Plus le singe grimpe en hauteur sur l'arbre, plus on voit son derrière
The political situation in the Ivory Coast is not encouraging despite the commitment to a 30 November election... Unfortunately, the opposite of ‘war’ is not ‘peace’; it is also stagnation, frustration and impatience. Ever since the breakthrough at Ouagadougou, where Gbagbo and Soro made their deal to have a temporary government composed of rebels and loyalists, ending five years of stand-off, the bloom has worn off that rose. In its place is:
· a hesitant start towards disarmament; some weapons were destroyed but most are still in the hands of the ‘soldiers’ of both sides. There have been rounds of notional disarmament as part of the scheme. In June, the FN claimed to have disarmed some 1,900 fighters in the rebel capital Bouaké and a further 450 in Kani, in Zone 5. The weapons, however, still remain in depots controlled by the rebels and would be instantly accessible in case of a new flare-up. On 28 June, Force Nouvelles (FN – rebel forces) fighters in the north-western towns of Vavoua and Séguéla took to the streets to protest against the replacement of local commanders and to complain that their rice rations had been reduced. The soldiers were supporters of Koné Zachariah, who was the Commandant de Zone in their area (known as Zone 5) until he fled to Burkina Faso after his failed attempt to resist the launch of the disarmament process near Vavoua in mid-May. He was replaced by Ouattara Issiaka, alias ‘Wattao’, the FN’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Officers were kept hostage and the FN shot one of the rebel’s rebels. Peace has been restored, however temporarily, just as in the earlier rebellion in Bouake a few weeks before. This is a far cry from disarmament.
· In the period up to 14 July the other armed groups, the militias of the West, who were loyal to the central government were being prepared for a general disarmament starting in earnest on the 22nd of July. These militias Duékoué (APEWE, UPRGO); Guiglo (FLGO, MILOCI); Bangolo (MAIMCA, RCAZO); Blolequin (FLGO) and Toulépleu (FS LIMA and FLGO) and Zouhanien were each represented by two people in charge. They met at the General headquarters of the Integrated Command Centre (CCI) located in Yamoussoukro, in the presence of the partners of the CCI: Unit of Support of Presidency, the French Force Licorne, the UNPOL, the PNRRCC, the SNA and prefects of Blolequin, Toulépleu, Bangolo and Duékoué. This disarmament will be as successful as that of the rebels, with the weapons kept close by.
· an interrupted effort of ‘identification’ which was to have provided a new register of electors and proper citizenship papers for those entitled to them. This was contracted at great expense to the French firm SAGEM. The question has bogged down in a battle over who pays for the election and how it will be funded. The French Ambassador says that since the UN demanded the election the UN should pay. The UN has no intention of paying the full bill and the French delayed starting the identification process until it was assured of payment. The Independent Electoral Commission said that the cost of the election would be FCFA 36 billion. This is a problem because the Government is going around with its begging bowl asking for contributions despite the fact of a recent intake of FCFA 57 billion from the sale of its Treasury bonds. Soro, the rebel turned Prime Minister, says he cannot continue the disarmament process until he gets more money. The election process and the disarmament process are turning into a gigantic hustle and shakedown of the international community.
· The checkpoints and barriers which divided North from South have been manned by joint units of both rebels and loyalist soldiers, with the UN peacekeepers out of their frontline positions. However, it is still hard to pass freely (in both the political and economic senses of the word ‘free’) through these barriers and the UN Peacekeepers (e.g. the French Force Licorne) are never far away.
·The reunification of the armies has not been achieved; with a dissonance between the numbers and ranks of the rebel army and the needs and budget of an army at peace. There is great unrest in the barracks and there are constant threats of coups and uprisings; partially fostered by the French peacekeepers.
·The UN and international sanctions against the government being allowed to purchase and resupply the military with new equipment and ammunition has diminished the opportunities for co-operation between the two sides. One has primarily French issue equipment (the result of the Pacte Coloniale) and the other East bloc equipment (the result of the free market). The heavy transport, tanks, fixed and rotary aircraft and APCs are largely those of the peacekeepers, not the rebels or the loyalist troops. This has made logistics run at a snail’s pace and emphasised the power of the peacekeepers over the peace process because they control the vehicle fleet.
·The two major parties, PDCI and RDR, were the major parties of government for years, along with Gbagbo’s FPI. Neither the PDCI nor the RDR were parties to the Ouagadougou Agreement which was agreed among Gbagbo (for the FPI government) Soro, representing the rebels and Blaise Campaore (representing the French). The opposition parties have no real stake in the Ouagadougou Agreement succeeding as it stands as they were not parties to it. They lost members and leaders in massive defections after the agreement. The rebel side as well lost many of its leaders and members after the agreement as Soro, despite his title, represented only a small fraction of the rebel side. He had the support of Blaise Campaore (the Burkinabe facilitator) but of only a limited number of the rebels. They fired at Soro’s his plane as a warning, killing four of his colleagues. They could have killed him as well but made do with a warning.
·This election will have another effect. In addition to the Presidential contest, the country will get the chance, for the first time in eight years, to vote for members of the National Assembly. In many cases the members of that august body are totally out of touch with their constituencies. Many were prevented by the war from even visiting their constituencies. Their job has been a well-paid sinecure for years. Now there will be new people seeking their seats and there is already serious jockeying for candidacies; there is a great need for cash to pursue these efforts. This need for cash has created a nexus of ‘godfathers’ based on ethnicity, regionalism and access to cash flows. All the parties rely on these godfathers. It is they who determine qualifications for office.
·The most problematic of these issues is the notion of ‘cabinet responsibility’. The cabinet was cobbled together after Ouagadougou to enjoin (or ensnare) the several political strands in one Cabinet. This has been, as one might expect, totally unworkable as there is not one policy (other than a prayer to end the heavy rains) to which all parties adhere or agree upon. This has led to paralysis, conflicts and sniping at every initiative, irrespective of its source. Cobras, pythons and mambas can be put into a single pit and called a ‘snake farm’ but is doesn’t mean that they can sleep comfortably with the other snakes in the same pit or relax their guard for an instant. Now there are regular rumours of a Cabinet shakeup in which the snakes will be replaced by ‘technocrats’ before the election. No one is sure if either Gbagbo or Soro actually has the authority to do so.
·The economy continues to boom. Cocoa prices are relatively stable and new licenses have been issued for oil and gas. Many of the French businesses, who beat a hasty retreat in 2004 after the French massacre of unarmed Ivoirians, are now coming back to the country. There have been several delegations of French businessmen (MEDEF) who have come back to view their former fiefdoms. Many have expressed their wish to return to the good old days of pillage and dominance. Others are more restrained and hesitant despite the governments’ predilection for issuing contracts to the French multinationals without bothering with international tenders... There is no real transparency as to where these revenues are going at there appear to be ‘heavy leakages’ in the national revenue stream. Some of this has been addressed in the National Cocoa Scandal...
·Recently President Gbagbo announced a full enquiry into the financial situation of the coffee and cocoa industries. Five Ministers (including the Finance Minister and the Agriculture Minister) will be summoned to testify in front of a Special High Court set up for the purpose. These include two ministers close to the President and from his party. There are floating allegations of sleaze and corruption, including the purchase of a factory in the US. A total of twenty-three top officials were implicated; some of whom languish in MACA Prison. There is more involved than personal gain. Much of the money which was taken from the cocoa and coffee industries went to buy weapons for the government after the 2004 UN embargo on arms. No one is quite sure why Gbagbo chose this moment to instigate these proceedings as his government was the main beneficiaries of the weapons purchases.
·At the same time there has been no such an enquiry into the fraud, corruption and embezzlement in the petroleum industry. This industry thrives on stolen Nigerian crude oil and an extensive black market in ‘recycled’ petroleum products. The case of Trafigura’s alleged dumping of oil waste into Abidjan is a good example. Everyone in the Ivory Coast government and the Port Authority has known that since 1965 there has been a parallel market in petroleum products. The slop tanks of incoming vessels are regularly drained and the water waste disposed of, leaving gasoline or diesel residues which are sold in the black market. There are several companies who specialise in this and several trucking firms who do virtually nothing else.
They are supervised (that is they have to pay) government and port officials for turning a blind eye. When this coalition of bandits grabbed a new kind of oil waste form Trafigura’s ship and tried to process it, they came a cropper in that they couldn’t separate the oil from the water because of a precipitating agent used. They then cut their losses and dumped what they had purloined wherever they thought they could get away with it. The smell was very offensive to many people. The public outrage over this ‘dumping’ by the supposedly qualified agents of the company created such a furore that the company had to ransom its CEO from the local prison with a payment of $200 million. Very little of this windfall has ever been given to the purported ‘victims’ of the waste and this tranche of money is a bone of contention among the political leaders who want their share.
A force de patience et de saindoux, l'éléphant sodomise le pou
The fundamental problem of the Ivory Coast is the overweening presence of the French. The government of the Ivory Coast has never been in charge of its own economic or political destiny.
·The strictures of the Pacte Coloniale required that French control the economies of the African states through the CFA franc. Under the terms of the agreement which set up the BCEAO Bank 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 BCEAO states 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.
·In short, more than 80% of the foreign reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “operations accounts” controlled by the French Treasury. The two CFA banks are African in name, but have no monetary policies of their own. The countries themselves do not know, nor are they told, how much of the pool of foreign reserves held by the French Treasury belongs to them as a group or individually. The earnings of the investment of these funds in the French Treasury pool are supposed to be added to the pool but no accounting is given to either the banks or the countries of the details of any such changes. The limited group of high officials in the French Treasury who have knowledge of the amounts in the “operations accounts”, where these funds are invested; whether there is a profit on these investments; are prohibited from disclosing any of this information to the CFA banks or the central banks of the African states.
·This makes it impossible for African members to regulate their own monetary policies. The most inefficient and wasteful countries are able to use the foreign reserves of the more prudent countries without any meaningful intervention by the wealthier and more successful countries.
·France retained possession of the Ivory Coast’s foreign currency reserves; it controls the strategic raw materials of the country; it stations troops in the country with the right of free passage; it has 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.). France not only sets limits on the imports of a range of items from outside the franc zone but also sets minimum quantities of imports from France. The Ivory Coast governments are window-dressing on continued French rule.
·The government of Sarkozy is little better than that of Chirac. Most of the French actors are the same; they were not replaced by Sarkozy. Sarkozy is Chirac with lubrication. For the people of the Ivory Coast there is no marked change.
·Although there has been an exodus of civil servants to the various parts of the rebel North no effective tax policies are in place there. The rich cocoa lands in the North, the French Army’s gold mine in the North and the various cotton and other enterprises do not pay their way. Their goods are exported abroad without paying national customs and excise taxes; they don’t pay properly for electricity, fuel or water. Political organisations are rudimentary and hospitals, schools and clinics have yet to reopen in large swathes of the North.
·Blaise Campaore is desperate to keep things going. He is deathly afraid that he will join Charles Taylor at The Hague on war crimes. After all, the weapons which were sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast to arm the rebels all came through him and Burkina Faso. They were sent by Chirac and Kaddafi. Taylor’s defence is that if he is on trial Campaore, Chirac and Kaddafi should be with him in the dock.
So, what will the poor people of the Ivory Coast be voting for on November 30th? Without some real reforms in prospect there is little they can change by putting their ‘X’ next to someone’s name. That is the tragedy and disappointment of a rich, cultured and beautiful land.
By Dr. Gary K. Busch
