WITH ECOWAS, NOT ALL DICTATORS ARE EQUAL!
THE NIGER DEBICLE: HAS ECOWAS BITTEN MUCH MORE THAN THEY CAN CHEW?
"WE AS A PARTY WILL ENSURE RESTORATION OF DIGNITY AND NOT ALLOW THE REPETITION OF WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR 10 MPs WHOM WERE REMOVED AND BULLIED OUT OF THE FIFTH PARLIAMENT" [and were replaced by Paopa choice seconds]. So says Madam Mariama Lowe when meeting with the female MPs elect. Very well done Madam Mariama Lowe, I duff my hat to you; keep encouraging the women and, continue to send encouraging words at all levels, even to the youths.
A COUP D'ETAT IS A COUP D'ETAT! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE IF THE METHOD USED IS BY A MILITARY TAKE OVER IN JUNTA FASHION OR BY A CIVILIAN ASSISTED FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS COMMISSIONER BY WAY OF A BROAD DAYLIGHT ROBBERY OF THE PEOPLES FRANCHISE AND STEALING THEIR VOTES (PAINFULLY CAST ON 24th JUNE 2023 IN SIERRA LEONE; AND BEING ILLEGITIMATELY DECLARED AND SWORN IN WHEN IT WAS CLEAR THAT THE ELECTIONS WERE WON BY THE OPPOSITION HEADED BY DOCTOR SAMURA MATHEW WILSON KAMARA.
IS ECOWAS ON THE RIGHT TRAJECTORY OVER NIGER?
Please click link.
Just listen to Maada Bio saying he agrees with the ECOWAS group to 'REVERSE THE COUP IN NIGER": That is by military force! So, it is wrong to stage a MILITARY COUP, BUT IT DOES NOT MATTER IF IT IS A CIVIL COUP? A COUP IS A COUP NO MATTER HOW EXECUTED, PERIOD! TO STEAL THE ELECTIONS AND FORCED A DECLARATION AND A HURRIEDLY CONSPIRATORIAL SWEARING IN IS ILLEGAL AND A TREASON. WE MUST RECALL HERE THAT THE LATE JUSTICE BECCLES DAVIES'S SWAERING IN OF JOHNNY PAUL KORONA. RECALL HOW HON JUSTICE BECCLES DAVIES WAS VIEWED AS A COLLABORATOR AMONG THE HUNDREDS WHOSE NAMES WERE ON THAT WANTED LIST FROM WHICH 24 WERE EXECUTED BY FIRING SQUAD AFTER PRESIDENT TEJAN KABBA WAS RE-INSTATED IN 1997/8.
Maada Bio says past mistakes have been made to allow such COUPS as in Niger, and now "we do not accept this coup"! He continued, "We are to make every effort to make Constitutional order returns to Niger".
The question here is, Why must the Sierra Leonean voters accept Maada and Konneh's CIVIL COUP, operated through STEALING THE ELETIONS and disenfranchising the people by stealing their [protest] votes, because they do not want Maada Bio any more? Why should proper Constitutional order NOT RETURN TO SIERRA LEONE, but rather running a FAKE AND ILLEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT and a de-facto ONE PARTY STATE PARLIAMENT and mockingly propagating false distractive claims about a non-existent coup plot, whilst pretending that ALL IS WELL: it's only just a little bit of family grumbles? Just hear the Outgoing USA AMBASSADOR being interviewed at Radio 98.1 saying practically that things are not in order and the elections were not transparent, free or fear: hence the USA strong position including not congratulating Maada Bio.
On 16th August, 2023 the outgoing US Ambassador, David Reimer speaking to Radio Democracy 98.1 about challenges with the credibility of the 24th June, 2023 elections results and their implications for the MCC Compaq. The ambassador openly and sincerely condemned the set-up of the ELETIONS REVIEW COMMITTEE headed by the Vice President Juldeh Jalloh as it will not be free of bias. This is similar to a Magistrate judging his own case, thus breaching the well known legal principle, that "a man cannot be a judge, in his own course'! The interview ended abruptly as Radio Democracy 98.1 sirupticiously went off the air as the Ambassador was commenting on the State of Sierra Leone's economy in response to the interviewer's questions. Click link below for excerpts of the interview.
When asked after the ECOWAS meeting what is the difference with the Niger COUP now and past ones, Maada Bio says, "Well, if we have made mistakes in the past, we must try to correct it NOW"! 😉 He continues, "There is always a point, and time to get started: I think it was a mistake not to have taken action previously, but, now that we are together on this, we should take action to make sure that it does not continue".
These are Maada Bio's own words. So he is conscious and knows thatwhen you have made mistakes in tge past , it is reckless, careless or otherwise not right nor in place to repeat thosesame mistakes in the future. Yet he continues: he's not learnt from his past mistakes.
Apply those pronounments to the action the APC Party (as an Organisation) has taken to REVERSE the THEFT OF THE ELECTIONS BY STEALING, The APC Leadership is being proved right to take the stand they have taken (having made mistakes in the past to allow injustices to go on), now that they are all together as has the executives/the leadership of the ECOWAS. The APC have agreed to STAY AWAY TO MAKE SURE, as Maada Says, to take action and make sure that this [injustice] does not continue!
How dare he come out pretending as though he is in a legitimate staten of leadership to utter such words hypocritically, when he (Maada Bio) fully knows he did not win the elections but have stollen the peoples franchise/rights to chose whom they want, by perpetrating VIOLENCE, ARRESTS, KILLINGS, INTIMIDATION AND FAKE/FALSE COUP PLOT CLAIMS about continue to carry on as if ALL IS IN ORDER!
The article below maps out the failures and inconsistencies of ECOWAS and how West Africa has been confused and unsteady since the birthdays of independence in the late 1950s/1960s. We see how dictators end up through eyes of this article by Lasisi Olagunju: please, do read on.
CLICK LINK.
Monday Lines
With ECOWAS, not all dictators are equal
By Lasisi Olagunju
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 14 August, 2023)
The Jerusalem Post is arguably Israel's most-read English news website and best-selling English newspaper. Last Wednesday, it published an interesting report of what it described as a "nature drama" involving a large black snake in the town of Shoham, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The huge snake was "found motionless with an equally motionless porcupine stuck in its mouth." Apparently, the reptile had killed itself trying to swallow the porcupine. A reptile ecologist who visited the site and reviewed the spectacle told the newspaper: “The snake tried to devour the porcupine and as soon as it decided to abandon its unusual meal, it realized the magnitude of its mistake. The one-way direction of the porcupine's quills did not allow the snake to spit out the porcupine and in the end both the porcupine and the snake met their deaths in the tragic encounter.”
I read that report more than three times and looked at the Niger Republic debacle and the Tchiani porcupine that is stuck in the throat of ECOWAS. I wondered how the drama may end. There is a lesson for all strongmen out there in the Jerusalem Post story. This is especially so when you realise that snakes feed on small mammals like porcupines, and porcupines also feed on reptiles, including snakes. The two predators in that story died in the jaws of their meals. In whatever way the Niger Republic trouble is resolved, there will be no winner.
Coup anywhere is detestable. But as Brutus says in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "Th' abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power." When a great system suffers abuse at the hands of its operators, it invites the attention of Cassius's "lean and hungry look" and the "unkindest cut" of its guards. We saw it with Nigeria's First Republic and the consequences of abuse of power. Without January 15, 1966, there probably would not have been July 29, 1966 and all the subsequent topsy-turvy that drifted the ship to this shore of sharks. At the core of Nigeria's problem is the inoperable structure imposed on it by the coups of 1966. Without the coups, their causes, and the subsequent serial bad incidents of the 1960s, Nigeria's journey may probably have been better today. That is why we won't stop saying that democracy is the best form of government; we should protect it jealously from the ravages of ambition.
ECOWAS and its western allies are insisting on restoring constitutional order in Niger. Good. We support democracy, complete with its law-and-order content. But there is a problem where cow thieves sit in judgement over fowl rustlers. President Bola Tinubu's 'pro-democratic' ECOWAS procession contains persons who radiate negative democratic vibes. It includes one man called Alassane Ouattara, president of Ivory Coast since 2010. Ouattara was very loud and 'patriotic' at last week's ECOWAS summit in Abuja. He declared the coup in Niger as terrorism, stricto sensu. But democratic Ouattara has a history of endorsing coups and high-fiving rebellious soldiers when the rape was for his political palate. On 24 December, 1999, when the military ousted his arch rival, President Henri Bédié, Quattara hailed Bédié's sack. He described what the soldiers did as "not a coup d'état (but) a revolution supported by all the Ivorian people." The man apparently had forgotten uttering those words when he was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ECOWAS summit last Thursday in Abuja. Ouattara said he considered the Niger coup and the detention of Mohamed Bazoum by the junta "a terrorist act." He said the coup must fail and the coupists must fall. He added: "We want democracy in our sub-region. We do not accept, we will not accept coups d'etat. These putschists must go. If they don't let Bazoum out to be able to exercise his mandate, I think we should move ahead and get them out." Quattara is ready to send 850 soldiers - children of his rural and urban poor - to fight his war in Niger. And who will deploy the poor soldiers? They will be sent to the war front by the president's brother, Téné Birahima Ouattara; he is the Minister of Defence.
Another of ECOWAS's democrats is Faure Eyadema, president of Togo. He has been president of his country since 2005 - with the help of the military. Count the years. Before him, there was his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who became president of Togo in 1967 following a military coup. But the Eyadema family coup story did not start in 1967; it started with the 12-13 January, 1963 coup that claimed Togo's first democratically elected president, Sylvanus Olympio. He was killed outside the American embassy. How did it happen? Olympio's presidential residence was guarded by two policemen when six murderous soldiers attacked it on the night of January 12, 1963. The president jumped the fence and escaped into the premises of the American embassy. The Africa Report of 4 November, 2021 has these paragraphs: "Two things are certain. First, that the attack on the Togolese president’s residence in Lomé began at 11pm; and second, that Olympio was assassinated the next morning, at 7:15am, in front of the gates of the US embassy, from which he had just been removed. Between these two events, eight long hours passed, in which phone calls were made and orders given…Who shot him? In the days that followed, Sergeant Eyadéma boasted to reporters from Le Figaro, Le Monde, Paris Match, and Time Magazine that he had shot the president with his own hands: 'I shot him because he didn’t want to move.'" In 1992 (29 years later), reports said Eyadema tried to retract the statement but history has not stopped pointing at him as the regicide mastermind who, however, did not claim the throne until four years later.
Eyadema was in power for thirty eight years. He assumed power on 13 January, 1967; he was proclaimed president on 14 April, 1967; he was elected president on 30 December, 1979; he was re-elected president on 21 December, 1986; reelected again on 25 August, 1993; again on 21 June, 1998, and again on 1 June, 2003. He would have loved to celebrate the centenary of his coup in power but death yanked his lips off Togo's gourd of palm wine on 5 February, 2005. Writing a postscript on him for the Le Monde Diplomatique, a researcher at the Centre d’études d’Afrique noire, Comi Toulabor, summed up Eyadema as one man who had been a personal friend of the then French president, Jacques Chirac, and "had remained in power for 38 years - thanks to a couple of coups, systematic electoral fraud, the faithful allegiance of an army packed with supporters and members of his Kabye ethnic group, solid foreign support (especially from France), and adroit management of access to Togo’s meagre economic resources." How did Eyadema's son become his successor? The military high command simply announced to the nation that they had suspended the constitution and appointed Faure Gnassingbe to fill the vacancy created by the death of his father. Significantly, when that happened, the African Union said no; ECOWAS roared as it is doing now. It held a summit, interestingly, in Niamey, Niger, and issued a statement that said: "The heads of state strongly condemn the military intervention which led to Faure Gnassingbe being installed as the successor to the deceased President…They agree that this constitutes a coup d’état and they condemn the subsequent manipulation of the constitution by parliament." The younger Eyadema later 'legitimised' his inheritance with a controversial election three months later in April 2005. He was reelected in 2010; was reelected again in April 2015 and was reelected the fourth time in February 2020. He will be reelected and reelected till he dies on the throne like his father. That is the teacher from ECOWAS teaching democratic nonsense to Niger.
You cannot violate good faith with respect to the subject of democracy at home and be respected abroad as a campaigner for freedom of choice. ECOWAS’ pro-democracy campaigns won't resonate with the people as long as its motives are suspect and persons without democratic credentials push its agenda. The company being kept in Africa by western powers continues to suggest that autocracy is not abhorred in all cases and not all coups are objectionable. Or why is the democratic world very comfortable with Quattara and Eyadema and other gods with feet of clay? Scholars Christian von Soest and Michael Wahman in 2015 published an article with a provocative title: 'Not all dictators are equal: Coups, fraudulent elections, and the selective targeting of democratic sanctions.' I think the piece, its arguments and conclusions fit the current Niger Republic narrative, the global reaction to the fall of Mohamed Bazoum and the rise of his nemesis, Abdoulrahmane Tchiani. Soest and Wahman's observation is that "since the end of the Cold War, western powers have frequently used sanctions to fight declining levels of democracy and human rights violations abroad." They observe further that it is interesting and puzzling that "some of the world’s most repressive autocracies have never been subjected to sanctions while other more competitive authoritarian regimes have been exposed to repeated sanction episodes." They conclude that because of the political and economic costs of their decisions, western sanction senders pretend not to see "stable authoritarian regimes...(while) they sanction poor targets less integrated in the global economy and countries that do not align with (their) international political agenda." Why, for instance, do western powers have Paul Biya of Cameroon as a good friend and ally? The 90-year-old man has been in power for 41 years and is the world's oldest head of state.
Why is the Nigerian hawk comfortable with a very bad neighbour like Cameroun but is doing 'pakurumo' to Niger Republic's chicken which has simply come home to roost? Cameroun is a real case of bad being very good to definers of political values. That is a country where democracy is on indefinite holidays, where human rights violations at the hands of government and its forces are routine; where the people's right to freedom of choice is safe-kept in the strongroom of their life president, Paul Biya. In March 2020, a Cameroonian citizen confronted President Emmanuel Macron of France publicly in Paris on the human rights situation in Cameroon. Macron responded that he would "exert maximum pressure on President Paul Biya to put an end to this situation." Emmanuel Macron waited two years before visiting Cameroon and when he did, what did he do? According to Human Rights Watch, on July 25 and 26, 2022, Macron was in Cameroon and met with President Biya but "the visit focused on strengthening political and economic ties between Paris and Yaoundé. Macron did not publicly express concerns on the human rights situation in the country." Why are France and its allies comfortable with sit-tight, senescent Biya? Why have they refused to see the repression in Cameroon as a blight on the conscience of the democratic world but would not mind starting a world war because of a coup in Niger? And, they are determined to do so using the paws of our cat to pick their very hot chestnuts. Already, the sanctions Nigeria thought it fired to punish Niger's renegade soldiers are ricocheting, hurting Nigerians. Must our fly follow the corpse of Niger Republic and its jilted patrons into the grave?
The Akan of Ghana have a proverb: “One should never rub bottoms with a porcupine.” What would happen if one did? I think we should ask ECOWAS with the hurting quills stuck in its butt. We should be clear about what we want in Africa. Do we want democracy because it best serves our people or do we want it because it is what our western husbands say we should have? Why is negotiated transition back to democracy the choice for other troubled places and war the preferred choice for Niger? Why is Russia, with all its atrocities in Ukraine, the new allure of French West Africans? Why are some bad good and some bad very bad?
Niger- A COUP or A REVOLUTION?
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COMMENTARY BY MOHAMED A JALLOH CULLED FROM SIERRA LEONE DISCUSSIONS FORUM ON 11th August 2023 . READ ON:
QUOTE:
HOW JULIUS BIO AND MOHAMED KONNEH CONTINUE TO EMBARRASS SIERRA LEONE IN FRONT OF THE WORLD.
By Mohamed A. Jalloh
August 11, 2023
JULIUS BIO has been occupying State House as head of the current illegitimate government of Sierra Leone for the past 45 days since June 27, 2023.
That was the day Bio, aided and abetted by his handpicked head of the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL), Mohamed Konneh, conspired to install Bio as “president” of Sierra Leone.
How?
By Mohamed Konneh declaring Julius Bio the winner of the June 24, 2023 presidential election while carefully hiding the total votes cast for each presidential candidate at each polling station which are required to be counted in order to determine who actually won the presidential election.
Tellingly, that was how Bio executed his third coup in Sierra Leone on June 27, 2023.
Previously, Julius Bio - a two-time coup maker who embarrassingly describes himself as the “father of democracy” in Sierra Leone - had taken an active part in the overthrow of the government of Sierra Leone on April 29, 1992, and again in the overthrow of the government of Sierra Leone in 1996.
It will also be recalled that, on June 27, 2023, when Mohamed Konneh was asked by members of the international community and the leader of the major opposition party, the APC, to release the total number of votes cast for each presidential candidate at each polling station in order to prove who actually won the election, Konneh initially promised to do so. But, he added, it would take some time.
Embarrassingly, it turns out that the demonstrably dishonest Mohamed Konneh was hoping to buy time for the like-minded Bio to continue his unpatriotic charade as the illegitimate president of Sierra Leone.
How do we know that?
ANSWER: More than a month after Konneh promised to release the total number of votes cast for each presidential candidate at each polling station, he has failed to do so.
Worse still, confirming Bio’s and Konneh’s irredeemable bad faith, Konneh has now reportedly adopted a totally opposite posture by nascently claiming that “it is not part of the law to release the result by polling stations and districts.”
See, https://nightwatchnewspaper.com/bio-drops-out-of-ecowas/?amp=1
Click link to read.
Two questions naturally arise from the nationally embarrassing spectacle of Bio’s illegitimate government reneging in front of the rest of the world on its commitment to the people of Sierra Leone to release the total number of votes cast for each presidential candidate at each polling station, namely:
1. Was the release of the votes cast for each candidate by polling station part of the law when ECSL chief, Mohamed Konneh, openly promised to release those results in late June after the presidential election?
2. If so, when did the release of the votes cast for each candidate by polling station stop being part of the law?
As Julius Bio and Mohamed Konneh continue to embarrass the people of Sierra Leone in the eyes of the rest of the world, the people of Sierra Leone ponder another crucial question that remains unanswered, namely:
When will the international community act to bring about the long overdue end of the comically self-styled “father of democracy,” Julius Bio’s illegal occupation of State House - as they did in 1996 to restore democracy in Sierra Leone?"
© 2023 Mohamed A. Jalloh
UNQUOTE
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THE ABRUPT OFF AIR DRAMA OF RADIO DEMOCRACY 98.1 DURING THE BROADCAST INTERVIEW OF USA AMBASSADOR REINER HAS ATTRACTED BAD INTERNATIONAL PUNLICITY.
READ ON>>>>>>>>>>>
THE DAILY TRIBUNE OF NIGERIA REPORT CULLED FROM AFP NEWS AGENCY
S. Leone radio station goes off air before critical US interview
By Agence France-Presse
A prominent radio station in Sierra Leone went off air Wednesday shortly before a pre-recorded interview with the US ambassador highlighting concerns about the general election was due to be broadcast.
Radio Democracy 98.1 temporarily went off the airwaves during Wednesday’s breakfast program, when an interview with US Ambassador David Reimer, recorded a day earlier, was due to be broadcast.
In a leaked recording of part of the interview authenticated by the embassy, Reimer can be heard enumerating Washington’s concerns about the disputed June 24 vote and “the integrity and the credibility of the results” announced by the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone.
“The United States is concerned about irregularities in the results that were announced by the ECSL — that includes a big difference between the ECSL announced results and the parallel vote tabulation, as well as inconsistencies that were analyzed by domestic and international observers,” Reimer said.
“All of these things raise questions in our mind… about the integrity of the official results.”
International observers had noted “statistical inconsistencies” and condemned a “lack of transparency” in the ballot count.
A national observation group also found significant discrepancies between voter results for presidential, parliamentary, and local council elections.
Sarah Van Horne, a US embassy public affairs officer, confirmed to AFP that the interview had been recorded on Tuesday to be broadcast on Wednesday, but that it was not aired.
She said the embassy has been told it will instead air on Thursday.
Reimer affirmed in the interview that President Julius Maada Bio, who won 56 percent of the presidential vote, according to official results, was president.
But, he said, “What we have not done is congratulated him.”
He said the US would not change its work “with the people of Sierra Leone”, including health programs, but would review its government-to-government programs, including a Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact grant worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“In the year or two preceding the compact, we were very clear with the government of Sierra Leone that in order to get a compact they needed to have a fair, free, open, and transparent election,” he said.
“Sierra Leone had done everything else up to that point to get a compact… (but) given the fact that there are all sorts of questions about the results, we’re taking a look at everything, and that includes the MCC compact.”
He said Washington would like to see an “outside, independent look at the election” and a government dialogue with civil society and political parties.
Bio in early August announced that a committee comprising members of civil society and development partners would be set up to review the vote, under the leadership of his vice president.
But, Reimer said in the interview, “It’s just not possible for someone who was a candidate in the election to then look at the process and be not biased.”
The opposition All People’s Congress, which disputes the results, has refused to participate in local or national government, with most MPs boycotting parliament since it opened for business in July.
Reimer called on the APC not to boycott the government and to serve the Sierra Leoneans who voted for the party.
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*CHIEF MINISTER DAVID MOININAH SENGEH SKIPS DIPLOMACY TO ATTACK USA AMBASSADOR REIMER.
Following the interview made by the US Ambassador to Sierra Leone on 98.1 FM, Chief Minister David Shengeh has responded.
“Sierra Leone and the United States have a deep history of mutual respect and shared aspirations for our people - we're committed to their dreams and hopes. The relationship between our country and any other state is bigger than any single individual's ego or specific program.
When we invest 20% in education, we do it for our children. When we pass global corruption indices, we do it for our future. When we invest in girls education and human rights, we do it for ourselves. Make no mistake that as leaders of our country, our sovereignty and our national security is more important than anything. We invest and build systems for a reason and no external body can tell us how we mediate our own challenges.
This is why I am happy the President has set up an independent committee headed by the excellent Vice President to look into all election-related issues and bodies so that we can protect our people's votes in the future. This is why I am happy the Independent Commission for Peace and National Cohesion is facilitating the conversations between the opposition and government. This is why I am happy we are moving steadfastly on our ambitious national investment and transformation plans.
I find it quite fascinating that people believe African governments sit and wait for congratulatory messages from Western powers. We are equals as nations, irrespective of our economy. We are equals as nations, no matter how much help we receive from others. We are equals as nations, no matter our chosen bilateral relations with other nations. When our partners make incendiary statements that have the potential to disrupt our security and democracy backed by their own data and personal beliefs, we must understand that there are consequences to those words.
AND FINALLY:
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