Alassane Ouattara, Ivory Coast
Mr. President, from my rat hole somewhere on the outskirts of Accra, I extend my warmest greetings to you, in your presidential palace. I do not intend to beat around the bush to cut to the chase because we have a serious bone for contention here.
Mr. President in 2011, not too long ago, you were at the center of an electoral dispute with the then incumbent, President Laurent Bagbo. I am reminding you of this because it’s pertinent to reflect on the antecedence of events before proceeding onto the subject matter I want to discuss with you.
Africa’s man of the millennium, Kwame Nkrumah said, ‘those who judge us by the heights we have reached should do well to consider the depth from which we have come.’ It is not my intention to formulate a biased and a prejudiced opinion against you, so I have to dig to bring out relevant past to make an informed opinion on the mater beforehand.
Mr. President, in the heat of events in the aftermaths of the presidential elections you enjoyed the support of every Tom Dick and Harry in the EU, particularly of France, your former colonial master. This is a country that is deeply involved in the internal affairs of your country than ever before.
Mention must be made of the support you got from the AU. This was largely because majority of the African leaders really didn't have a choice, because a no support of you from them would have meant a cut of the funding of AU, since the body's budget is heavily financed by the EU.
I also want to applaud CNN, BBC Aljazeera and other European propaganda media outlets for the fantastic job they did in shaping world opinion in your favour.
To cut things short, morality was manipulated and made to be on your side.
Mr. President, I know you are a man of conscience, therefore your guilty consciousness should be terrifying you now especially with the recent news of mutiny in town.
Deep inside, you know you did not win the elections. In cahoots with France, you rigged the elections all in the grand plan to affect a regime change in Ivory Coast.
You know France wanted to oust Laurent Bagbo at all cost and you, being the former President of World Bank, an institution that is responsible for trapping a lot of African countries into the dominion of Neocolonialism, best fitted to do the job, because to them Bagbo was becoming too much of a bad example to the rest of the former French colonies who are currently tied to France through the French African community.
Mr. President, you know that the constitutional council declared President Laurent Bagbo the winner of the election and the electoral commission also declared you winner in contravention of the law because the constitutionally mandated body which announces the results of every election is not the electoral commission but the aforementioned body. You simply rigged the election.
Bagbo wanted to change the economic direction of Ivory Coast to better suit the interest of the people and Mr. President; you being the economic guru of the World Bank knew this better than anyone else.
He wanted to do so by reversing the provisions of the pacts that every former French African colony signed with France on the eve of their independence in 1960. Mr. President, I am sure you know that per the pact;
Ivory Coast is forced by France to use FCFA (the franc for French African colonies).
Ivory Coast is obliged to pay colonial debt for benefitting from colonialism.
Ivory Coast pays rent for using the presidential palace in Abidjan.
Ivory Coast is obligated to keep 85%of their foreign reserve in French central bank in Paris. Should the country request to use the money in Paris, it gets it back as loan with interest.
In the awarding of Ivory Coast government contract, French companies must be considered first before companies from other counties. It does not matter if Ivory Coast can get better value for money else where
Mr. President, these exploitative terms which Bagbo sought to eradicate turned him to an archenemy of the French. The French used you to make Bagbo suffer the fate of sylvanus Olympio of Togo, Maurice Yameogo of Upper Volta, present day Burkina Faso, Modibo Keuta of Mali etc.
Mr. President you failed to see that in doing so, you protected the French interest and betrayed the Ivorian cause.
You rode on the back of the northern Ivorian bandits known as Nouveau forces by exploiting their tribal inclination to cause mayhem and terrorize civilians. The truth must be told, you reduced yourself mere ethnocentrist by doing that meanwhile you wanted to rule a nation made of a diversity of tribes.
Thousands of Ivorians had to seek refuge in Ghana to escape the brutality of Nouveaux Forces.
After the mission of toppling Bagbo was completed, you integrated them into the army-an action done to curb resistance that may come as a repercussion and to make you look popular.
Your aim here did not work because of the recent mutiny in the army and it is well known that it was the former rebels who are spearheading everything.
It never came as a surprise to me, because a bandit will always be a bandit and his insatiable quest power and money definitely cannot be appeased by you.
You forgot Violence only begot violence. The criminals you used to seize power are now at your doorstep knocking.
You have to deal with them but what makes everything so pathetic is that you don't have the acumen to handle them because you are only a stooge of France. You are only waiting on France to give you directives so that you can act.
Mr. President, people thought you were saving the situation by conniving with France and nouveau forces to topple Bagbo, but little did they know that you were messing up the whole show.
It s a matter of time before the people get to know who you really are.
You reap what you sow.
The struggle continues
Yusef Gariba.
