Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

Following the hotel attack in Bamako , the peacekeeping mission is being expanded with the addition of 650 German troops , to join the 1500 French troops already in place. Since it's Thanksgiving and I'm with my family, I won't spend a lot of time writing about this now, but here is an earlier pos t that discusses violence by Islamic Extremists in Africa generally.

Burkina Faso was supposed to have a presidential election in October, and then that happened . After the presidential guard gave up power , a new election date was set: Sunday, November 29. Here are some of the more prominent candidates: Fourteen candidates are vying for the presidency. The most prominent are Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, a former prime minister who split from Mr. Compaoré last year, before the uprising; Zéphirin Diabré, a businessman and former official with the United Nations Development Program; Bénéwendé Stanislas Sankara, an acolyte of Thomas Sankara (no relation), the Marxist former soldier who as president, from 1983 to 1987, changed the country’s name from Upper Volta; and a lawyer, Tahirou Barry.  Diabre  says he will propose a new constitution, will prioritize youth and women, and will leave the issue of former president Blaise Compaore to the justice system. Here is some information about the candidates that were running for president i...

I've been behind on blogging here - I'll make a Thanksgiving resolution to get back to posting daily. One reason I'm behind is I've done a few blog posts for the Monkey Cage, and I spend more time on those posts than I do on my own. Here is a post I did on Cote d'Ivoire's October 25 election. 

I've been behind on blogging here - I'll make a Thanksgiving resolution to get back to posting daily. One reason I'm behind is I've done a few blog posts for the Monkey Cage, and I spend more time on those posts than I do on my own. Here is a piece I did on the Guinea's October 11 election.

Map showing the fullest extent of rebel-held territory in January 2013, before it was re-taken by Malian and French forces. France has given Mali 300 million Euros in aid since France helped the Malian government re-take control of the country in January 2013, and is now promising another 360 million ($408 million) for 2015-2017. This continuation of support follows the advice of Collier and Hoeffler , who argue that post-conflict aid can be helpful in restoring or initiating economic growth, but find that often foreign governments only send aid for the first few years after a conflict ends, and aid becomes more efficacious as the government rebuilds absorptive capacity in the years after the war ends. So I suspect Collier and Hoeffler will cheer France's persistence. On the other hand, whereas Mali tends to get decent marks on democracy scores (such as Polity ), it tends to get mediocre marks for quality of governance , and several studies have found that aid may only be ...

2015 Election Map from the African Research Institute Five ECOWAS countries had presidential elections scheduled for 2015. So far, Togo , Nigeria , and Guinea have held theirs. Cote d'Ivoire has their election scheduled for next week. Burkina Faso was scheduled to have their presidential election on the same day as Guinea (October 11), but then that happened. The election is now rescheduled for Nov. 29.

There is a presidential election next week in Cote d'Ivoire. The previous election, in 2010, was sandwiched between two civil wars - the first civil war was sparked in part by events around the 2000 election and delayed the 2005 election until 2010, and the second civil war was sparked by events around the 2010 election. So political scientists are looking into the origins of these conflicts, to understand why they happened, and predict whether next week's election will be followed by peace or by violence. Hence, it's Cote d'Ivoire Week over at the Monkey Cage (and perhaps the party will continue next week). Yesterday, Beth Elise Whitaker and Koffi P. Charles-Hector Yao-Kouamé wrote a post that focused on the role of anti-immigrant politics, which was the result of a history of immigration (resulting in a large population of immigrants and children of immigrants) and multiparty politics (which motivated politicians to politicize anti-immigrant sentiments): Th...

Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara talks during an interview with Reuters at his office in Abidjan October19, 2015. REUTERS/LUC GNAGO Cote d'Ivoire is holding a presidential election, and incumbent president Ouattara is expected to win his first (and likely only, given the Constitution and his age) re-election. The Monkey Cage has a nice piece today with a convincing explanation for the importance of anti-immigrant politics over the past 20+ years in Cote d'Ivoire. In fact, according to the 2000 Constitution , President Ouattara is not qualified to be president for a number of reasons, including his age and the origins of his parents. In 2004, the legislature changed the rules to enable him and other excluded to candidates to run for president (as part of the peace talks), but these changes were never voted on in a referendum, leading some of his opponents to continue declaring his candidacy invalid. Ouattara, not surprisingly, considers the Constitu...

Conde, pictured at a press conference last August, obtained an absolute majority in the first round of votes despite opposition claims of electoral fraud. Photograph: Cellou Binani/AFP/Getty Images Incumbent president Alpha Condé was declared the winner on Saturday of last Sunday's presidential election with 58% of the vote, enough to avoid a run-off election. Condé was active in the opposition under most if not all of Guinea's authoritarian rulers before he won the country's first democratic election in 2010. In that election, he came in second in the first round, to Cellou Dalein Diallo, but won in the second round. Diallo rejected that election as fraudulent before conceding when the Supreme Court ruled against him. This time, Diallo again rejected the outcome as fraudulent, but declined to formally appeal the result. Instead, he is calling on his supporters to peacefully protest. Observers declared the election transparent and valid, although with numerous logis...

Guinea's electoral commission was criticized for problems with voter registration (BBC) Last Sunday , "Millions of Guineans voted peacefully ... in the West African country's second free election since the West African country's independence from France nearly 60 years ago." Incumbent president Alpha Conde, who won the country's first free election in 2010, was expected by outside observers to win re-election, although perhaps not in the first round. Eight candidates contested the election, which makes winning a majority in the first round a challenge. Conde's main rival is Cellou Dalein Diallo , the candidate of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG). Diallo was prime minister under former president Lansana Conte (who first came to power in a coup in 1984) and aligned himself with the leader of the 2009 coup, Moussa Dadis Camara. Diallo came in first place with 44% in the first round in the 2010 presidential election , but without a maj...

President Muhammadu Buhari addresses members of the National Working Committee during the meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party at the headquarters of the party in Abuja, Nigeria July 3, 2015. REUTERS/AFOLABI SOTUNDE The Economist reports that although Buhari did name an initial list of cabinet ministers by the end of September, as promised, he has not yet named their portfolios, except for oil minister (himself). Nonetheless, there has been a "Buhari effect," as bureaucrats and other officials fearful of his strict standards have improved power supplies, oil refinery production, and diplomatic relations. As an example of his crackdown on corruption, the former oil minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, was arrested in London for money laundering. Reuters reports that Buhari has now submitted a second list of 15 names to the Senate for approval, to satisfy a constitutional requirement that each of the country's 36 states be represented in the Parliam...

The Economist argues that Burkina Faso's coup failed because "power in Burkina Faso is steadily shifting away from the army to civilians." While this is certainly true to a large extent, it doesn't mean that the military has left politics completely. The coup also failed because it was led by one faction in the miltary (the presidential guard) but was not supported by another faction (the regular army). As Landry Signé notes , "the transitional body was a hybrid of civilian and military rule, and not exclusively civilian. The military initially stole the transition after civil society and popular protests drove Compaoré from power, and the military managed to keep considerable power even after the appointment of a civilian president." During the coup, Prime Minister Yacouba Isaac Zida was arrested by the Presidential Guard. Prime Minister Zida himself is a military man, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. So the military still has a fair amount of power...

Reuters : "Suspected Islamist militants from Nigeria's Boko Haram group killed three civilians and a soldier in a double suicide attack across the border in Niger on Sunday, security sources said. Four attackers also died in Niger's southeastern region of Diffa and authorities were searching for two more suspects, a security official said." Reuters : "Militants claiming loyalty to Islamic State said they were behind suicide bombings (on Friday in two suburbs) near the Nigerian capital Abuja which killed at least 15 people, a statement on Twitter said on Sunday." From the map above, this appears to be the first attack in or near Abuja in 2015.  Some earlier and more substantive posts on Boko Haram here , here , and here .

After one prime minister was dismissed the president and another resigned in response to an outcry from parliament, elder statesman Carlos Correia (pictured above) became Prime Minister (all 3 PMs were from the ruling party, the PAIGC). To reduce the instability and potential of internal rebellion, Correia tried to bring the second largest party, the Party of Social Renewal (PRS), into the cabinet. Talks broke down over how many ministries the PRS would receive. The PAIGC has enough seats to approve the cabinet without the PRS (in the 2014 election , PAIGC won 57 of 102 seats with 48% of the vote), but Correia was hoping for a "national unity government" with the PRS, which holds 41 seats.

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari addresses attendees during the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York, September 28, 2015. REUTERS/EDUARDO MUNOZ In July, President Buhari said he would wait until September to appoint cabinet ministers, so that new rules of conduct and good governance could be put into place. Today is the last day of September, and Buhari submitted the names of his nominees today to the senate for approval. From a quick Google search, I'm not sure what the new rules of conduct and good governance are, and whether they've been put into place, except for this: "a directive that all federal revenue-generating institutions, including the opaque state oil company, begin paying their revenues into a single Treasury account instead of a web of largely untracked private bank accounts." The oil industry is probably the main source of corruption in Nigeria, so his reforms in that sector a...

Supporters of President Alassane Ouattara when he arrived in Daloa, Ivory Coast, September 27, 2015. AFP PHOTO / ISSOUF SANOGO Reuters reports that some of Cote d'Ivoire's opposition is still complaining that the Elecotral Commission is biased in favor of the government (President Ouattara is running for his first re-election). Estimates of attendance at an opposition rally today range from 300-700, including 5 of the 10 presidential candidates . The same article mentions that protestors question Ouattara's nationality. Unlike America birthers , these protestors don't necessarily question whether Ouattara was born in Cote d'Ivoire - his Ivoirité is questioned based on the birthplace of his parents. In 1994, an Electoral Code was adopted that required not only the presidential candidate to be born in Cote d'Ivoire, but also BOTH of his or her PARENTS. I'm not sure if it's known where Ouattara was born - he himself was reportedly born in 1942 near ...

Presidential guard soldiers are seen on the grounds of the Laico Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Sept. 20, 2015 VOA reports that the Presidential Guard (RSP) that launched a coup 12 days ago and then stepped down last week in response to pressure from the people, the regular army, and the international community is now refusing to disarm. This is not terribly surprising that the RSP does not want to disarm. It stepped down in exchange for the safety of its members and their families. Protestors are calling for leaders of the coup to be executed. One reason military governments are willing to negotiate their exit, as the RSP did, is because they can enforce conditions such as amnesty for the coup because the military holds weapons. Geddes notes that "Militaries can enforce compliance with amnesties and other deals, but only if they can make credible threats to respond with violence if the new government reneges." If the RSP disarms, it will be relying on the w...

Between holidays and classes starting I haven't had a chance to blog since Tuesday, and a lot has happened in Burkina Faso since then. The coup against the interim government happened on Wednesday, September 16, as the country prepared for elections in October. The day after the coup, my prediction was that "It is unlikely that the military will remain in power for long. ... There will likely be a transition to civilian rule in the not-too-distant future, and elections. The CDP will not likely be excluded from those elections. In fact, parties who attempted to ban the CDP may be banned themselves .... Perhaps the best we can hope for is that the military will negotiate some prerogatives and protections for itself (such as military control over the military budget and amnesty for the events of 1987 and this latest coup) ..." So I was right about the coup not lasting long and the return of elections, but I didn't appreciate at the time the lack of support the presi...

Landry Signé provides his insightful analysis on the Burkina Faso coup in this morning's Monkey Cage  (I added a link to one of my posts that he must have forgot☺): Even if observers in the international community were surprised by what some have called a “ disaster for Africa ,” this unconstitutional seizure of power was predictable , and if it didn’t happen before the elections, it could have happened after the elections. My research suggests this “disaster” is a result of weak horizontal accountability during the transition. Simply put , horizontal accountability is the ability of government institutions to check abuses by other branches of government and a system in which government institutions are independent and no agency or branch becomes too powerful compared to the others. Some may refer to this system as one with “checks and balances.” ... Even before the coup attempt by the presidential guard, the legitimacy and impartiality of the transition was a concern fo...

Source: AFP In my first post on last week's military coup in Burkina Faso, I predicted that "It is unlikely that the military will remain in power for long." However, I'll be the first to admit I had no idea the coup would end the way it seems to be ending. Quick background: President Compaore's 27-year rule ended on Halloween last year in response to street protests when he and his ruling party, the CDP, tried to remove the term-limits so Compaore could run for another term as president. An interim government planned for elections in October 2015, but a new electoral code banned the CDP and its allies from running. The CDP appealed to the ECOWAS Court, and that Court said the ban violated the former ruling party's human rights, but the Burkina Faso Constitutional Court ignored that ruling and enforced the electoral code, banning the CDP. Meanwhile, a commission of the interim government recommended disbanding Compaore's elite presidential gua...

The Economist has a good summary: IN A small African country, soldiers seize the president they are meant to be protecting and dissolve the government. More take control of the TV and radio stations. A burly man in a military uniform issues a statement on TV and radio to explain that for the sake of democracy and the state of the nation, the army has intervened to stop the despotic, immoral government. International outrage follows, as do protests at home. A curfew is imposed; the airport shut down; people shot in the streets. Few are quite sure what is happening. It is clichéd stuff. But it keeps happening, ... On September 17th the drama unfolded in Burkina Faso, a landlocked country of 17m in West Africa. Michel Kafando, the interim president since last October, and several other members of his government, were arrested by the presidential guard. A spokesman, complete with awkward uniform, appeared on television to announce that the “National Council for Democracy” has decid...

From Reuters  last Saturday: West Africa's ECOWAS regional bloc on Saturday extended a security force in Guinea-Bissau into 2016 to help protect state institutions amid a political crisis that has left the country without a government. Senegal President Macky Sall, who heads the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), called the extraordinary summit to discuss a political crisis in coup-prone Guinea-Bissau sparked when President Jose Mario Vaz dismissed the prime minister a month ago. He later replaced him with a new premier but a Supreme Court ruling this week deemed the new appointment unconstitutional and cabinet was dissolved. "Given the fragility of the political situation in the country, the conference decided to extend the mandate of ECOMIB for six months from January to June 2016," ECOWAS said in a statement, referring to its 600-strong force. Mediation efforts by the bloc will continue, it added. The former Portuguese colony has suffered ...

Niger soldiers provide security for an anti-Boko Haram summit in Diffa city, Niger September 3, 2015. REUTERS/WARREN STROBEL Excerpts from Reuters article : The Diffa meeting was a modest success not just for its mutually suspicious tribes but for a small team of fewer than 20 U.S. Special Operations Forces conducting an experiment that is part of President Barack Obama's new counter-terrorism strategy. The soldiers, who encouraged the meeting and helped provide a ring of security, do not go into combat, or even wear uniforms. They are quietly trying to help Niger build a wall against Boko Haram's incursions and its recruitment of Diffa's youth. A Reuters reporter was the first to visit the detachment, which is among about 1,000 U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed across Africa. In Chad, Nigeria, Niger and elsewhere, they are executing Obama's relatively low-risk strategy of countering Islamic extremists by finding local partners willing to fight rat...

Eight candidates  will be on the ballot in Guinea's presidential election on October 11 (7 men and one woman). This is a sharp reduction from the 24 candidates in 2010. Five of the eight, including incumbent Alpha Condé (RPG), contested the 2010 election. Alpha Condé (not to be confused with former president Lansana Conté ), in his first bid for re-election, is the front-runner. His main opposition is Cellou Dalein Diallo , candidate for the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG) party and former prime minister (2004-2006, under former president   Conté ). Diallo came in second place in the 2010 presidential election , with 47% of the vote in the runoff. That election has been described as " controversial ." Another major opposition candidate is Sidya Toure, candidate for Union of Republican Forces (UFR), also a former prime minister (1996-1999, under former president  Conté ). Toure came in 3rd in the 2010 election, with 13% of the vote. ...

(UPDATE: To be clear, I'm not claiming that I predicted with certainty this coup would happen, but I and others noted recently that the interim government was making decisions that increased the risk of a coup.) In July , I noted some similarities between Burkina Faso and Egypt - an uprising against a president who had been in power since the 1980s, followed by talk of putting the former president on trial for treason. Now, another similarity has emerged; just as Egypt's transition to democratic rule was interrupted by a military coup, yesterday there was a military coup against the interim government, which was preparing for elections next month. The coup d'etat should not be a surprise. In their preparations for next month's election, Burkina Faso was excluding the party of former president Compaore and his allies from participating in the election. Political elites don't like to be excluded from elections, and often respond violently. As I wrote in August...

Formation | Create infographics Jeune Afrique has some charts summarizing characteristics of the 10 candidates for president of Cote d'Ivoire (23 of the 33 candidates were invalidated by the Constitutional Court).  8 of 10 are men. 3 of the 10 are in their 70s (including incumbent Ouattara). 7 are Christian and 3 (including Ouattara) are Muslim. Most are from the southern half of the country (not surprising, since most of the population is in the south; "Northerner" Ouattara was born near Yamoussoukro). 4 are members of a political party, 3 are independents, and 3 were members of a political party but left (the PDCI supported Ouattara, leading some members to run independently).  Almost half (4 of 10) have degrees in Economics, including Ouattara and Charles Konan Banny (former Prime Minister and PDCI member). In addition to Charles Konan Banny, Essy Amara and Kouadio Konan Bertin are former PDCI members. Pascal Affi N’Guessan is the candidate of t...

Reuters : Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday rejected a request for the temporary release of former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo weeks before the start of his trial. Gbagbo, 70, is accused of plunging his country into civil war rather than relinquishing power after losing a presidential run-off election in 2010. His trial is due to begin Nov. 10. ... In June, judges confirmed four counts of crimes against humanity against Gbagbo for post-election violence in which around 3,000 people were killed. Read background to Cote d'Ivoire's election  here .

Last month, Guinea Bissau President Jose Mario Vaz dismissed his prime minister, Domingos Simões Pereira, to resolve what was described as a "deepening power struggle." Vaz said his fallout with Pereira stemmed partly from the appointment of a new armed forces chief, a key post in the small nation known as a hub in drug trafficking between South America and Europe. Vaz and Pereira are both members of the ruling party, the PAIGC. When the "unified executive" emerged last year, it was predicted that the political decision process was "likely to run smoothly," but that apparently wasn't the case. President Vaz appointed Baciro Dja to replace Pereira, and Dja was sworn in, but this was against the will of the PAIGC, who renominated the party leader Pereira. A PAIGC party official said the PAIGC "will never accept a constitutional coup d'etat. Neither the party nor the people of Guinea-Bissau will accept the nomination of Baciro Dja....

A man holds a framed portrait of Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari outside the venue of Buhari's inauguration in Abuja May 29, 2015. REUTERS/AKINTUNDE AKINLEYE Nigeria President Buhari won the election against Goodluck Jonathan in large part because of corruption and security concerns. In the 100 days since he took office, Buhari has been focused on fighting Boko Haram (including new leadership for the military) and corruption (including cleaning house in the state oil company). One of his anti-corruption moves was to delay appointing a cabinet until corruption reforms have been put in place. But as this Reuters piece points out, having no cabinet carries costs. Nigeria has not developed a policy response to its economic challenges, including low oil revenues from the oil price crash.

From The Economist : HOW many times can one man die? At least four, in the case of Abubakar Shekau, the slippery leader of Boko Haram. Nigerian security forces celebrated his demise in 2009, 2013 and 2014, only for him to pop up again, disconcertingly animate, on camera. When Chad’s president said in August that his troops had killed Mr Shekau, the jihadist was resurrected once again, this time with a voice recording. “Woe unto liars that had claimed I am dead,” said the voice. “Nobody can kill me.”

Léonce Koné, président du directoire du CDP, ex-parti au pouvoir http://news.aouaga.com/c/6019.html From the African Elections Project blog: OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — A court in Burkina Faso on Saturday rejected the chosen presidential candidate of the former ruling party, prompting threats of a boycott of the vote in October. The presidential and legislative elections scheduled for Oct. 11 are intended to end one year of transitional rule imposed after longtime President Blaise Compaore was ousted in a popular uprising triggered by his attempt to alter rules that would have prevented him from seeking a third term. The candidate list published Saturday included 16 of the 22 proposed candidates. The list is still provisional and appeals can be filed until Sept. 6. Most of the rejected candidates were disqualified for failing to pay the necessary fees.  But Eddie Comboigo, the chosen candidate of Compaore's Congress for Democracy and Progress, was barred under a ...

Former Ivory Coast prime minister Pascal Affi N'Guessan, leader of Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo's party, speaks during an interview with Reuters at his residence in Abidjan August 14, 2015. REUTERS/LUC GNAGO Reuters wrote about Cote d'Ivoire's upcoming election again today.   As expected , President Ouattara's main opposition candidate is Pascal Affi N'Guessan of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), the party of Laurent Gbagbo, which didn't hold an election in 2005 because of the civil war over disenfranchising the north by banning candidates such as Ouattara. In 2010 when the election was finally held, most agree that the FPI attempted to steal the election won by Ouattara (more on that below). Since Ouattara took the presidency in 2011 (after a second civil war caused by Gbagbo and the FPI refusing to recognize Ouattara's electoral victory), the FPI has been boycot ting elections, which has only resul...

A general view of the investiture ceremony of Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara as the presidential candidate of the Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) ruling coalition at Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium in Abidjan April 25, 2015. REUTERS/LUC GNAGO Former Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, who says he was a friend to President Ouattara for over 30 years, isn't feeling so friendly anymore. Banny is not happy that the former ruling party (PDCI) is joining with the president's party (RDR) to support Ouattara's re-election. Banny is joining with other opposition members (including PDCI dissidents and FPI hardliners ) in the National Coalition for Change (CNC) to complain about the insecurity and the electoral commission. The CNC says that insecurity in some parts of Cote d'Ivoire will hampber voting in the October elections, and that the electoral commission's voting registry is biased in favor of the government. The CNC thre...

I updated my post on the Benin election , to add Prime Minister Zinsou to the top of the list, and then I noticed a friend of mine shared a post from Henri N'dah-Sekou  with all 52 candidates. One for every card in the deck! Here's the content from his post (I bolded the names that were in my earlier post): 2016 comme jamais!  Plus de 50 candidats pour la présidentielle. Une vraie brochette. Un pur casse tête pour la CENA.  Un vrai labyrinthe pour les électeurs. Les 15 millions de caution fixés par le code électoral seront ils suffisants pour dissuader certains?  1 Ake Natonde  2 Karimou Chabi Sika  3 Patrice Talon 4 Pascal Irénée Koupaki  5 Abdoulaye Bio Tchane 6 Celestine Zannou  ...