What is happening in Cote d'Ivoire is in deed unprecedented in the history of our modern day Africa Union (AU). This is a clear case of where a member state is going to be left to her fate against the powerful nations of the world who are clearly organized in the “defence of their interest”. This is not just about Lauren Gbagbo or Alhassan Quattara but the AU's 21 million Ivorian tax payers in general. The AU has enough means at its disposal, even with the worsening situation in the Union, to ward off the aggressive and blood tasty war mongers of the colonial masters while we go about this problem our selves.
The real picture of what is happening in Cote d'Ivoire can best be exposed by reflecting on what the AU member state was from her attainment of an independent state status till the Dec. 7, 1993 when the first president and the father of the nation, Félix Houphouët-Boigny past away. The Ivory Coast till 1993 had been the darling of the French and West, particularly on issues relating to the common African interest. The Liberian and the Sierra Leonean crisis were all fought with every ECOWAS member states contributing forces with the exception of Cote d'Ivoire. All the Ivorian state formerly lives for under this regime as a national policy is France's interest or nothing at all.
The Ivorian national position at that time was not absolute as some suppressed voices within the state of individuals like Lauren Gbagbo saw the position as odd one and needing to be review. The 1990's departure of the authoritative octogenarian served as an opportunity that opened a door of agitations for a revision of the Ivorian national status vis a vis its relationship with her colonial master. The agitations lead to coup and counter coups, until the uprising led by the group of radicals with Gbagbo as their leader, found themselves in power.
The attempted proxy coup de tar by the French to wrestle back power from the Pro-African radicals who were considered to be shredding up the colonial past grip on them and awakening their population in millions against the French vested interest, was what has brought the state to such an unfortunate situation it is finding herself today. Interesting enough, the Africa Union that was supposed to be in the position of winning the confidence of a member nation who is struggling to disengage from the tentacle of her colonial past, found the Union turning her back at the poor state. In fact, the attitude of AU is just like having the poor Ivoirians running to the imperialist Americans for help and being let down.
We shall not to be surprise to see the American marines surfacing on the shored of Abidjan with their submarines and air fighter Carriers, at the slightest provocation, in defence of the UN forces refusing to leave Ivory Coast. The French as well are already with modernized heavily equipped 500 troops on the land of Cote d'Ivoire and could easily draft in further reinforcement from as far away Chad where the colonial military resources have stationed themselves oppressing the Chadian people against their will.
The situation on ground is very volatile that could be instigated by the Gbagbo or Quattara side. How shall we all be feeling when at the end of it all we get to know that the provocation that eventually worsened off the already tensed situation, between the UN cum French forces and the Ivorian forces, was actually from the Quattara side? Is it not in this people's interest to use every means possible to stair up violence in the country so that the military means of their external backers could be use to remove the incumbent government forcefully from office? What then happened when the Gbagbo side who are already in control of the arms start a form of genocide that none of us can reverse as most of the civilian victims will be the unfortunate innocent people of the Union?
In all fairness, some of us are for the kind of AU that could be able to reverse military coups, take control of such situation that result in dead lock between opposing parties and normalize illegitimate use of force to take over government, than the clear wish of the people.
It is in every ones interest to have an election in an AU member states that is; transparent, free and fair in which a peaceful transition amidst handing over ceremonies will be the case. We rather have the AU seen to be doing this than our colonial masters, the UN or any military force from outside the continent of Africa. In deed such act will not be different from our fore fathers' experience of which we all call “occupations”. Only a fool will not be considering what is happening now as a “Modern Version of Colonial Occupation”.
Every occupation comes with local innocent collaborators, most of whose decision are due to reasons far from the occupier's mission. Imagine a powerful stranger seeking to make an individual a king of his people. The individual cooperate fully with the occupier so that he could become the new king while the occupier's core aim is to use the new king to exploit his people. Imagine a section of a country being promised a higher status over their fellow inhabitant by a conquering occupier. Majority of those who will be fighting along with the occupiers will be doing so because of the expected status to come when the occupier wins. Interestingly, this works more in the African circumstances where national resource sharing is done on tribal or sectional basis. Ironically, the occupiers aim is its own self interest of rubbing the entire community.
The big question is, how do we have genuine and fairness election in our Union? How do we get the AU on top of the game? How do we get the AU that is democratic itself without the masses participating in a popular election that lead to who become an AU Commission Chairperson? How do we have the AU that is capable of commanding the respect of all parties in a member state's election without first getting the masses to be participating in the AU election of the Commission's Chairperson? How do we make the AU capable of having trusted people appointed by the Union to member states, as election observers while voting is going on and be able to feed back to the Union, for her to make her own decision on how fair such election is? How can we get our electoral commission to be independent on our land of corruption where severe poverty, deceptions and lies, all roll into one institution, plays the highest role in our daily lives?
One interesting thing about life is looking at others thinking they are being stupid just because one can not see how stupid him/her self is. How many of us are capable of seeing exactly what we are ourselves even by looking at the mirror? How many of us knows exactly what we are until the worst happens? We live with all sorts of ignorance only for someone from somewhere far away to tell us what resources we have on our land and what we do not have. We then sit down like things that have no names for outsiders from far away to remove what ever they think we have on our land, only to be given royalties like kings. Normally these so called royalties are peanuts meant for sub humans and interestingly, the peanuts are again taken away from us as a fee in paying for development, as if development is a saleable phenomenon! All we do very well is selling natural resources from beneath our lands only to buy back “common sense” from others.
Imagine how many Ghanaians will be looking at the Ivoirians and marvelling at how stupid they are to allow such a mess on themselves? Imagine how a lot of Ghanaians are actually not aware that we are as well sitting on time bombs by the names “National Democratic Congress (NDC)” and the “National Patriotic Party (NPP)” who are ever preparing for their own battle? How many of us are aware that what ever arms are supplied to the Ivoirians by the west in sorting themselves out, the AU citizens will be paying back in hundred folds? How many of us are aware that paying back entails starving our own poor masses to giving away free of charge in place of the arms we received? How many of us are aware that the UN and imperialists will be recouping the money spent on arms used in Cote d'Ivoire? How many of us are aware that arm trade by the Western industrialized nations is an industry, on its own, like a car industry? How many of us are aware that there are those that go about ensuring that the wars take place for their arms to be sold? Could we all try to understand this scenario as actions by fire fighters whose job it is to go about setting people houses on fire just for them to get the opportunity of putting off the fire to be paid? How many of us recalled the concerns of arms recently said to be smuggled into the Ghana? How many of us are sure that all the arms have been recovered by the right authority and secured? How many of us are aware of the number of gun runners that have already gone into contract with our greedy politicians to make them available at the slightest chance to kill us in an event of political disagreements like is currently happening in Cote d'Ivoire? How many of us knew the extent to which these NDC and NPP naturally hate them selves? How real can we be than accepting this as a natural phenomenon nobody can do anything about than voting for somebody like the AU Commission Chairperson who then will automatically become more powerful to be there for us, in time of need? How many of us are aware that politics is actually a war that is fought in a relatively peaceful form and could easily break into an open conventional warfare there by making it a potentially exploitable venture for those in the arm industry? How many of us are aware that when we are in a moving car, the car is a form of a contained fire in motion but only get out of hand when something goes wrong? How many Ivoirians could believe this will be their fate some few years back? How many Ghanaians or Ivoirians are even aware that they actually pay annually to the “Africa Union Insurance Corporation PLC, to secure them in such desperate time like this? How many of us are even aware of how many fat cows and busy bodies of the AU Commission that our money maintains?
A lot of my fellow Ghanaians might not have an idea of how much it will be costing every one of us to have Jean Ping flying from the headquarters of the Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to the Cote d'Ivoire. How cheap could this have been if Dr. Jean Ping will be travelling on donkey all the way as most of our poor people daily do just because those individuals like the AU Chief who are saddled with the responsibility of empowering the people better, are not doing the wish of the people? Yes, he will be travelling by an expensive private jet to be accompanied by all sorts of persons. Unlike you and me, Dr. Jean Ping stayed in the best hotel, rode in the best secured car, ate the best food, wore the best clothing and got the highest security possible while in the war thorn state. Equally, all the official AU Commission imposters that were be hovering around Jean Ping from Addis Ababa to Abidjan will be having their inflated per dime and their corrupted bill footed by us who are the tax payers of the Union.
Painfully, as if our Ghanaian democratically elected presidential burden is not heavy enough on us, we again have to live out of necessity with the burden of the fat cows of the AU. However, in the latter case, we have no say on how the “Fat Cows of Addis Ababa” get the mandate of shaping our destiny as they only come in through the back door like a bunch of armed rubbers that they actually are. It is even irritating to be aware that the AU Commission does not consider us as CITIZENS OF THE UNION BUT RATHER, THE SUBJECTS OF THE UNION!
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah referred to the solution to this as CONSCIENTISM. Our job is for the people to know that there exists a person in the AU as our Union's Commander in Chief called Dr. Jean Ping who got into our most revered Union's office by the back door to work for the people, but end up working for the CIA because of the back “door syndrome”.
In Ghana, the stakeholders of the state of Ghana are Ghanaians numbering 23 million people. In the EU, the stakeholders of the Union are citizens of the EU member states numbering about 480 million people and are called citizens of the EU. In the USA, the people of the member 52 states of the Union are the stake holders and so called the citizens of the USA. In the Africa Union, we are not called “citizens” of the AU but the “People” that is just as good as “subjects of colonies”. What would you be expecting from a chief security officer of our Union who got into office by the back door than; insubordination, subservience, insensitivity, hypocrisy, corruption and siding with the faceless pay masters that facilitated his illegitimate entrance into our Union's office? Why else do we expect from the powerful pay masters of the Washington and Paris when expecting their pound of flesh back? What other time could this be than the time of dare need such as what s going on Ivory Coast? What is exactly the reason for the powerful western nation to be so interested in regime change in Cote d'Ivoire than putting their sympathisers into the nation's vital position? Could this ploy as well not have been employed by the colonial masters in the election of the AU Commission Chief at the exclusive election of the AU member states leaders since that could be another position of attacking erring member state leaders? What exactly are we going to be getting when we continue to sit down for people planted into the AU Commission by the CIA than those who will be pretending to be doing something for the people when in reality they are actually there to make us swallow the bitter piles of the imperialists that we have been refusing to take voluntarily at the local levels of our governments? How best could we safe guard the AU Commission from being the feasting ground for the CIA and their agents than encouraging the people to be taking their destiny into their own hands democratically beyond their colonial boarders? This is exactly what the process of electing the AU Commission Chairman will be changing by making the ultimate candidate elected by the people to be exactly the will of the people, at the highest peak of the Union.
In Ghana our president does not get into office by the back door but by the open ballot in which every Ghanaian is free to be part of the election. The first point of injustice starts with denying the people by their majority, the right to participate in the so called "democratic" process of choosing who will be leading them in the AU's Commission. Again, on whose behalf is Dr. Jean Ping visiting Abidjan? Is it on behalf of the people of the Africa Union that include the people of Cote D'Ivoire or he is just doing that on behalf of the IMF, EU, France, UN and the USA who are now the self styled “Members of the International Community” of which the AU Commission Chairman and his cronies have on several occasion being referring to themselves as part of? Are the Chinese and the Russians also not part of the “International community”? If yes, why are these nations openly disagreeing with the so called international community occasionally while our own AU just behave like dummy or a carbon copy of the UN? Is it not disturbing to be hearing Ban Ki Mon who was single handily imposed on the poor weak nation of the world by the CIA as the head of the UN, talking like he is our boss in Africa on behalf of the colonial masters? Is it not shameful for Jean Ping mission to Cote d'Ivoire to be seen as the errand boy of Ban Ki Moo? What then should we be expecting from Dr. Jean Ping than what the European Colonial masters controllers of the UN want? What about if it is true that the UN position does not truly reflect what the majority of the people of Cote d'Ivoire want? Do we all recalled exactly what happened in Liberia under the impartial ECOMOG supervised election where the people voted for Charles Taylor despite the unfavourable position of the “International Community”?
In the Action group of Africa (AGA) we have insisted that the only way this can be very clear is when the people are voting on who become the chairman of the AU Commission every 4 years, which is not the same by the process of having just the 53 leaders who are actually the mess, we are having all across the continent today, being the only ones voting.
Please let us all bear in mind that when it was said that "THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN", those saying this were expressing their resolute to fight so that justice as a privilege of some few people in the high places become the right of everyone in the lower places too. This is the wish of Nkrumah to us all and that is what we must get! THE UNION BELONG TO US ALL!!!!
Kofi Ali Abdul-Yekin
Chair/Coordinator
AGA (Action Group of Africa)
