26 April 2011

Opposition Boycott Clouds Chad Vote

Opponents denounce presidential contest as "election circus" with Idriss Deby Itno expected to secure fourth term


Voters went to the polls in Chad, with Idriss Deby Itno, the country's sitting president, virtually assured of re-election after his three main opposition rivals announced a boycott.

Saleh Kebzabo, Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue and Ngarlejy Yorongar have withdrawn from what they have described as an "election circus" and have urged citizens to boycott Monday's vote.

Having demanded reforms that include the issuing of new voters' cards, they claim that unfair conditions caused Deby's Patriotic Movement of Salvation (known by its French acronym MPS) to crush them in a February parliamentary poll and are predicting the new poll will be a "historic fraud".

 
Witnesses said many voting stations opened late in the capital because of the late arrival of voting materials and staff.

The ballot was underway in the district of Djambalpar where residents said they were pleased to be coming out to vote.

"I'm very happy to come to vote today to fulfil my civic duty," Youssouf Zeni, 58-year-old civil servant, said.

At an election meeting on the last day of campaigning on Saturday, in a jam-packed N'Djamena stadium that can seat 20,000 people, Deby invited Chadians to "abandon ideas that divide us".
His three main opponents, in turn, addressed a rally attended by more than 1,000 people earlier in the day, urging voters to boycott the vote.

Kebzabo is the president of the National Union for Democracy and Renewal, the opposition party with the most national assembly seats, nine, followed by Kamougue's Union for Renewal and Democracy with seven seats, and Yorongar's Federation Action for the Republic, with four.

Deby's MPS party won an absolute majority with 113 of the 188 seats in parliament against a fragmented and underfunded opposition of more than 100 parties in February's parliamentary elections, the first contested by the opposition since 2002.

In Monday's vote, he will face two candidates from smaller opposition parties: Albert Pahimi Padacke and Nadji Madou.

Deby has been in power since 1990 after unseating dictator Hissene Habre in a coup.

Seeking a fourth five-year mandate, he has said he is certain of re-election and that the poll will be "credible". The real reason for his former challengers' boycott was that "they realise they will be beaten," the president told a press conference on Friday.

With other parts of the Muslim world rocked by months of protests against long-serving rulers, Deby said he was only in power because his country wanted him.

"If the people had not asked me to be a candidate and to continue to serve Chad, I would never have done it," he said, adding he would focus his next term on helping the rural poor.

An observer told the AFP news agency that the only test of Deby's support will be in the voter participation rate - which the president himself has predicted will exceed that of February's poll.

Yorongar, though, has forecast a high abstention rate.

"The boycott will be heeded, but the system of fraud will ensure that Deby gets 90 or 95 per cent," he said on Saturday.

Sandwiched between volatile neighbours Niger and Sudan, Chad is one of Africa's poorest countries, despite abundant resources of uranium and gold.

It became an oil producer in 2003 following the completion of a $4bn pipeline linking its oil fields to depots on the Atlantic coast.

About 4.8 million of Chad's 11.1 million citizens are eligible to cast ballots, along with around 233,000 expatriates.

24 April 2011

Cameroon: Never a Prisoner


Reminder

4 May 2006
Pius Njawe
Pambazuka


"On July 12, 2010, Pius Njawé was killed in a car accident in Chesapeake, Virginia in the United States. The accident happened when a tractor-trailer rear-ended the car in which Njawé was a passenger. Njawé’s  wife Jane was killed in a car accident in September 2002". Wikipedia



One of Africa’s utmost press freedom heroes, Cameroonian journalist Pius Njawe has faced relentless harassment by the authorities throughout his career. In the past thirty years he has been arrested 126 times and served prison time on three different occasions. Despite ongoing adversities, Njawe continues to publish his newspaper Le Messager. In 1993, he was awarded the WAN Golden Pen of Freedom in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the independent press in his country. Pius wrote this article for the World Association of Newspapers on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

I have been a journalist since the age of 15. I started as an errand boy at a newspaper called Semences africaines, in the city of Yaoundé, Cameroon. Over the past 34 years, I have been arrested 126 times while carrying out my profession as a journalist. Physical and mental torture, death threats, the ransacking of my newsroom, etc., has often been my daily lot in a situation where repression and corruption, even within the press, have become the norm. Woe betide the slightest dissenting voice in this context, for it attracts all kinds of wrath, even from so-called colleagues…

My longest detention lasted ten months. I was arrested on 24 December 1997 for daring to wonder about the President's health after he had experienced heart problems whilst watching the Cameroonian football cup final. On 13 January 1998 I was sentenced to 24 months in prison. Four months later, the sentence was reduced to 12 months under pressure from national and international public opinion. But that was not enough to remove the pressure, and after ten months, the President resigned himself to pardoning me, a pardon I had never asked for. 

I have never felt like a prisoner when I have been behind bars. You can be in prison without being a prisoner; the real prisoners are those who imprison journalists whose only crime is to inform or to express an opinion. On the other hand, being deprived of your family, your colleagues and the people you love is a real ordeal; and the tears you cry say less about being behind bars than about the pain and suffering your absence causes on all sides. I used to shed my tears in the arms of Jane - my late wife - and my children, when I saw the suffering they had to endure to come and see me in prison, as if my absence from them was not enough for my persecutors. I could not stop myself from crying when Jane gave birth to a still-born child on 9 January 1998, four days before my trial, following beatings she received the previous day when she brought me food, by prison guards who did not even have pity on her late pregnancy.

While my many detentions have largely contributed to confirming my convictions about certain democratic and human values, my long stay in prison above all stimulated my sense of solidarity with others, particularly the poor and the outcast. It strengthened my determination to use journalism as a weapon against all kinds of abuse. For there is no better weapon than words for restoring peace and justice among people, although it depends how those words are used.

To have the privilege of writing taken away from you overnight feels like being victim of a crime. The prison governor called me into his office one day to warn me that as a prisoner I did not have the right to write, and that my persistence would land me in solitary confinement. I immediately started to think about what my long days would be like in a cell I was sharing with more than 150 fellow detainees, almost all of them crooks, if I could not write. So I decided to defy the governor's ban by stepping up my bi-weekly column, "Le Bloc-notes du bagnard" (The Convict's Notebook), in my newspaper Le Messager. The chain of people I was bribing - including prison guards - to get my column out, was long; I have always wondered how I would have survived in that prison without writing.

During a lecture I once gave to students from a well-known university in New York, the director of the school of journalism made the following remark: "Mr. Njawe, my students and I appreciated your brilliant exposé of the situation regarding press freedom in Cameroon and in Africa in general. But I cannot help wondering one thing: either you invented all these stories to impress us, which I could understand, or everything you have told us is true and I am dying to ask you why you continue to work in the profession in the suicidal situation you describe?"

It is indeed difficult to understand why people persist in a profession that causes them so much misery and suffering. As regards my own case, I invariably reply to everyone who wonders this, that I entered journalism the way you enter a religion; journalism is my religion. I believe in it, and a thousand trials, a thousand arrests, a thousand imprisonments and as many death threats will never make me change job. On the contrary, the harder it is, the more you have to believe in it and cling to it. 

Even in the depths of a prison cell you can feel good about being a journalist. How many times have I not rubbed my hands in my cell, my fingers itching to once again hold a pen between them, when thinking back over my career? How many times have I smiled when recalling an editorial or an article that helped foil the most atrocious plans against Cameroon and its people? If only for consolation, one sometimes ends up saying: "They're right to take it out on me like this, after all, I haven’t spared them in my articles…".  Provided, of course,  that you adhere to the best practices of journalism - that you scrupulously respect the canons that make our profession so great. 

Respecting ethical standards is of fundamental importance for anyone wishing to be a journalist. It protects you against all kinds of people who would like to teach you a lesson. When you are facing a judge who is being manipulated, it is your irreproachable professional defense that makes that judge examine his or her own conscience. It is what wins your colleagues over to your cause when you are in difficulty. Doing your job properly therefore seems to be the best advice anyone can give a journalist operating in a context of constant harassment. And doing your job properly also, and above all, means avoiding "gumbo journalism", a practice becoming increasingly widespread in our profession, where people write what they are paid to write instead of giving real information and the truth. While journalists have the right to earn a decent living, even in emerging nations, honest journalists never need pockets in their shrouds…

Journalists perform a social function, which gives them not immunity, but the right to look critically at the way a nation is being run. While playing this crucial role, it is important for them to be protected by the law, but also by the whole of society for which they work. Mobilization is therefore essential every time a journalist is thrown into prison, or threatened with arrest or death. Because every time a journalist is silenced, society loses one of its watchdogs.

* This article was made available by the World Association of Newspapers to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Visit http://www.worldpressfreedomday.org/ for more information.

23 April 2011

Cameroon: Stop Punishment of Journalists Probing Public Corruption

23 April 2011
CPJ


A year after death of journalist in prison, CPJ calls for justice and reforms

The government of Cameroon should initiate reforms to guarantee journalists’ ability to report on issues of public interest without fear of reprisal, said the Committee to Protect Journalists in a letter sent today to President Paul Biya one year after the death of a local journalist in pre-trial detention for reporting on corruption allegations.

CPJ holds the government responsible for the death of Germain Cyrille Ngota Ngota, a probing editor with the monthly Cameroon Express, who perished in prison on April 22, 2010, due to a lack of medical attention despite repeated requests for help. The organization is seeking an investigation into the case. Ngota was initially detained in February 2010 after he and three other reporters questioned a government official regarding allegations of embezzlement of public funds at Cameroon’s state oil authority, SNH. The government’s own investigation revealed that the official ordered state intelligence agents to arrest the journalists and unmask their sources.  Another journalist has accused state intelligence of torturing him while in detention.

CPJ urged Biya in the letter to end the practice of abusive detentions and criminal prosecutions that allow for settling scores with critical or probing journalists. The organization also called for a reform of the “criminal code so that defamation, libel, and press offenses are adjudicated by civil courts. In the interest of public accountability, transparency, and democracy, we call on you to take all necessary steps to hold to account officials and security services who abuse their authority in reprisals against their critics in the press.”

Unfortunately, Ngota’s case is part of a broader climate of repression for reporting that sheds light on the management of public resources. Earlier this month, a provincial governor in Cameroon had a journalist detained after he made routine inquiries about the arrests of two employees at the state-run palm oil company. The authorities later said the reporter had been detained for his own protection. Authorities also banned a newspaper amid legal harassment of journalists investigating public corruption. With a score of 2.2 out of 10 Cameroon’s public sector is ranked as highly corrupt on Transparency International’s index

18 April 2011

Gambia Government's Position on The Tragedy in Ivory Coast

15 April 2011
Statehouse Online
Republic of The Gambia


The events in Ivory Coast have vindicated us on our earlier assertion that Western Neo colonialist sponsored agents in Africa that owe allegiance only to themselves and their Western Masters are ready to walk on thousands of dead bodies to the Presidency. This is what is happening in Ivory Coast.

Africans should not only wake up, but should stand up to the new attempts to re-colonise Africa through so called elections that are organized just to fool the people since the true verdict of the people would not be respected if it does not go in favour of the Western Backed Candidates as has happened in Cote D'Ivoire and elsewhere in Africa.

What is really sinister and dangerous about the neo colonialist threat is that they are ready to use brute force, or carry out outrageous massacres to neutralize any form of resistance to the Western selected President as has happened in Cote D'Ivoire.

In Ivory Coast, we know the role played by the former Colonial power who, outside of the UN Mandate, first Bombarded the Presidential Palace for Days and eventually stormed it through a tunnel that links the Presidential Palace to one of the residences of their diplomatic representative.

The reasons for the bombardment of the Presidential Palace prior to the raid was according to them; to prevent Gbagbo using heavy weapons against civilians! But both the UN and France were aware of the outrageous massacres of civilians, entire villages that supported President Laurent Gbagbo were wiped out by the so called republican forces fighting for Ouatarra. Were Gbagbo supporters not supposed to be protected by both the UN and French Forces against Massacres?

These so called republican forces that were supposed to be fighting for Democracy, ended up killing thousands with impunity and are now engaged in massive looting!

Our position is very clear. The case of Laurent Gbagbo is a replica of the Case of Patrice Lumumba who; as a a Freedom Fighter for the dignity and Independence of not only Congolese people but the entire black race was overthrown by Western powers including the UN, and handed over to his sworn enemies to be murdered.

History is repeating itself as the same Neocolonial forces that overthrew Patrice Lumumba, captured him and handed him over to his enemies almost fifty years ago; are the same forces involved in the Ivory Coast with the only difference being that it is now a different former colonial power.

If justice is to be done, there should be an impartial and comprehensive investigation into all the atrocities carried out in Ivory Coast by a team of honest and decent Allah fearing people. Alassan Ouatarra and his forces cannot go scot free and blame everything on President Laurent Gbagbo who according to the Ivorian Constitution is the legitimate President of Ivory Coast. This team should be selected by the Non Align Movement.

One is tempted to ask this Question:

How is it possible that the verdict of the constitutional council that decided on who won the elections in some Francophone African Countries recently were accepted: that is after the election in Ivory Coast but that of The Ivorian Constitution Council was rejected by both the Western powers and the UN?

As far as we are concerned, the only solution to avert a long drawn-out civil War with all its attendant consequences in Ivory Coast is to reorganize Presidential elections in the shortest possible time. In the meantime an interim Government of National Unity should be formed without Alassan Ouatarra; as he also has a lot to answer for as well.

One thing is very clear to all Africans today – the plot to recolonise Africa is very real and we must stand up to it.

It is shameful that the most evil, dictatorial and repressive powers on earth today are calling African leaders Dictators. It is also very shocking and interesting as well that the same powers are not saying anything about the popular uprising that has been raging on Burkina Faso for the past three weeks resulting in the storming of the Presidential Palace in Ouagadougou, last night, with the whereabouts of Blaise Compaore unknown. This uprising has been going on for more than three weeks now and not a single international news media is reporting on it. Is it possible in today's world that such an uprising can take place in a country like Burkina Faso; so close to the Ivory Coast; a dusk to dawn curfew imposed for two weeks; without the Western Media including those of the former colonial Master knowing about it?

We the new Generation of Africans cannot and will not be fooled. We know what Blaise Compaore stands for in Africa with regards to the West.

Captain Thomas Sankara was murdered for standing up to imperialism and neo colonialism in Burkina Faso in particular and Francophone Africa in general. He was killed for the same reasons that Patrice Lumumba and other African Freedom Fighters died for, their killers eventually becoming Presidents in those African countries and worked exclusively for Western interests in Africa.

Blaise Compaore, is one of them. He has a lot to answer for the civil wars that ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast then, and now.

That there is such a media blackout of the uprising in Burkina Faso, but an up-to-the-minute reporting of events in Yemen, Syria, Ivory Coast etc shows that the so called international news media are the mouth pieces of certain Satanic Powers with a sinister Mission for the rest of the world outside the West.

Why can't the West respect Africa's Independence and dignity?

In conclusion, we call on the UN to ensure the safety, protection, and well being of President Laurent Gbagbo; the constitutionally legal President of Ivory Coast and set him free. He cannot be tried whilst Alassan Ouatarra, the internationally selected President goes scot free after massacring thousands of civilians just to be President!

The Gambia Government would not recognize any President or Government in Africa that has been imposed by forces outside of the African Continent for whatever reason. We know what those governments and Presidents stand for in Africa. They loot African resources on behalf of the powers that brought them to power.

MAY THE ALMIGHTY ALLAH Guide, Guard and Protect Africans by giving us the courage to stand up in Defence of African Independence, Dignity and the protection of our natural Resources from those hungry locusts on the rampage in Africa. The road to total liberation may be tough, but we shall prevail very soon INSHA ALLAH.

14 April 2011

Benin: The Slide into Dictatorship

14 April 2011

International Freedom of Expression Exchange - IFEX


Police attack newspaper journalist, thwart opposition demonstration



On 24 March 2011, a group of police officers in the capital, Cotonou, violently assaulted Séïdou Choubadé, a reporter and columnist for the privately-owned "Le Nokoué" daily newspaper, during an aggressive crackdown on opposition demonstrators. The demonstrators were challenging the credibility of the constitutional court's 21 March announcement declaring President Yayi Boni winner of the recent presidential election. 

The Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent reported that the officers injured a number of demonstrators and arrested and imprisoned several others, including Raphaël Akotègnon, one of the leaders of the demonstration and a member of parliament for the opposition L'Union fait la Nation (In Unity Lies the Nation's Strength) party. 

The correspondent said that while some of the police officers slapped Choubadé several times, others beat him with clubs. The attack went on unabated despite the journalist showing them his press card. Choubadé, who had gone to the scene with his motorcycle, fled, leaving behind the bike. 

The attack on Choubadé resulted in a swollen face, a cut on his upper lip and a number of hand injuries. 

Meanwhile, there has been widespread condemnation of the crackdown on the demonstrators by the police. In a 28 March statement, the country's broadcast regulator, the High Authority for Broadcasting and Communication (HAAC), threatened to institute an action against the police for the attack on Choubadé. 

11 April 2011

France And The Ivory Coast: The Empire Strikes Back

French colonialism and the learned dependence of African states


December 16, 2010
By Dr. Gary K. Busch

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.”

This was agreed at Linas-Marcoussis and at Pretoria. However, no disarmament took place. The rebels agreed to disarmament plans, schedules and procedures but missed every deadline. They rejected President Mbeki as a mediator because he insisted that the rebels fulfil their agreement to disarm. To this day there has been no disarmament, despite calls by the UN Security Council.

The UN issued Resolution 1633 which extended the deadline for the election of a President from October 30, 2005 (as written in the Constitution) for another year on the basis that a free and fair election could not be held under existing conditions and created the post of Prime Minister with elevated powers. It demanded that “all the parties signatories to the Linas-Marcoussis, Accra III and Pretoria Agreements, as well as all the Ivorian parties concerned, implement it fully and without delay”. These responsibilities were clearly delineated further on in the Resolution

“14. Demands that the Forces Nouvelles proceed without delay with the DDR programme in order to facilitate the restoration of the authority of the State throughout the national territory, the reunification of the country and the organization of the elections as soon as possible;

“15. Affirms that the identification process must also start without delay;”

Since then there has been no effective progress on disarmament. This is the root of the crisis.

There was a program in place to ‘identify’ Ivorian citizens in an effort to create a current electoral roll. The question of ‘identity’ goes to the heart of the rebellion. Without a solution, there could be no elections and no serious hopes of peace between the armed camps.

Since 1993, when Henri Konan Bédié succeeded Félix Houphouët-Boigny as President, Muslim northerners have struggled to get identity papers; officials have accused them of hiding their foreign origins and abuses linked to constant identity checks have mounted. North-south tensions became personalised in the face-off between Bédié, from the south-west, and Houphouët's former Premier, Alassane Dramane Ouattara ('ADO'), who is both northern and Muslim, and a former International Monetary Fund Deputy Managing Director. Konan Bédié promoted the nationalist concept of Ivoirité and changed the constitution to allow only '100 per cent' Ivoirians to stand for the presidency. He claimed that Ouattara's family came from Burkina Faso and that he had faked his identity papers to hide the fact. Security agents carried on tearing up northerners' documents or made it impossible to renew them, effectively depriving them of their nationality. Bédié’s first act as President included expelling 12,000 Ivory Coast residents on the grounds that they were really from Burkina Faso. This was Bedie, not Gbagbo!.

Banny's cabinet approved a fresh identification process, together with new identity cards and a new electoral register. Gbagbo and the FPI disagreed with the Banny program because it did not provide for disarmament in advance of the registration. This was insisted on because under the Ivorian Constitution, registration could only legally be conducted by Registrars appointed by the Institut National de la Statistique who would draw up the electoral roll and issue voters' cards. The INS was run by the Planning Minister, former FPI Finance Minister Paul Bohoun Boubre. Banny's scheme was being run by an ad hoc Office National d'Identification, which is not provided for by the Constitution. Without disarmament it was not safe for licensed registrars to visit the rebel-held North to examine the documentation of putative voters and citizens. Banny has said that a ‘village council’ could meet and make the necessary identification. Since these councils were dominated and controlled by the local rebel bands, this meant that whoever the rebels said is an Ivorian became one on the spot. Fraud becomes the byword.

In fact this type of fraud was widely reported. The National Assembly announced that the police had brought evidence which showed that the RDR (Ouattara’s party) was ‘selling’ registration documents. The President of the National Assembly, Mamadou Koulbaly, held up the purported registration of a man who claimed to be Ivorian and who used the existing documentation of a man, Sanago Aboubacar, to register. The real Sanago Aboubacar is a FPI delegate from Abobo and was very surprised to see someone else’s face on his identity document. The police reported that these false identification papers are being sold for the sum of 15 000 FCFA by the RDR village councillors in the North. The whole process is in disrepute because no one trained and licensed to perform the process of identification is able to attend these ‘village councils’. Any electoral roll prepared by this process is seriously flawed and incredible as a valid electoral roll.

The nub of the issue is that at least over half of the rebel forces grouped under the rubric “Forces Nouvelles” are not Ivoirians and never were. They were gathered as mercenaries and hired thugs by the French from Burkina Faso, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone and from the assorted other bands of riff-raff engaged in internecine warfare in West Africa. They were transported to the Ivory Coast and armed by the French, with the support and participation of Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso and Toure and Tandja of Mali and Niger.

There has been a peace treaty in place in the Ivory Coast since 2003. During the interval the ‘international community’ has intervened in the political process of the Ivory Coast. It has wrung concessions from Gbagbo and the FPI Government and made formal agreements with the rebel bands. To date these commitments by the rebel bands have not been implemented or enforced. The international community has been resourceful in pushing Gbagbo but has refused to deal in any meaningful way with the rebels. These rebels have not brought good government to their occupied areas. They have destroyed the infrastructure of the North. They have billeted themselves on a resistant population; stolen their houses, cars, children, jobs and opportunities. All of this has been done in defiance of the law, customary traditions and supposed UN standards. They pay no taxes; they pay no rent; they pay no customs duties. And yet, the UN and the international community has done nothing to stop them or to assist the poor disenfranchised, impoverished and supine citizens of the North

The rebels steal the cocoa, the cotton, the wood and the wool and make small fortunes which they bank in Ouagadougou. The international community, to be fair, has no love for the rebels – they have been led in their deliberations by the French who have a lot at stake in this country.

After 46 years of independence, France still controls most of the infrastructure and holds its foreign currency reserves as part of the 14-nation Franc Zone. The airline, telephone, electricity and water companies, and some major banks, are French-controlled. 'Accords de coopération', signed after Independence by the late President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and France's then Premier, Michel Debré, are still technically applicable. France maintains a stranglehold of Ivorian commerce and currency which vitiates national initiatives towards independence.

This privileged position of France is confirmed by a report from the UN Commission: "The testimony we have assembled has also enabled us to see that the law of 1998 concerning rural property is linked to the dominant position that France and French interests occupy in Cote d'Ivoire

According to these sources, the French own 45% of the land and, curiously, the buildings of the Presidency of the Republic and of the Ivorian National Assembly are subject to leases concluded with the French. French interests are said to control the sectors of water and electricity.” The report only superficially touched the dominance of French interests in Cote d'Ivoire, but they are not hard to find. Below are some of leading players of the French business class in Cote d'Ivoire:

Bollore, leader in French maritime transport and principal operator of maritime transport in Cote d'Ivoire along with Saga, SDV (Switched Digital Video) See switched video. and Delmas, controls the port of Abidjan, the leading transit port in West Africa West Africa. Bollore also controls the Ivorian-Burkinabe railway, Sitarail. Although it has recently withdrawn from the cocoa business, it has maintained its leading position in tobacco and rubber.

Bouygues (leader in construction and public works public works) dominates Ivorian construction projects, such as highways or dams, financed by public funds and constructed by the government. Since Ivoirian independence it has been the number one company in construction and public works (we also find Colas, third-ranking firm in road building in France). Bouygues also has, through privatisation has obtained additional concessions, control of water distribution (Societe des Eaux de Cote d'Ivoire), of production and distribution of electricity through the Compagnie Ivoirienne d'Electricite and the Compagnie Ivoirienne de Production d'Electricite. It has also been involved in the recent exploitation of Ivorian oil.

Total (the biggest French oil company) holds a quarter of the shares of the Societe Ivoirienne de Raffinage Oil Refinery (number one in Cote d'Ivoire) and owns 160 petrol stations and controls the bitumen supply

France Telecom (seventh in rank among companies in France and leader in the telecoms sector) is the main shareholder of Cote d'Ivoire Telecom and of the Societe Ivoirienne des Mobiles (it holds about 85% of the capital), since concessions were granted in this sector, in the context of the privatisation of public enterprises.

In the banking and insurance sector, there is the Societe Generale (sixth bank in France--the Societe Generale des Banques de Cote d'Ivoire has 55 branches) as well as Credit Lyonnais and BNP-Paribas. AXA (the second largest company in France and leader of the insurance sector) has been present in Cote d'Ivoire since the colonial period.

The most long-established of the French companies in Cote d'Ivoire is the Groupe Compagnie Francaise de l'Afrique de l'Ouest de Cote d'Ivoire (CFAO-CI). It operates in many sectors (cars, pharmaceuticals, new technology, etc). For a long time, CFAO monopolised exports and the retail trade, and its profits (not a single year of loss, since its creation in 1887) led to it being taken over recently by the Pinault-Printemps-La Redoute group.

There is also "the former boss of French bosses", Baron Ernest-Antoine Seilleres, through Technip (plant for the oil sector) and Bivac (which recently installed a new scanner at the port of Abidjan).

The presence of French capital is a demonstration of the profitability of Cote d'Ivoire. And although French direct investment is only Euro 3.5bn--the most profitable former state enterprises having been acquired at knock-down prices--the annual profits from this investment are enormous.

Despite the flight of some French nationals during the rebel war of recent years, French business presence in Cote d'Ivoire has returned and has recovered its former levels.

One of the most important influences in the economic and political life of African states which were formerly French colonies is the impact of a common currency; the Communuate Financiere de l’Afrique (‘CFA’) franc. There are actually two separate CFA francs in circulation. The first is that of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) which comprises eight West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The second is that of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) which comprises six Central African countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon), This division corresponds to the pre-colonial AOF (Afrique Occidentale Française) and the AEF (Afrique Équatoriale Française), with the exception that Guinea-Bissau was formerly Portuguese and Equatorial Guinea Spanish).

Each of these two groups issues its own CFA franc. The WAEMU CFA franc is issued by the BCEAO (Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest) and the CEMAC CFA franc is issued by the BEAC (Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale). These currencies were originally both pegged at 100 CFA for each French franc but, after France joined the European Community’s Euro zone at a fixed rate of 6.65957 French francs to one Euro, the CFA rate to the Euro was fixed at CFA 665,957 to each Euro, maintaining the 100 to 1 ratio. It is important to note that it is the responsibility of the French Treasury to guarantee the convertibility of the CFA to the Euro.

The monetary policy governing such a diverse aggregation of countries is uncomplicated because it is, in fact, operated by the French Treasury, without reference to the central fiscal authorities of any of the WAEMU or the CEMAC. Under the terms of the agreement which set up these banks and the CFA the Central Bank of each African country is obliged to keep at least 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in an “operations account” held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20% to cover financial liabilities.

The CFA central banks also impose a cap on credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20% of that country’s public revenue in the preceding year. Even though the BEAC and the BCEAO have an overdraft facility with the French Treasury, the drawdowns on those overdraft facilities are subject to the consent of the French Treasury. The final say is that of the French Treasury which has invested the foreign reserves of the African countries in its own name on the Paris Bourse.

The creation and maintenance of the French domination of the francophone African economies is the product of a long period of French colonialism and the learned dependence of the African states. For most of francophone Africa there are only limited powers allocated to their central banks. These are economies whose vulnerability to an increasingly globalised economy expands daily. There can be no trade policy without reference to currency; there can be no investment without reference to reserves. The African politicians and parties elected to promote growth, reform, changes in trade and fiscal policies are made irrelevant except with the consent of the French Treasury which rations their funds.

The key to all this was the agreement signed between France and its newly-liberated African colonies which locked these colonies into the economic and military embrace of France. This Colonial Pact not only created the institution of the CFA franc, it created a legal mechanism under which France obtained a special place in the political and economic life of its colonies.
The Pacte Colonial Agreement enshrined a special preference for France in the political, commercial and defence processes in the African countries. On defence it agreed two types of continuing contact. The first was the open agreement on military co-operation or Technical Military Aid (AMT) agreements, which weren’t legally binding, and could be suspended according to the circumstances. They covered education, training of servicemen and African security forces. The second type, secret and binding, were defence agreements supervised and implemented by the French Ministry of Defence, which served as a legal basis for French interventions. These agreements allowed France to have predeployed troops in Africa; in other words, French army units present permanently and by rotation in bases and military facilities in Africa; run entirely by the French.

In summary, the colonial pact maintained the French control over the economies of the African states; it took possession of their foreign currency reserves; it controlled the strategic raw materials of the country; it stationed troops in the country with the right of free passage; it demanded that all military equipment be acquired from France; it took over the training of the police and army; it required that French businesses be allowed to maintain monopoly enterprises in key areas (water, electricity, ports, transport, energy, etc.). It is difficult to imagine what the changes were from colonial rule to today that aren’t merely cosmetic.

The civil war which broke out between the North and the South in the Ivory Coast was largely about the efforts of the Gbagbo government seeking to achieve real independence; a breakaway from the colonial dominance of the French which controlled almost every aspect of national life. He had the support of the Ivorian people. However now, after all the fighting and suffering by both sides, the current policy of Gbagbo seemed to veer away from confrontation to a policy of restoring the status quo ante; French neo-colonialism. This didn’t work. It fostered is a level of bitterness and rancour among a people who were watching the yoke placed on their necks again and, despite their current apathy and discouragement after years of fighting and sacrifice, they realised that, North and South, they had nothing to lose by sweeping the board clean of their black Frenchmen and installing genuine Ivorian patriots in their place.

Unfortunately this was not an option in the ballot. The problem with trying to rectify these problems by negotiation was that there has been a government which was at war with itself. After Linas-Marcoussis and the subsequent agreements since 2002, culminating in the Ouagadougou Agreement the Cabinet has been made up of representatives from the legitimate parties of the past (FPI, PDCI, RDR, PIT) and a bunch of jumped up warlord rebel parties. Each has had its own ministry or ministries at its disposal. Government reshuffles didn’t change much but the cast of characters. There is no Cabinet; there is competitive anarchy. These imposed Cabinet members drew hefty salaries and expenses and rode in chauffeur-driven cars as they plotted the downfall of their Cabinet colleagues and the impoverishment of their fellow citizens. The National Assembly has not been elected since 2000 and many of the delegates are dead, dying or haven’t visited their constituencies in years. They present no hope for the populace.

Just there is lawless theft in the North the South is not much better. In the years since the rebellion the power brokers of the South have found an accommodation with the companies which thrive in the large rich harvests of cocoa and coffee. Even more importantly they have taken large pieces of the burgeoning oil and gas businesses which are expanding rapidly. A new refinery is being built. New pipelines are being connected. The rebels in the North have not had a chance to dine at those tables so feel that what they steal from the public purse is justified in comparison to what the Southern politicians are harvesting. Just as the rebels in the North are not likely to give up their piratical enterprises for a peace and national unity where they go back to being shoemakers and truck drivers; the fat cats of the South are not going to take the fast money from the business community and put that cash into roads, schools, electricity and hospitals. That is why the election is was a sham and without a clear conclusion

The French, buoyed by their successful intervention in Guinea where they managed to advance their candidate, Alpha Conde, to the Presidency, were sure that their manipulation of the voters’ roll and their protection of the Northern rebel leadership would give them an unassailable lead in the runoff election. However, the blatant vote-rigging in several Northern constituencies (where more people voted than were on the electoral roll) and where armed rebel troops surrounded the polling stations making sure that voters voted ‘correctly’ were so blatant that a real count could not be made in the requisite period. The Constitutional Court examined the situation and the voting procedures and declared that President Gbagbo was re-elected. This was in opposition to the Ouattara electoral commission which declared their man as the winner. Now there are, putatatively, two presidents. The Army remains loyal to Gbagbo, despite tasty offers from the French Army and diplomats to the Army higher echelons.

The French were able to convince the ‘international community’ (a euphemism for those who do not really want to be involved and who are satisfied with posturing) that the election results were free and fair. This is, of course, preposterous. In a country divided into two camps, occupied by a group of foreign military ’peacekeepers’ under the guidance of the former colonial master, and armed to the teeth at the same time, what kind of ‘free and fair’ are they talking about? The French used their influence on neighbouring francophone states to parrot their conclusions of ‘free and fair’. This is even more bizarre. How is it possible that the unindicted war criminals of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali who have given open support to the rebel north on behalf of their French masters are taken seriously by the international community. Their countries are economic basket cases; their leaders are despots and they govern without democratic institutions. They survive by French subsidies and what they can steal from the Ivory Coast. The rise of the Assassin of Abidjan, Michèle Alliot-Marie, to the post of Foreign Minister of France gives no comfort to anyone. It was she, as Defence Minister, who ordered the French soldiers to shoot down unarmed demonstrators at the Hotel Ivoire in November 2006 which killed sixty-eight men, women and children and wounded a thousand others.

This situation cannot last. There are always fears that there will be another military confrontation. The international community has hobbled the military preparedness of the Ivory Coast by sanctions and shooting down the Ivorian Air Force. However, there is no need for violence if the new Gbagbo Government decides to take affirmative action in dealing with the rebel North. What is needed is a bloodless and legal retaliation against the current situation. The North survives on the goodwill of the South. The time is ripe for the Gbagbo Government to insist that this is paid for as contracted. Let then shut off the water pipes to the North; let them turn off the electrical power; let the interrupt the communications links to the North; and let them stop the shipment of fuel from the South to the North. The North isn’t paying for them; they are not paying income taxes or corporate taxes; they do not pay customs duties.

Let the government act by shutting down these services to the North. Let the French bring in water, electricity, fuel and telephone links. If they want colonialism let them pay for their colonial ambitions. There is no need for war or conflict. Shut the valves and switches on a commercial basis. That will certainly bring the North and their glove puppeteers to a better understanding. France doesn’t have the funds to do this and desperately doesn’t want Francafrique to be an issue in the electoral campaign. 

This is the time to act.