DR. JEAN PING VISITS COTE D’IVOIRE (Part1)

The interesting nature of humans in making them selves masters of ignorance even at the cost of their lives, is not limited to the current unfortunate citizens of Cote d'Ivoire but to the people of the world at large. Most of us have already taken side with opinions formed on the issue of concern, based on mere hear say. The so called “global media” has now moved from showing us the pictures of cow carcass somewhere in the heart of the Sahara desert or a piece of ice in motion fallen from the large chunk of the Ice Mountains of the Polar region, all now said to be by the mysterious “Global Warming”. This global warming is the only reason for every thing bad. In fact, this impending crisis in Cote d'Ivoire would have been said to be by global warming had the circumstances been slightly different. The global media is now fully aware of how foolish we all are in believing anything, especially when the news is accompanied with motion pictures being run along with commentary that are super imposed on the picture we are seeing. How many of us care to ask our selves whether the picture of violence on our TV screen said to be from the streets of Abidjan of innocent people being attack are not actually by the favourites of the imperialists? How are we sure that the rockets lunched into the USA Embassy in Abidjan are not from the sympathizers of the IMF sponsored candidate as both camps have easy access to such ammunition? Could this not be a desperate ploy by the money bags employees of IMF that are all over the African political facets, to recoup their investment put into buying the freedom of the people, and now being stalemated by the will power of the people in an election? Is this not one of the reasons why in Europe and the USA majority of the people are gainfully employed indirectly by the government while on the land of the Africa Union our implanted government heads by the IMF are daily retrenching those already employed despite that fact that it is just a minority of our population are in the public sector while the masses that are unemployed are being mercilessly burdened with heavy taxations? Does this not explain why our government heads practice the UN and IMF policies, like cows eating grass, with absolute disregard to the feeling of the masses? How are we sure that those we see in the motion pictures carrying out peaceful demonstrations are not from the camp of the disfavoured factions of the IMF and the UN than we are being made to believe? How are we sure that we are getting the true voice of the people of Ivory Coast being expressed when the legitimacy of the sources of information that we are being fed with are questionable? How many of us have a little conscience of saying it, as it must be heard so that people could form more sensible opinion than what is currently the case?

We are now all at the mercy of media and information manipulators. Like in a heavy weight boxing match, Laurent Gbagbo and Alhassan Quattara are having the global media busy with all sorts of corrupted commentaries that is in no doubt in favour of one f the heavy weight fighters while millions of those who are actually far from the source of the news, in the West and other parts of Africa, are exercising their own “mental democratic rights. Interestingly, the democracy of the “international community” is by the manifesto of the western media in which almost every one cast his/her votes by their psychologically in deciding who to back and the same Independent Global Media who as well double up as the International Independent Electoral Commission that declares the result for every one to abide by. In this election people physically do not actually need to vote but just accept the opinion of the West. It is very unfortunate that the poor people on the street of Cote d'Ivoire are now the latest victim of this Global Media Independent Electoral Commission where people's physical votes actually at any particular location does not matter. Here we are with the people on the street dying in the name of the “people's right” of dignity to life while the foreign media and their so called “International Organizations” are twisting the voice of the people into something else thereby exposing certain anomalies of democracy that is only good for colonies.

Our call for democracy, even to the highest pick of the AU (Africa Union) Institution where we in the AGA (Action Group of Africa) believed is the genesis of the abuse of the people's dignity, is the empowerment of the people into those that control the power of shaping their destiny, relatively peacefully with out the use of naked violence and unnecessary external colonial interference. This was echoed in the words of the AU Commission Chairman Dr. Jean Ping at Shanghai Institute of International Studies in China, when he was busy pouring out his memorised versus of the AU vision like a school child reciting a well rehearsed poem that, “the vision of the AU aims at concretizing the dream of an independent Africa that is united and strong; an Africa in a position of comparative advantage vis a vis the rest of mankind and whose concerns should be taken on board. As a matter of fact, we believe in the dignity of the African people who, for a long time, have suffered from colonial domination, injustice and iniquity in the past. All we want is a continent free from want and free `from fear”.

Brother and sisters, a careful analysis of above vision of the AU and practical reflection on the actions of the AU Commission, absolutely exposed the opposite of what is actually happening. The AU Commission is just like the mouth piece and a carbon copy of the UN that is in place to ensure that the people on the land of Africa are doing exactly what the UN, USA and our colonial masters of Europe want us to do. At the slightest opportunity our AU Commission Chairperson himself refer to the Africa Union institution as an “International Organization” that is more interested in the interest of the “International Community” than our own interest on the land of Africa, that sometimes and for some obvious reasons, defer from the interest of the West and the International Community. So rather than having the AU coming up with an Africa position on an African member states concerns, we have the AU staking sides with the so called international Community in promoting global agenda at our cost. In fact everything that is happening in the Cote d'Ivoire exposes this phenomenon than any other as some of us did not start noticing this trend in the Kenyan and the Zimbabwean crisis. The AU is supposed to be seen taking side with African position than that of the EU, UN, USA and IMF. The AU is supposed to be having the first hand information on anything happening on any part of the Union but rather, our union depends largely on third hand information to make judge on us.

It is very obvious that the AU is not equipped enough to have a first hand information from the people because of the various impediments between the people and their Union. On his way to address the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, the AU Commission Chairperson Dr. Jean Ping have to first visit Abuja to meet President Goodluck Jonathan in the name of ECOWAS, to debrief him on exactly what happened in Cote d'Ivoire before meeting the key players in the crisis themselves. Ironically, President Goodluck himself is entangled in exactly the same mess as those in Cote d'Ivoire are doing in manipulating the Nigerian political strata to sustain himself in power come next election against rival parties like former vice president Aliu Aitku and Ibrahim Babangida. Equally, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan in helping Jean Ping just out of bureaucracy and protocol of face saving like the so called ECOWAS meeting that decided in backing the IMF and the UN favorite of the warring faction also depended on the Nigerian High Commission in Abidjan to inform him on what to tell Dr. Jean Ping. Now, God knows who the Nigerian Ambassador in Abidjan will be depending on for their own information as most of these people are also on the pay role of the Europeans and the American CIA. Could it not have been cheaper for both the AU and the ECOWAS to have sent electoral observers to Cote d'Ivoire than to wait until it become inevitable to be sending in military peace keepers? How many electoral observers were sent to the Cote d'Ivoire by the AU and the ECOWAS? Was there any feedback directly from these electoral observers to the AU Chief? What was these feed back since this is the time of truth?

In reality, Dr. Jean Ping as the AU Commission's Chairperson is like the Chief Justice of the AU whose duty is to ensure that every citizen of the 53 AU member states get justice in life. How then can a judge whose sources of information are so corrupted expected to be fair even if such individual want to be just? Is this not the reason why the USA has their CIA and the FBI all across every one of their own member states? Is this not why the highest office of justice on the land of the Union of the People of the American ex-colonies chose to have coined out the concept of democracy that will allow the voice of the people to be heard directly by the president without any form of impediments or distortions, so that the president can be able to make comparison of the information from his informants and the peoples' expression? Is this not the reason why we have manifestoes of office seeking individuals to be presented to the generality of the people so that the citizens will be having an opportunity of advanced information on how communication between them and the one to be elected will be? Is this not the reason why people vote so that they can be able to give the potential highest office holder the opportunity of having an idea of what they want and what they do not like?

The French army has been on the land of Cote d'Ivoire doing exactly what they have done for centuries that the people of Cote d'Ivoire are saying they are no more going to take. What has been the position of the AU on the occupiers whose sole aim in Ivory Coast has been plain regime change at all cost so that the man that will be carrying out their biding will be the one in charge of the nation? Was the dignity of the people in the so called AU vision not flouted at the AU itself with the innocent people being massively disenfranchised in the AU Commission election?

How I wish these deaths on the street of Abidjan of the poor masses also involve the families of the very ones like Alhassan Quarttara and Lauren Gbagbo, whose opinion is the only thing that counts in the emergence of the one who become the “The UN mole of the AU Commission” in our common name? What else should one expects from the CIA sponsored AU Commission officials headed by the Commission Chairperson elected by the back door and supper imposed on us by a corrupted form of “colonial democracy”? What else could be employed in justifying this unnecessary death than the peoples' lack of awareness that their destiny of who they should be voting for as the AU Commission Chairperson to address such situations, lies squarely in their hands? It is even more painful when some of us knew very well that both Alhassan Quarttara and Lauren Gbagbo have already freighted their families to the special forts and mansions in the exclusive suburb of Europe, bought with the people looted money, while they muddle up the remaining peace of the people. Our imaginations even goes far when we think of the real victims as; the children, the women, the aged and the disable whose situation are already beyond bearing, in the already harsh African circumstances.

Alas, generals or their families do not die in wars but they take all the credit of the wars. Rather, it is the poor people that fight and die in wars caused by the generals in their power tousle, which is exactly the very problem “democracy” is in place to address. In other words, since the generals and their families are very few while the victims of the decisions of the generals are the majority, democracy recognize the importance of empowering the majority of the people to be making the final decision by their popular participation and voting for peace or for war. Common sense clearly indicates that when the people are to voting freely without external interference like the Ivorian case, the decision of the majority will always be for peace and prosperity. Of course peace and prosperity means more than money to us which is not the same as most of the CIA implanted persons in our Union think. So denying the people by their majority the right of participating and voting in the AU Commission Chairperson's election, the principle of the AU's vision of peace and prosperity is already corrupted.

Somewhere last week, we witnessed Mr. Tambo Mbeki's disappointing departure of the Ivorian capital, mainly because the real powers behind the warring factions of Cote d'Ivoire refused to acknowledge the authority of Mbeki's boss, the Africa Union Commander In Chief in person of Dr. Jean Ping himself who assumed his position through the back door. Two days ago, the AU Commission Chief was also in Cote d'Ivoire like a wolf in a sheep skin to tell them to obey what exactly the EU, France, UN, USA and IMF are saying. As expected, since those in power of the Ivorian people have started smelling rat from their own AU as the mouth piece of the colonial and the powerful nations, they did not only asked the AU Commander in Chief to leave their country but also ask the Colonial French and the UN forces to leave their land.

In fact what else do you expect from the prior action of the AU in dismissing Ivory Coast from the Union without first exhausting the medium of clearly hearing both sides of the crisis? In dismissing the entire country from the Union dues to the fighting between two small factions, does that mean that the people who have been paying their annual subvention to the Union have also been dismissed? Is this not a clear confirmation that the Union does not recognize the existence of the people as its citizens? So when the Chairman of the Commission in the person of Dr. Jean Ping was talking about the dignity of the people and their freedom from fears as the vision of the Union, that does not actually include the people of the Cote d'Ivoire in general but a few who are Alhassan Quattara and Laurent Gbogba? So because of bad behaviour of these people, the whole member state of the Union is dismissed thereby leaving the Union with 52 instead of 53 member states? What else can the Union be indicating than an expression that being in the AU is a privilege to the citizens of the Union and not actually their right, and that the AU is capable of existing without its member states and their people? So by this situation, could one be concluding that the message the AU is sending to its member states is indirectly saying, “do what ever we in the AU Commission tell you to do as failure to do as we say means giving us to allow the colonial powers to attack you?” What this seems to be saying is that the UN telling the AU what it want the AU to tell its member states to do, mostly toeing the interest of the “west” and failure to do obey now attract a direct action from the “international Community” while the AU Commission Chair person says from the fortress of Addis Ababa “We told you so”. Is this not what the Common Wealth of our colonial masters and the UN does to her member nations too when some few people refuse to toe their colonial lines?

To our historians that still retain the genuine memories of the American Civil War, was that what Abraham Lincoln did when the leaders of some of the US southern colonies decided to disobey their Union even to the extent of threatening to secede? Were the people of the entire states excluded from the USA as solution were being sorted? When things could not work despite all the effort of Abraham Lincoln been exhausted that an open warfare became the last resort, were the people of the state concerned excluded by their Union for the then ex-colonial infiltrators that never stop in their effort to decolonize free people, to have their way? Did the US side with the imperialists of Europe who were also part of the Union's war or rather sided with those of their own citizen despite the bad situation?

Since this phenomenon is a recurring phenomenon in the evolution of the AU, is it not in the best of the Union to start rethinking seriously about the causes of these problems and their practical solutions? Is not out of common sense for the AU to accept the reality that anytime money play a key factor in who becomes the next president of a member nation in which the majority of the people are poor, violence and contesting of results become the order of the day? Are the AU and Chairman Ping now telling us that democracy in our Union is now free for sale to the highest bidder or any one openly backed by the west?

Now that we are having a clear expulsion of the Western forces by the incumbent president of Lauren Gbagbo and here is the UN clearly in defiance of leaving, what will be the position of the Africa Union? On whose side is the AU going to be? Will the AU be telling the UN and the French army to leave Cote d'Ivoire so that the matter will become an internal one in which we could get a form of solution as has been the approach in the recent past in other AU related crisis or the AU is going to sit down for an all out war between the powerful nation and one of her own? Will the AU Commission Chairperson not be winning more confidence of the Gbagbo's regime and that of the generality of the Ivorian people by siding with them in imploring the UN to leave, so that the atmosphere of confidence for a better dialogue could be encouraged? Assuming the majority of the people of Cote d'Ivoire truly are behind Gbagbo as they are making us believe, what will be the attitude of these people to the AU if the UN and their allies get their way like it happened in Iraq? Is our Union going to be an institution of which our mess are cleaned up for us by our colonial masters while we look on after which they the colonial masters then ask us to go one in doing exactly what they wanted us to do forever? How could a people with this kind of mentality ever have a taste of freedom? This is the time to turn our imagination of freedom into something practical and this can only be the case when everyone who believes in freedom joins our call for the popular participation of the masses in the election of the AU Commission Chairperson. Enough of the “back door approach” exploited by the CIAs! Our democracy must be by every one and not by some people, just as our freedom must be by every one in our Union!

Kofi Ali Abdul-Yekin
Chair/Coordinator
AGA (Action Group of Africa)
([email protected])