Nigeria’s decisive intervention in helping to stop the coup in the Benin Republic was a commendable commitment to saving democracy for them, and, more importantly, for us. I have always taken the side of the argument that Africa’s only option for consolidating democratic rule is to do so without recourse to the military, which is incapable, by its very nature, of deepening democracy and civic culture. Of course, the argument getting louder and louder is that so many so-called democratic regimes in Africa are themselves undermining democratic processes, institutions and culture in their countries. This is true, but the solution lies not in the military but in citizens’ learning to impose will on the regimes responsible for democratic backsliding on the continent. My argument today, however, is that I wish Nigeria and ECOWAS had intervened earlier when the President of Benin, Patrice Talon, was emptying the country’s democracy of its content. Once again, the military’s attempt to intervene was because democratic regression had been engineered by a sitting democratic regime.
The Benin event occurred just over a week after the coup in Guinea-Bissau. The irony could not be deeper. The Bissau coup was organised by former President Umaru Cissoko Embalo himself, who decided to refuse to accept the election result, which showed clearly that he had lost. He was unwilling to hand over power to the legitimate victor of the presidential election, so he chose to engineer a theatrical coup d’état, calling on his faction of the army to take over power in a coup he himself announced. After the coup, there was astonishment around the world as Embalo was holding press conferences and trying to convince the world that a “real” coup had occurred against him. Having played his skit, he took a flight undisturbed by the military to Senegal, then on to Morocco and then the Republic of Congo.
Benin played a key role in the return of democracy to West Africa in 1989/1990 by inventing the Sovereign National Conference, a new social contract for the reconstruction of state and society. Benin was the first Francophone African country to start a peaceful democratization process in the early 1990s. Hitherto, the country had been ruled since 1972 by General Mathieu Kerekou, who, after putting an end to a cycle of chronic instability, proclaimed Marxist-Leninist principles as state ideological policy right from 1974. He convened a National Conference for all stakeholders to sit down and address the country’s problems in February 1990, under the chairmanship of the Catholic cleric, Mgr Isidore de Souza. The first decision of the 500 delegates invited to the Conference, however, was to declare its independence from the government project and proclaim the sovereign character of its decisions over the party-state.
The National Conference in Benin took its inspiration from the “Etats Generaux” that accompanied the French Revolution of 1789, and it immediately galvanized Francophone West Africa. The autocracies in Niger, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali all crumbled as they were forced to accept National Conferences that dissolved their existing power structures and crafted new multiparty democracies. The National Conferences were manifestations of historic moments in which the agency of democratic forces became sufficiently strong to destabilise well-established authoritarian regimes. The central objective of the National Conferences was clear – to dismantle the authoritarian State machine and to broaden citizen participation in the political system, public affairs, to all components of the nation. Since then, the tides have turned, and successive administrations in much of West Africa have engaged in a path of democratic regression and recreated the authoritarian state.
Last Sunday, December 7, early in the morning, the coup attempts in Benin started with an attack at the residence of President Patrice Talon and then an announcement on national television by a military group of the overthrow of the president. Had the coup succeeded, it would have been the sixth in the region in a few years. Why would the military seek to intervene and break the democratic order just four months before a presidential election in a context in which President Talon would not be contesting, and his party had already nominated someone else to contest for the presidency? Note also that the President is considered by many as engaging in good governance and developing the country.
The reality on the ground is that President Patrice Talon has jailed all his political rivals or sent them into exile. He is the sole embodiment of political and economic power in the country. He has used or rather, abused the judicial system to ensure opposition party candidates are banned from participating in the electoral process, and his desire determines all political outcomes in the country. He has invented a “new Beninese democracy” in which the imperative of economic development requires setting aside democratic principles and the rule of law. The new Constitution adopted by the National Assembly on November 15 embodied an alarming concept of a “political truce” which will “stabilise” the country by imposing an extension of tenure for the president from five to seven years.
The main opposition party, Les Democrats, which was banned from earlier elections, has already been banned from next year’s presidential polls. All parties seeking to contest in elections have to get signed support from current elected officials, so the political reality is that no opposition candidates can participate in Benin’s “democracy”. By making opposition politics impossible, President Patrice Talon opened the doors to the military to propose yet another “corrective regime.” Nigeria and ECOWAS watched while President Talon emptied democracy of its content in the Benin Republic. Lessons must be learned in West Africa. Democratic consolidation requires the maintenance of a level playing ground for elections that is bolstered by the rule of law and a justice system that applies the same law to all. What needs to happen is for citizens in Benin to mobilise themselves and insist on their right to vote for candidates of their choice rather than those imposed by President Talon.
