Earlier in August this year, a Professor of Law, Kais Saied, the Tunisian President, who emerged through a democratic election in 2019, shocked the world by assuming absolute power in a coup manner – firing all executive council members, dissolving the parliament, abolishing the judicial arm of government, suspending the constitution and proclaiming he will be ruling by decree.
For a state where the 2010 Arab spring originated from before leaping to other North African countries, this is not the best of steps to take. Effrontery display of unconstitutional power grab such as this could have easily led to another crisis. It took the radical intervention of opposition parties and civil society coalitions before the Professor of Law appointed a new prime minister to set up a new government directly under his supervision.
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In Mali and Sudan, different interest, lack of cohesion and diverse ideological conviction among the joint interim government comprising military and civilian leaders has been the reason for coup and counter-coup in the two countries as the interim government of military cum civilian leaders especially in Sudan were unable to work together with each faction wanting to take all the power structure without concession to the other party has been the major source of the problem instead of focusing on people’s need.
In September this year, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, led the charge of the military in ousting a democratic structure led by Alpha Conde in Guinea without stating an exact timeline of when new elections will be held.
The irony is that the issues, happening under the previous rulers toppled continue at a sophisticated rate in these countries under the new government who promised reforms. Take for instance, when Doumbouya was sworn in late last month as Interim Head of State, he was totally silent in his speech on when Guinea will return to democratic rule, which was the same mistake made by Alpha Conde who grew intolerant of democratic instruments such as peaceful protest and free and fair election before he altered the constitution to pave way for his third term.
With its 18 months transition period promised gradually coming to an end, pressure has been mounted on Mali by Germany, France and the European Union to conduct a democratic election and put in place democratic institutions. In a clear tactical way of preserving authoritarian illegitimate political power, the West African country is shifting ties to another political blog going by its attempt in linking with Russia-based Wagner Group in bringing 1000 mercenaries to the country, a move which is clearly against the African Union’s Convention for the elimination of mercenaries in Africa, which came in to force in 1985 after it was passed in Libreville in August 1975.
Fundamentally, protecting the ideals of democracy translates to free and fair election, press freedom, and prioritising the citizens’ economic needs leading to minimising unemployment, promoting good governance with unequalled display of transparency, which will entrench trust among the people are all key to averting coup.
The African Union is crucial to making this happen as it needs to be reorganised, initiate sanctions when instruments of democracy are under threat in any member state when it starts to develop and not after everything becomes uncontrollable. The African Union’s ability to make its laws enforceable, supreme and supersede national state laws just like the way European Union is handling ongoing disagreement with Poland over legal supremacy is also significant.
Moshood Olajide, a Policy Development Analyst, can be reached via [email protected]
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