No one can deny it: there are clearly problems of Governance and Democracy within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). In this regard, this last institution, due to its chaotic and lax functioning, is no stranger to the disintegration of democratic institutions born of the various democratic processes of the late 1980s, from the National Sovereign Conference of Benin Republic in February 1990 , which has been observed in recent years. By behaving like a Syndicate of Heads of State, as many like to say, where it had to assert itself as the guarantor of Good Governance and Democracy through respect for the principles on which the rule of law is based in its community space but also and above all the strict observance by each State and above all Head of Member State – the men passing through and the institutions surviving them – of the rules of coexistence of which it is the guardian.
On April 29, 2021, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) issued a decision in which it declared: "The Court decides that the political formations and citizens of Senegal who cannot present themselves to the elections due to the modification of the electoral law [in 2018] must be restored to their rights by abolishing the sponsorship system, which constitutes a real obstacle to the freedom and secrecy of the exercise of the right to vote, to on the one hand, and a serious infringement of the right to participate in elections as a candidate, on the other hand.” And this statement also came, the day after the presidential election of April 11, 2021 in Benin Republic, which had de facto excluded all opposition candidates because of sponsorship under the same conditions as in Senegal. Should it be emphasized that the Liberal Social Union (USL) had not had a follow-up to its referral to the ECOWAS Court of Justice in emergency proceedings a few weeks before the presidential election which had allowed President Macky Sall to be re-elected in the first round with more than 58% of the vote in 2019, like President Patrice Talon in 2021.
In countries like Benin Republic or Senegal, when the leaders come to concoct texts and laws that divert democratic principles for the sole benefit of the princes who govern, there is clearly still a problem. Especially when ECOWAS lets it go and when faced with its deliberations against these texts and laws, as is the specific case of the sponsorship system for which the Heads of State of these countries concerned have not yet corrected their texts to this day. Not as far as we know, there is clearly an even more serious problem of credibility of this institution vis-à-vis the peoples of the Member States.
And all this contributes to making this institution inaudible when, by a combination of circumstances, it comes to set itself up as a defender of Democracy in the face of a coup d'Etat. Whether at the instigation of populations weary of bad governance or the Third presidential terms, or even hatched by the Wagner Group and with the voracious appetite for power of a few soldiers.
The former Beninese journalist, Charles Migan, is undoubtedly not wrong in saying: "To praise a tropicalized democracy, with variable geometry, is to take liberties with the constitutional provisions which open the door to military intervention. To stick to the spirit of the power which is entrusted is the guarantor of the Republic”.
However, under the fallacious pretext of the liberation of Africa from France and the West, and with the support of the Wagner Group, will it now be necessary to accept the support of coups in Africa? This question must be answered in the negative and unequivocally.
Admittedly, there have been Africans, particularly from West Africa, who support coups d'Etat to the detriment of civilian regimes. And that does not bother them to be at the same time those who, loud and clear, find that we cannot admit Third presidential terms in this sub-region or even complain of being under the yoke of civilian regimes but dictatorial. The case of Benin Republic is a clear example.
Some Opposition political parties in many of these ECOWAS countries, because they are unable to create alternatives or alternations to gain power - the democratic process being flawed and the institutions of the Republic vassalized -, come even to tack on the question of coups d'Etat. By using subterfuge not to denounce and clearly and categorically condemn the latest coup in Niger.
Algeria, secretly led by oligarchs and military dignitaries who are very jealous of their privileges, never wanted Democracy for their people. This is not a new fact. The various repressions vis-à-vis their populations during the Hirak bear witness to this. So there is nothing very surprising about Algeria's attitude towards the coup in Niger. Worse, its leaders have taken the liberty of enacting measures to be followed by ECOWAS. Just as if ECOWAS were at the orders of Algeria. And when we know the close proximity of Algeria to Vladimir Putin's Russia, of which Wagner is one of the protagonists of the coups d'Etat in West Africa, we quickly understand everything. Moreover, in the conflicts in West Africa, particularly in the crisis in Mali, Algeria has never ceased to play a double game by allegedly posing as a mediating country, but a mediator in the game could not be more ambiguous. And this, both to settle some accounts with France and to arrogate a geopolitical influence in Black Africa with regard to its eternal rival, Morocco.
If, at the end of the socio-political crisis in Niger against the backdrop of a coup d'Etat and kidnapping, ECOWAS does not reform itself in depth, it is a safe bet that it will lose the little credibility it still has left and worse that it will disappear. Especially since one thing is sure and certain, the upcoming elections in several countries will be sources of social explosions and ECOWAS will face new socio-political instabilities. Both the germs have already spread sufficiently and the resentments very strong for this to be avoided by its conciliatory methods, even accomplices with the Heads of state of the member countries who endlessly trick democratic principles. And, instead of coups d'Etat which will be strongly condemned and fought, we will then have to expect violent popular uprisings with the aim of bringing down the regimes that ECOWAS has never had the courage to denounce and condemn. After all, the people have the right to rebel to supplement the coups d'Etat forbidden to the military. Because only the people are sovereign, and no Head of state or Constitution can be above the people.
By Marcus Boni Teiga
