPI for violence started by Ouattara and who made 50 deaths. Who will pursue Bush or Obama in front of the CPI for thousands of civilians killed in Iraq or in Afghanistan? Who will pursue the Ivory Coast rebels for 5000 deaths of the civil war which they caused? Who will pursue Chirac for the murders of hundreds natives of the Ivory Coast in front of the Hotel Ivoire? Silence these deaths are not of the good side. That of the allies of the West.

A new cold war of economic nature?

One of the interesting phenomena to be observed in the diplomatic point of view is the striking convergence of opinion between France, supported by the European Union, and the United States on the Ivory Coast situation. It is a new phenomenon: during the last episodes of our crisis which does not want to die, the United States watched France getting stuck in the mud in its » small Iraq » in a quietly ironic way and softly laughed of its unfaithful ally. The Bush administration had noisily even prevented France from « suspending » the Ivory Coast Parliament in 2006, during the period of glory of the proconsuls of the international Workgroup ( GTI).

Water flowed under the bridges. In the United States, the conservatives who had a grudge against France have left, leaving the place to the democrats, well in favour of the UN and the » joint management of the imperialism « . They anyway have no choice: weakened on fronts opened carelessly, Washington needs its French ally, who supports the war effort in Afghanistan. In France, Sarkozy the Atlanticist succeeded Chirac the Gaullist, and proceeds to exchanges of friendly services with Uncle Sam.

But there is something even more important there: the Westerners, all the Westerners, feel weakened. They have no more the monopoly of the technology, their population is ageing and put into debt, and they see the Asiatics and the more thrifty, emerging countries, go with more means to the conquest of the strategic raw materials of Africa. It is necessary to put themselves together to block the road to the Chinese!

The « leaks » of diplomatic telegrams orchestrated by Wikileaks fall just at the right moment to better understand the inhabitants of the Ivory Coast. » The French people welcome favorably the extension of the American presence in Africa as means to counterbalance the regional expansion of China « , we can read on a note. The new French politics » can give the United States the opportunities to spread their influence in Africa without meeting resistance « , notes a telegram.

France is henceforth considered as » one of our most powerful allies in Africa « , adds a memo of the American embassy in Paris, intended for Hillary Clinton. Paris made the « gendarme » in Africa yesterday against the communist danger. Henceforth, its armed forces help in the conservation of the interests of the West. The time of the competition that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, which expressed itself with ferocity in Rwanda (Kagame with the Americans, Habyarimana with the French people) is finished.

The new cold war which sets the old aristocracy against the emergent powers in Africa is today at first and above all economic. But to militarize the planet, from Iraq to DRC going through Ivory Coast, the West runs out, loses the battle of hearts and spirits; while its opponents make only of the business and gain ground every day, surfing on the refusal of the arrogance of an international hypocritical group of friends donor of lessons. The « desoccidentalization » of the world, augured by the French essayist Hakim El Karoui, has begun.

Ivory Coast: democracy, sovereignty and fights of influence

Philemon OWONA’s perspective

In OPINION, Subjects in French on December 5, 2010 at 7:25 am (extraits)

Several days after a presidential election which was supposed to return the peace in Ivory Coast and ten years after the controversial election of the year 2000 which had carried Mister Gbagbo at the head of the country – instead of a long deserved and expected peaceful happening – the people of Ivory Coast find themselves in a situation exactly identical to the one that prevailed before the second ballot of the presidential elections of 2010. According to the partisans of both camps, President Laurent Gbagbo and his long-time opponent, former Prime Minister Dramane Ouattara, both won the presidential election of 2010.

Who to believe?

According to the international community (if this expression contained some sense), the winner of the presidential election in Ivory Coast is unmistakably Mister Ouattara. From Washington (Barack Obama) to Paris (Nicolas Sarkozy) going through the United Nations, the identity of the new President of the Republic of Ivory Coast is an evidence: it is the ex-Prime Minister Ouattara.

But, to be content with only this version of the political events in Ivory Coast at present, is obviously to jump the gun. It is to choose definitively the camp, and it also is to agree to assume the responsibility which this attitude would provoke sooner or later. Because, opposite, the partisans of President Laurent Gbagbo (arrived at the top of the first ballot with more than 38 % of the votes) support obstinately that their champion is the legitimate winner of this presidential election.

With figures to support this, the team of President Laurent Gbagbo highlights the national basis of his electorate and does not hesitate to praise the virtues and the legitimacy there when the character of this electorate is compared with those – more regional and more tribal – of his main opponent. Besides having topped up the votes in the region of Abidjan (30 % of the votes of Ivory Coast), Mister Gbagbo and the activists of his political movement say he can count on faithful voters through all of the territory of the country.

As a political argument, in the days following a high-risk presidential as the one that has just occured in Ivory Coast, although the proofs of an electorate with one pan-national basis are supported, the objectivity recommends the benefit of the doubt.

Naturally, we have to be conscious that in politics, as in all the forms of fight for influence, the benefit of the doubt is only a negligeable factor, sometimes assimilated to naivety, especially when it is about the quest of power, it is nevertheless urgent to keep present in the spirit the upper interest of the Ivorian people as the ultimate end that is worth vast fight of influence on this territory formerly considered as a real El Dorado in western Africa. To take facts and causes for a camp is a normal attitude in any competition. But, to lose sight of the sovereign character of people, by carelessly annihilating the opponent and the aspiration of his activists, does not at all participate in the construction of an atmosphere of stability, cooperation and prosperity. Especially since the institution – Constitutional concil – legally justifiable in publication of the electoral results is, according to the current Ivory Coast constitution, the only one able to say who is the winner.

For the record, in a competition, it is not the one who organizes it that is skilled to declare it the winner. This responsibility belongs to the one who has been appointed as referee. Barack OBAMA and Nicolas SARKOZY are nevertheless public-spirited of democratic countries worn-out to the practice of this postulate, and should understand this. Furthermore, in July, 2009, in his speech pronounced in Accra (Ghana), it is well and truly President Barack Obama who had – in his unique style – ordered the Africans to respect the strong institutions and not the strong men ».

Between July, 2009 and December, 2010, what happened so that the Constitutional Council of the Republic of Ivory Coast – in charge of insuring the effective superiority of the constitution – loses the strength and the value which Mister Obama recommended nevertheless, there is hardly a few months? Consequently, how can we explain the « parti pris » on which President Obama and his French colleague seem, both, to have been embarked after the proclamation of the results of the presidential election in Ivory Coast by the CEI (independant electoral commission) of Ivory Coast)?

The importance of the benefit of the doubt, in the current Ivory Coast context, consequently has to privilege the neutrality. It even allows even to bring forward some elementary truths:

With all the intellectual qualities, the skills, the work experience and the total support of the » international community « , which is in favour of him, Alassane Dramane Ouattara, in the name of the good of the Ivorian people should grant the benefit of the doubt to the Constitutional Council of Ivory Coast, the only competent institution in promulgation of the electoral results in Republic of Ivory Coast. He should think of serving his country otherwise and effectively.
Washington, Paris and the United Nations should necessarily regain self-control, to give up) the politic of the ostrich (refuse to see the political reality Ivory Coast) and, as somewhere else, compose with the leadership already in position for the sake of the sovereign people of Ivory Coast.
The armed rebel chiefs and troops which reign over the north part of the country should, after all, think of changing their rifle of shoulder. Formerly considered as the most stable French-speaking country economically, since 1999, with the overthrow of general Gueï and de facto split of Ivory Coast, consequence of this rebellion in the North of the Ivory Coast after the year 2000, the economic leadership of the country of Houphouet Boigny in Africa and in the world was reduced as a shagreen. And the only economic domain in which the Ivorians still dominate the world – the production of the cocoa – is the object of cynical speculations as much in London as in New York. The price of the cocoa jumped up, moreover, this week, because of the uncertainties surrounding the suites of the second ballot of this presidential election.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF IVORY COAST SCOFFED

December 15 2010 by IvoireBusiness (extracts)

In its will to oblige the sovereign people of Ivory Coast to recognize the victory of Alassane Ouattara by the presidential election, the European Union (EU) has just crossed an unprecedented step, never seen nowhere else. It has indeed just announced its decision to sanction the highest judicial authority of Ivory Coast, guarantor for the sovereignty and for the independence of the country, the teacher who has passed aggregation of Law Paul-Yao N’ Dré, President of Constitutional Council.

This decision of no effect strikes a blow nevertheless seriously at the dignity of Ivory Coast as sovereign State full member of the UN Security Council.

That is why every inhabitant of the Ivory Coast proud of its independence and its Constitution has to fight and denounceby all means, because the aimed purpose is to suspend the Constitution of the sovereign Republic of Ivory Coast and to provoke the collapse of its institutions.

Let us remember that the same EU wanted to suspend the National Assembly!

The penalties concern the limitations of visas and a frost of assets, due to the refusal of President Laurent Gbagbo to recognize the victory of Alassane Ouattara in the presidential election, which victory was pronounced by Mr. Youssouf Bakayoko, president of the CEI, today on the run, secretly taken out of Ivory Coast by France, and who is now in Paris.

France And The Ivory Coast-The Empire Strikes Back

by Nigerian Papers Today on December 16, 2010

Currently there is an impasse in the runoff of the Presidential elections in the Ivory Coast. The French-linked and funded electoral commission declared that Allasane Outtara won the election while the Constitutional Court declared incumbent President Gbagbo as the victor.

The ‘international community’ of Western countries, NGOS, UN appeasers, and a variety of Francafrique cowards and bed-wetters support Ouattara even though massive fraud has been demonstrated at the polls in the rebel-held North.

This result should be no surprise to anyone. There has been no effective disarmament of the tinpot rebel warlords of the North and no unification of the country in anticipation of the election. A ‘security’ dividing line between the North and the South has been maintained by the occupying French forces pretending to be U.N. troops. Even so-called peacemakers like Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso pretend to be neutral. Campaore, an unindicted war criminal with a track record of subversion, arms smuggling and war profiteering in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Cost is somehow portrayed as a neutral.

When arms were being shipped to the West African wars by Chirac and Ghadaffi they arrived at their destinations after having passed through the hands of Campaore and Tandja (who both profited on the deliveries), Ouattara, known as the “Father of the Rebellion” in the Ivory Coast was sustained by operating from a safe haven in Burkina Faso when he was not busy maintaining his close personal ties to Sarkozy’s first wife in Paris. There was no mystery about the Ouattara-Campaore joint effort. Several hours of tapes exist which recorded the meetings called by Campaore in Burkina Faso which garnered support for Ouattara among the Northerners and actively plotted with two French military officers sent from Paris to attempt coups against the Gbagbo Government.

Voter fraud and deception was the rule in the North for over seven years. Even when the AU originally appointed Banny as the interim Prime minister ad Thabo Mbeki as the mediator the frauds persisted. President Mbeki visited the Ivory Coast and invited the warring factions to meet with President Gbagbo in Pretoria where two sets of agreements were made. These Pretoria Agreements achieved a resolution of most of the outstanding issues between the two sides, because President Gbagbo made concessions to achieve these ends. The most important point made in Pretoria was that there would be disarmament of the rebels.

This was, indeed, a requisite of the original cease-fire agreement at Linas-Marcoussis , Article 3 (g) “In order to contribute to restoring security of persons and property throughout the national territory, the Government of National Reconciliation will organise the regrouping and subsequent disarming of all forces. It will ensure that no mercenaries remain within the country’s borders.”

Some links showing the protests:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgZ75aCr2A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rKMEAzpFyc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcOmw624suM

Thank you

Endnotes:

[Image] : https://www.bluehost.com/track/atteby/

Source URL: https://www.ivoirediaspo.net/ivory-coast-the-real-stakes/2691.html/