What lessons can we learn from youth incidents among authorities and pro-Gbagbo activists? For Séverin Kouamé, professor and researcher at the University of Bouaké, the difficulty of organizing a return without skirmishes is a sign of a climate of persistent tensions between the two camps. According to him, it is necessary to solve the real causes of the crisis of confidence.
RFI: How do you analyze the consequences of what happened to this day of Laurent Gbagbo’s return to the reconciliation process?
Séverin Kouamé: This inspires me to two things. The first is that precisely the notion of reconciliation, at least in the Ivorian political game, is part of what I can call political objects that are poorly constructed and with poorly shared understanding. We saw this earlier when the two representatives of the various political parties or the main political parties of the main protagonist talked about reconciliation. Everyone has an idea of who is special, who is specific, who is biased. We can therefore not go to reconciliation without having a common understanding of it.
The other thing is that everything that happened during the day yesterday [jeudi]is symptomatic of a deep crisis of confidence. We must not hide our face: between the various protagonists of the Ivorian crisis, at least what is called the Ivorian crisis, there is a deep crisis of confidence. When we remember the rather harsh words that President Laurent Gbagbo said, at the time during the presidential campaign, about his counterpart [Alassane] Ouattara, treats him like a “liar” when we see that Mr. Ouattara almost never mentioned Mr. Laurent Gbagbod’s name in any public space for the first five years, you see that in this we are in a politics of mistrust, of mutual resentment which, as we can see from what happened yesterday, is symptomatic of the fact that, in addition to declarations of intent , beyond interruptions in reconciliation, there is still a long way to go.
Does this mean that despite several months of negotiations, the ground has not been completely leveled between the two camps, the preparations have not gone where they are supposed to go?
Yes. I believe that in this, everyone was in a form of losing twice, because in truth I am still convinced, without wanting to make any test of intent to the government, that it was not in the interest of public power. a wave of people welcome Laurent Gbagbo. This would prove that, despite these ten years, there has not been a dampening, a dilution of the connection that part of the population would have against him.
So the orders that come aminima, the engine orders that are never clearly established, etc. and that make some of those who will come to support him gassed, brutalized, are the proof that the goal is reached, wave did not come out. Even on this, on the other hand, the Laurent Gbagbo clan was not as transparent in its communication with the government.
Overall, the crisis of confidence from my perspective can be deep. And this is one of the hallmarks of this long crisis that we have been living for almost 30 years, because the truth is that they do not rule between us who have ruled us and those who rule us trust each other.
What are the concrete measures that must be taken in the coming days to clean up this climate?
I think it’s an element that is fundamental. Everything we have experienced for 30 years has a basis: there is a deep crisis surrounding the election competition. On that we have deadlines to come. The various protagonists must sit down to agree on the rules of the election game. First of all, it is.
In addition to the ceremonies that would give us the impression that people love each other, and that these would have made peace with hugs, we must address the deep causes, at the evil root, therefore clean up, create conditions for an approval of the rules of the game for election competition . But also and above all to work so that this imperfection in our political game is corrected. Today we realize that all political rhetoric is completely polarizing about identities, about fears. We have to work on it. There must be some form of regulation of political competition, regulation of political practice for this type of approach to cease.
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