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| Col. Mamady Doumbouya |
While Ghana’s first
President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah waited anxiously in Beijing, China, to make it home
to Accra after the February 24, 1966 coup, he received many messages of political
solidarity from heads of state across the globe.
African leaders were
not left out of this well-wishing gesture. From Mali, President Modibo Keita
sent in a note to Nkrumah. Albert Margai, then Prime Minister of Sierra Leone,
also had his message received by Kwame Nkrumah.
“Please accept, my dear
Brother, the assurance of my highest consideration, esteem and prayers for your
personal well-being and safety,” parts of Margai’s message read. Nkrumah quotes
this in his 1968 book, Dark Days In
Ghana.
Political solidarity in
such situations in international politics is a normal phenomenon. It,
therefore, came as no surprise the apparent acrobatics of love and compassion
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) showed their colleague
-- deposed President Alpha Conde.
On Sunday, September 5,
2021, Col. Mamady Doumbouya and his men toppled Mr. Conde who had been in power
in Guinea since 2010. Mr. Doumbouya, a former French legionnaire was until his
dramatic coup Alpha Conde’s darling-boy. As a matter of fact, as it is typical
of most African heads of state, the deposed Guinean president ensured he had a
tight grip on security around him so to help him cling on to power the way bees
glue themselves to nectars.
Mr. Conde hatched a
plan. He would fall on Mamady Doumbouya who had been trained in France and also
said to have had several trainings in a couple of countries including being
taught as an “operational protection specialist” at Israel’s International Security Academy. Aside Doumbouya’s
enviable military credentials, his physique which makes him stand tall and
robust like the baobab tree certainly might have been a contributory factor Mr.
Conde considered him the best man to ward off “enemies” of the state.
This, in 2018, Mamady’s
one-time boss -- Alpha Conde -- called him from France to Guinea to lead and
man affairs of the then newly formed Special
Forces Group (GFS). The former French legionnaire obliged, came down and
headed the GFS. He did his master’s bidding and is said to have committed human
right abuses in Guinea which made the European Union threaten sanctioning him together
with some other 24 persons of the West African state.
In all this, the people
of Guinea grew weary of Alpha Conde and what broke the camel’s back was when
the now deposed president changed the country’s constitution last year. The
change in constitution allowed Conde to stand for a third term in office which
he won the elections amidst controversies.
“When a handshake goes
beyond the elbow,” our elders say, “it ceases to be a friendly gesture.” Doumbouya
grew weary of Conde’s cling to power and would topple him on that Sunday. He had
had enough of Alpha Conde’s ‘handshake’ that went beyond the elbows of Guineans.
The boy who arguably
has been a faraway student of Ghana’s late President Jerry John Rawlings in his
speech, after the coup, said: “If the people are crushed by their own elites,
it is up to the army to give the people their freedom.” A quote he attributes
to his mentor Rawlings.
It must be made clear
that we condemn coup d’états with all the seriousness it deserves. That is one
of the backward games drawing Africa’s progress behind. For this, we
unreservedly condemn Mamady Doumbouya’s coup.
Nonetheless, one finds
it difficult sympathizing with Alpha Conde considering the fact that he
knowingly committed the first coup in his country. A democratic coup d’état for
that matter. On October 14, 2019, Aljazeera
reported in a news article -- dubbed “Several killed in Guinea protests
against constitution change” -- the atrocities Conde’s stay in power was
causing.
If we are to apportion
blames then we cannot turn a blind eye on Conde’s first coup -- the
constitutional change. Among the frivolous reasons that supporters of Alpha
Conde gave for the change in the country’s constitution was that the president needed
more time to finish his projects. One wonder’s the sort of progressive and productive
projects (most) African leaders implement let alone to warrant them stay in
office after their mandated terms have elapsed.
In Ivory Coast, President
Alassane Ouattara also changed his country’s constitution to enable him stand
for a third term in office. In March 2020, in the capital Yamassoukro, Mr. Ouattara
tricked the world declaring he was poised not to go for a third term.
Amidst cheers and
applause, Alassane Ouattara said: “I have decided not to be candidate in the
Oct. 31 presidential election and to transfer power to a new generation.” The
Reuters reported. But that promise was short lived. When Ivory Coast’s Prime
Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly -- who was the candidate for Ouattarra’s Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and
Peace -- died in July 2020, Mr. Ouattara went back to swallow his own ‘vomit’.
Again, one of the frivolous
reasons given as in the case of Conde’s was that the supporters of the Rally of
the Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace need Alassane Ouattara to stay and go
for a third term. Well, that was not supposed to be surprising anyway. The Ivorian
President himself had earlier said that if his opponents including former President
Henri Konan Bedie stood for the elections then he will equally contest again.
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| Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara at the ECOWAS Summit |
Ouattara’s March 2020
announcement and his subsequent moonwalk moves tell how cunning the African
politician could be. Today, this is a man ECOWAS deemed fit to accompany its
Chair, Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to Guinea to pressure
Mamady Doumbouya to step down and return the country to a civilian rule! Ouattara?
The man who equally staged a coup by illegally changing his country’s
constitution? It is nauseating when the pot gathers courage to tell the kettle
it is black.
On July 24, 1993, when
the heads of state and government of ECOWAS met in Cotonou in Benin to revise
its treaty that aimed at seeing among other things the realization of good governance
and promotion of democracy in the sub-region, Alassane Ouattara was present. Yes!
He was by then Ivory Coast’s Prime Minister under President Félix
Houphouët-Boigny’s regime. Mr. Ouattara appended his signature to the ECOWAS
treaty and today he has flatly flouted what he stood for.
Still questioning
ECOWAS’ moral right to advice Mr. Doumbouya, why was Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbe
present at both the first hastily conducted emergency virtual summit and that
of the September 15, 2021 held in Accra-Ghana? The crimes Alpha Conde committed
that saw him toppled have been committed too in Togo and ECOWAS is silent on
it.
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| Togo's President Faure Gnassingbe at the ECOWAS Summit |
Was it not Faure Gnassingbe
who equally changed his country’s constitution in 2019? “The amendment means that Faure Gnassingbe is
very much eligible to stand for reelection in the country’s polls slated for
February 22, 2020. But, wait! That’s not all. Faure Gnassingbe could as well
stand for the 2025 elections and rule till 2030 when he wins the people’s
mandate,” we wrote in a February 12, 2020 article titled Faure Gnassingbe, a president for life?
If we are to mention
names of ECOWAS’ heads of state and government one after the other -- or even
that of Africa at large, the probability of each one of them being guilty as
the Pharisees in John 8:7 will be high. “When they kept on questioning him [Jesus],
he straightened up and said to them [Pharisees], ‘Let any one of you who is
without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’”
When Jesus said this to
the Pharisees, they shamefully left one after the other. But Africans leaders,
most of them if not all, are without shame. So, ECOWAS leaders are still busily
pressuring Doumbouya over his coup. Can we ask the ECOWAS Chair why he attended
Alpha Conde’s inaugural ceremony when he knew that the man had illegally changed
his country’s constitution?
“On Tuesday, 15th
December 2020, I was in Conakry, capital of the Republic of Guinea, to attend
the swearing-in ceremony of His Excellency Alpha Condé,” wrote H.E. Nana Addo
Dankwa Akufo-Addo on his Facebook wall. It must be stated that the ECOWAS Chair
also attended Alassane Ouattara’s inauguration in same month even before he
left for Guinea.
Is it not the case that
attending such third term inaugural ceremonies one directly or indirectly approves
the illegality these power-drunk presidents commit?
Taking a cursory look
at ECOWAS’ coercive diplomacy employed against Doumbouya, one is tempted to ask
if it is not the case of ‘witches’ busily praying to exorcise witchcraft?
What we must take into
account is that whereas then Guinea’s President Sékou Touré wholeheartedly welcomed
Kwame Nkrumah, made him a co-president of the French speaking country as Guineans
cheered him (Nkrumah) up in Conakry, in the same city in 2021, Guineans hooted
at their own deposed President Alpha Conde. Two deposed presidents, two
different narratives.
The people cheered on
Mamady Doumbouya and his men for what appeared to them -- the masses -- a messianic
saving mission from Conde’s brutal play with power.
In his book A Promise Land, Barack Obama in 2002 in
responding to the then impending U.S. invasion of Iraq said at a rally that: “I
don’t oppose all wars. What I oppose to is a dumb war.” Indeed, wars like coup d’états
are atrociously bad but there comes a time when one finds sense in these and,
going forward, ECOWAS leaders and heads of state in Africa at large must advise
themselves accordingly. They must desist from thinking they owe the country
which they govern and respect their citizens.
Failure to comply with
this humble advice, their citizens will one day jubilate as Guineans are today and
they will boldly proclaim and cheer on their respective soldiers in telling the
world that they do not oppose all coups. That, what they oppose to is a dumb
coup.
The
writers are Ghanaian journalists who have interest in the world’s politics with
an unflinching eye mainly on what pertains in Africa. Views expressed here are
solely theirs and do not, in anyway, reflect the editorial policy of this media
organisation.
Email:
internationaldialogue2@gmail.com
Twitter:
@abisolo7 & @aniwaba
