Ivory Coast showdown: The political crisis in West Africa
If there's one thing that Gbagbo has done it's this: Show the Ivorians that there is life after France, writes Paisible Ivoire.
The only struggle against Gbagbo is that of shameless imperialists to secure resources and influence in West Africa.
Now, people who hadn't heard about Gbagbo a year earlier are suddenly turning into Ivory Coast specialists and anti-Gbagbo pundits. Fed by the uncritical media they believe they know what is going on. Uncritical of what they are being fed as information they make un-,worse, mis-informed comments.
They talk of an international community that thinks like them and brandish their numbers as a proof of their being right. The number of people saying something does not make it true. In medieval times, intellectuals said that the earth was flat. They were wrong. Today, very knowledgeable people are succumbing to emotions and sensationalism thereby not being objective when it comes to Ivory
COast and Gbagbo.
I suspect the fact that Allassane studied in the US is the reason why
so many Americans back him. Moreover, socialism has never been a political philosophy of choice in the states. It is that of Gbagbo...
The UN and ECOWAS are not independent bodies. Those speaking African countries there, for the most part, depend on aid from the members of the permanent security council. They are not independent and are mere parrots when it comes to opinion. In that international community, and in the security council, is France which definitely has economical and political interest in Ivory Coast. Those interest are of an imperialist nature, like it or not.
Allassane is liked because he belongs to the system (IMF, World bank,
France, etc...) and has religiously applied their measure in Ivory Coast in the past when being the prime minister of a corrupt and dictatorial regime (in the 90s). He is docile. He executes, no question asked. A good slave.
Gbagbo is a bit more of a problem. He has views of his own. He thinks that imperialism is still a fact, how funny you will say. The fact is a significant portion of the Ivory Coast population thinks like him. This makes it difficult to take him out.
Obviously he can be treated as a Mugabe... that is demonized. Let's
kill his legacy they must have said. The fact is it will be difficult to turn him into a West African Mugabe. He is more adept at politics than Mugabe. He's been doing it since before Allassane was collaborating with a dictatorial regime. Allassane is a relative new comer on the political scene. He is naive. He believes that support from the US or France is enough for him to win the Ivorians hearts.
He is sadly mistaken. Times have changed and it's no longer sufficient to be friends with Paris to lead Ivory Coast.
If there's one thing that Gbagbo has done it's this one: show the
Ivorians that there is life after France.
Let's salute him for that.