Review of March 11 death in Ivorian by Ivorian Prime Minister Hamed Bakayoko, unanimously hailed as a man of consensus who is able on the same day to move from one leader of one political sensitivity to another and then to a third of different sensitivity. In a country where biased competition sometimes seems incompatible, isn’t that an essential trait?
It really is one. And that is so much more important, as this country gives the impression of always being torn between hostilities without exit. We just have to regret that we have to wait for men with consensus to disappear, to shed as many tears over the immense loss that their disappearance represents for the nation. It is as if the Ivorians do not even remember that their homeland in the past was itself a nation of consensus. How many Hamed Bakayoko have not yet passed away before these people take the time to honestly ask about the means by which they have so quickly managed to destroy this legacy of consensus spirit that they have received from Félix Houphouët-Boigny?
“The Old Man” was extinct six short years ago when the Ivory Coast experienced the first coup in its history, in 1999. Three years later, an armed uprising broke out that no one would have imagined in this peaceful oasis. And about eight years later, about 3,000 Ivorians perished in a deadly war that the best analysts had not imagined during Houphouët-Boigny’s lifetime.
If the Ivorian political class sees nothing unacceptable in this, all its attempts to convince us of the sincerity of the tears of Hamed Bakayoko will be in vain. It would then be necessary to decide to admit that the men of consensus, with whom they claim to be honored, will have preached in the wilderness, and that the great principles of the “old man’s” political philosophy are indifferent to them.
What are the main principles?
Until the early 1990s, it was Laurent Gbagbo and some of his left-wing comrades who led the struggle to force the one-party regime to decide on a pluralistic democracy. In the past, the government has certainly had its periods of paranoia, its share of more or less real plots and made arrests, sometimes arbitrary. But the Ivory Coast in Houphouët-Boigny, by and large, did not know how to become a violent and bloody dictatorship, like those who suffered from other peoples on the continent.
Even the pleasant Ivorian humor that many appreciate today was born of the ingenuity of these people, from their ability to slide into the small space that power left them, like a breathing valve, to scratching the regime, allusively, without to fear the worst. The most important thing was not to violently attack the head of state.
When Laurent Gbagbo, shortly after La Baule’s speech in 1990, increased the pressure on the regime, Houphouët-Boigny, for fear of an impending end, almost asked to be allowed to organize his exit. If this great leader was able to beg, it is because he was able in all humility to imagine unimaginable concessions, just to avoid setting his country on fire and blood. It is clear that the war in 2011 would never have taken place in “his” Côte d’Ivoire.
Can the death of Hamed Bakayoko unite the nation?
In politics, some Ivorians can just as much be manic, vengeful, as some others refrain from assimilating the difference of belonging to the other. Of course, the current enemies stem from the fact that the Inheritance War in 1993 was experienced by some as a battle to the death. It was of course made without weapons, but how destructive it was!
The relative economic recovery of recent years may have given some impression that the nation has become itself again. But how can we forget the fact that it was enough that the Bédié-Ouattara agreement was broken, that the gaping wounds opened up that everyone pretended to have forgotten. This agreement, previously conceived against Gbagbo, has therefore been replaced by a new one created today between Bédié, Gbagbo and a few others, against Ouattara.
Second Hamed Bakayoko will disappear, and until the last of the men agree that all the tears shed over their remains will not be enough to unite this nation. At least not as long as the agreements are made against one person and not for Côte d’Ivoire.
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