As announced in our previous edition, La Dépêche Afric-Info brings you the second part of this three-part interview granted to it by Mr Candide Azannaï. True to form, the politician passes without complacency to the scanner, the management of the Covid-19, the high cost of living and of course, the Talon governance. The man speaks of "cannibalism" in business, of "unacceptable despotic inaptocracy"... For Azannaï, there is no question of giving a blank check to President Talon "who is in an illegitimate extension of the mandate that 'he received from the people in March 2016 and who ran for 05 years no more'. Read the interview...
La Dépêche-Afric Info: Mr Candide Azannaï. It would be an understatement to say that you have made yourself rare. It's been quite a while since you've been heard from, you who are still quite present on the news. You have become inconspicuous, let alone audible. During this interview, which will be informal and without jargon, It goes without saying that we will ask you to comment on a certain number of questions to which you will not remain insensitive, far from it. Among other things, it will be a question of the governance of Talon and we are in the middle of the second five-year term. What do you think are the positive and negative points of this governance? Mr. Candide Azannaï, try your hand at the exercise.
Candide Azannaï: I would like to greet all those who read and follow you. Some would apparently have wanted every second, to see me intervene, to opine on everything. Yet I am not so silent. Barely a month ago, I reacted against the folkloric deception of the so-called Rupture power, a deception carried by the Mediator of the Republic about the lure that constitutes a new orchestration of a new electoral parody projected for 2023.
In the same vein, I made public my renunciation to take part in the Assizes organized at the end of May by the Catholic Clergy of Benin Republic. You know a little earlier, when this affair of art objects and cultural, even religious objects which are called "royal treasures" but which I do not call royal treasures - these are not, in my understanding, treasures but works of civilization plundered by the so-called European civilizing mission. It is easy to read in the REPORT ON THE RESTITUTIABILITY OF WORKS PILLED DURING COLONIZATION that “… the European nations certainly spared each other, for the time of a century, this kind of outrage. On the other hand, they exported the practice and systematically resorted to it during the wars of conquest and economic influence that they engaged in Asia and Africa from the middle of the 19th century. These works come from the degrading wars of artistic conquest and constitute a barbarity that discredits the European colonizing nations. I said clearly that it was a bluff that hides unacknowledged dividends harmful to the general interest. In reality and by the way, we are forced to undergo a maneuver of diversion which I have likened to a profanatory confiscation of these objects which are not all - in all sincerity - profane objects. Among these objects, there are some that are sacred. For no reason, for no hidden agenda, should these objects be treated as they are, after such a long profane estrangement in space and time due to colonization. In short !
On what you asked as a question worthy of interest speaking of the bumpy leadership obscured by the hubris at the top of which Patrice TALON is at the helm, you have just mentioned if I heard correctly, strengths and weaknesses of his second five-year term and you would like my opinion on this. No, no and no, Talon does not have a second five-year term.
It's a joke when I followed him distract those he thinks are not paying attention by indulging in a ridiculously dubious mix between the notions of second and second in a purposely confused design on the notion of last term.
Remember once and for all that Patrice TALON is in an illegitimate extension of the mandate he received from the people in March 2016 and which ran for 05 years no more. The people of Benin Republic did not grant him any second term, much less any second term. We are in an illegitimate extension of the mandate opened in April 2016 following a battery of violent attacks with cruelty that bloodied and bereaved the people of Benin Republic.
We live under a permanent coup regime. And it is factual. With regard to West African Community law and even African political law, Patrice TALON is in pure illegality. I weigh the words well, there is no second term for Patrice Talon because there was no election worthy of the name before April 2021.
La Dépêche Afric Info: Candide Azannai, turning the page is therefore not on the agenda, to hear you speak?
Candide Azannaï: You cannot hide this reality and no one can hide everything that has happened since the exclusion which had as a vector, the Certificate of conformity that came out of the hat of the Constitutional Court under the leadership of who you know. When there was confiscation of the legislative power consecutive to the political exclusion of all the political Opposition, there was consequently a villainous stoppage of the democratic process. But what commits us, what binds Patrice Talon to the People of Benin Republic, is the democratic commitment resulting from the legacy of the National Conference of February 1990. And there is no positive point because you know, contempt for democracy and denial of the rule of law are disqualifying eliminatory criteria, which discredit the so-called power of rupture and by extension Patrice TALON. When you undermine democracy you are eliminated all the way and ineligible for democratic governance. We need to know what is at stake; what is at stake is neither more nor less democracy. And on that, Patrice TALON made himself seriously useless.
When a President or anyone else comes to power after the oath of Article 53 of the Constitution and paradoxically suddenly, this same person engages a leadership of weakening democracy and manages the country on the basis of exclusion, inexistence of a truly plural and representative parliament, that one is in a sham, in a bastard governance, unacceptable and more serious, becomes illegitimate.
Benin Republic today is political exclusion, the confiscation of legislative power, nocturnal disfigurement and then sectarian tampering with the Constitution that led to the factual privatization of the State. Who can say with pride that Benin Republic has a legitimate parliament? Nobody.
Who can say that Benin Republic is still an admiring democratic example, a model to follow? Nobody. We are no longer a democracy and that is a sad record.
To make fun of us and give themselves a hypocritical conscience, the profiteers of this weakness, the nationals and those who dominate international geopolitics and who take advantage of this degradation hide badly behind the fallacious approximate concept of hybrid democracy, authoritarian democracy.
Patrice TALON has used an incredible process of establishing and exercising personal power, placing him in the same category as African Heads of State who tamper with the constitution and even perpetrators of coups. We are therefore entitled to speak of a democratic deficiency at the head of an unacceptable despotic inaptocracy. Since February 1, 2019, you must perceive the so-called power of rupture as an ineptocracy following a coup in the Republic of Benin.
So they don't have a track record and here's what I can tell you that you have to take for granted. We have no parliament, from the moment there is no parliament there is no democracy. The only requirement...
La Dépêche-Afric Info: This string of grievances is obviously your barometer?
Candide Azannaï: Indeed the only requirement I said a kind of thank you barometer, which deserves a balance sheet; an assessment of democratic governance. On this level, shamefully displays a filthy nullity.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: However, Mr Azannaï, it is a reality today, when we observe around us, that there have nevertheless been infrastructures that have been built, right? Could they not weigh in the balance of considerations as positive points to the credit of this Government?
Candide Azannaï: It is through the governance of democracy that everything will be appreciated because we must not accept that we can kill to make roads, infrastructures under veils of opacity, and omerta. Do you want us to leave to our children and to those who will exercise power later that to make roads you have to kill?
You want us to leave to our children and future leaders that to make schools you have to kill? Should be excluded? Should we take up arms like guerrilla gangs while we were under the oath of Article 53 of a peaceful and consensual Constitution like the one resulting from the National Conference?
I don't think at all that you would conceive that you have to antagonize everyone and then say, that's the condition for doing development? No.
What pseudo-development? Hold this. The so-called power of Rupture is a dictatorial ineptocracy.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: Even if, as you portrayed, this "government is illegitimate" democratically speaking, don't you note infrastructural achievements, as well as some progress in terms of reforms? You don't notice any?
Candide Azannai: Listen! On the question of reforms. There have been no reforms in Benin Republic because, according to the doctrine to talk about reform, there are three levels of preliminary approaches, three things first. In addition to these things, we need a fourth, a sincere evaluation mechanism, a public, objective and credible, not to say independent, evaluation.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: And what do you think these prerequisites are?
Candide Azannaï: It is necessary to take stock of the situation by first inviting the reasons which require a need for reform. The causes that require reform understood here as an improvement project for appropriate solutions. Then you see the possibility, the feasibility in relation to the responsibilities on the one hand and on the other hand in relation to the upheavals likely to result from not taking into account the acquired or pre-existing rights and advantages.
Then comes the implementation which requires the motivation of the actors who will be involved as well as the context which guarantees broad support within the populations. All these things have to be thought about, planned and require that we iron them out beforehand. Reforms cannot be initiated when these things are not assured and the mechanism of evaluation is the use of force and the use of firearms.
When I want to make reforms, I have to know that there are those who support the reforms, those who are commonly called among us the movers, and those who are opposed to the reforms, those who fear, those who are not satisfied, reassured, convinced of the merits of the reforms.
I must not ignore these under the pretext that I have the arms of the Republic and certain dishonest officers of the Command of the Armies as support to impose my absurd daydreams as state reforms. This is the sad reality which unfortunately is imposed on us by TALON and which I condemn without appeal.
When you are a reformer, you must ensure that the advantages of those who support them are advantages compatible with the values and universal principles previously accepted by all. In the same way, those who fear, who are opposed must only lose or be disadvantaged in respect of the same universal principles and values previously admitted by all. A reform that excludes is not a reform; a reform that kills is not a reform.
No President unless he is a medieval monarch can publish his business daydreams in the public agenda of the Republic.
Are there people who really know what we are talking about when it comes to public reforms, state reforms? No, I don't think that around Patrice TALON, anyone gives the impression of it.
There is no reform under TALON. No. And when some think that certain infrastructures can settle the sprains, violations and other reductions or suppressions of universal rights and more serious the savage killing of innocent citizens, I think that we do not negotiate values, we can never negotiate values and that life in all circumstances is sacred and must never cease to be sacred and inviolable.
Values are transcendent to everything. Values and principles are not to be bartered for infrastructure; neither does life. And what infrastructure, if we really want to talk about infrastructure? Those to which we try to refer to seek amnesia for the excesses orchestrated by the so-called power of Rupture are carried out how? At what cost? In what conditions ? In what total omerta? Are these reforms worth selling off Democracy, ruining the rule of law, killing, exile, imprisoning and imprisoning citizens for their opinions?
Go on ! Today who can talk about Benin Republic's indebtedness? Under what conditions are credits and loans made? What is the role of parliament when we have completely excluded this artificial parliament from the prior authorization of debt in the name of the people? It has even been excluded from giving an upstream agreement on these matters, which nevertheless commit current taxpayers and future generations. Pipe!
No, no, no, what happens every day is a dispossession of each Beninese of his rights over the management and the future of the country... We have seen lax practices of the kind in certain countries, especially in the past in certain regions such as South America. The result for these countries was cruel for their populations, for their economies, for their political influence and for their room for maneuver on public action later.
With the so-called power of Rupture, open your eyes, we are in a system of ineptocracy. They are for the most part incapable people and I insist that you beware of the mirages they spread to impress you with artifices aimed at putting the naive among the populations to sleep while waiting for the awakening which will certainly be cruelty disappointing. We are only at the beginning.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: It is an open secret to say that Benin Republic is experiencing difficulties. For some time now, the country has been going through a rather difficult situation which is similar to what some specialists might call a recession. COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and other reasons have been widely cited by the authorities, the rulers to justify what is now recognized as a reality, that is to say the dear life. So Mr. Candide Azannaï, what are your assessments of this situation which further precarious the existence of the average Beninese?
Candide Azannaï: you know when it comes to economics, economics is mathematical. Some when they come to power think that the economy is infinitely elastic. Nope !
Public finances, the economy of a country, the management of public treasuries, of State resources, it's mathematical. Any whimsical deduction for occult purposes, especially diverted to the detriment of the general interest, remains stubborn because it demands compensation that in 90% of cases acrobatics with reality cannot resolve. In down-to-earth reasoning, the traces call out in all cases. When Patrice TALON came, he came on a promise to part with his old business, his previous business. The Constitution also prohibits the President of the Republic from being a direct, related or indirect businessman. What about factually, effectively with Patrice TALON since 2016?
I think we have to audit the conditions themselves, how Patrice TALON's old cases are transferred to others and who are these others and under what conditions?
It will be necessary to audit it, a rigorous and independent audit to understand who are those who manage his affairs, the former affairs of Patrice TALON?
Is this his galaxy of yesteryear, what is called the TALON clan? What are the positions of the members of this galaxy today, especially in the current structuring, configuration of the Patronage? We have to see what the health of these companies was before Patrice TALON took power in 2016 and what is the health of these companies today in terms of volume of profits, shared dividends, turnover...
It is necessary to carry out the audit in all the sectors in relation to the tax orientations, the various conclusions of the awarding of public contracts in open mode or in mutual agreement mode and to see in order to understand that these are not at all the causes that you evoke to validate the high cost of living.
The high cost of living can have one of its social gangrenes there. This audit is a first element that must be questioned and of which we must not accept the abstraction that we are attempting about.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: Candide Azannaï, what is the correlation between the good or bad shape of the Talon Galaxy's business and the economic difficulties that Benin Republic is experiencing?
Candide Azannaï: If these companies are in renewed health, and that at the same time there is a screaming reduction in the business of small and other users and members of the population and employers, it is necessary to mark a reflection on the need to justice and equity in the management of inequalities.
At the end of such an audit, we can ensure that there is no conflict of interest, no insider trading, even less mismanagement at the top of the State. Rumors are coming from wherever paradoxically the gates of the country's most important resources are.
Because democracy is transparency, don't we have the right to question when everyone seems to be crying out for hunger?
When we want to talk about the cost of living situation today or what you report is called recession, difficulties today, there is a 2nd thing that must be seen. What we call cannibalism in business.
Yes, business cannibalism which is defined generally when fellows eat each other, man eats fellow, when businessmen destroy other competitors, other businessmen, destroy their fellows and take advantage of their destruction, we speak of competitive business cannibalism.
So in employers, you will see something that has developed since 2016 called business cannibalism which means that in Beninese employers, the big bosses of employers have been erased, imprisoned, their business destroyed…. Either these bosses have disappeared or they have taken to their heels. I don't want to give names. But in fact, there are figures from the business world who are erased from the ecosystem of Beninese employers.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: You are no doubt alluding, among others, to the businessman and politician, Sébastien Ajavon and others.
Candide Azannaï: Listen to yourself, have your business, you feed maybe 10 people. If we swallow you, we eat you, we swallowed these 10 people as a result. And behind each of these 10 collaborators or employees do you know who and how many Beninese and within the populations are pushed into social distress?
The purchasing power, salaries and sources of income of the 10 once removed weigh on the overall purchasing power of the wage earner as a whole. Each of the employees reduced to unemployment, forced into underemployment causes, you know, a deterioration in purchasing power, an accumulated increase in social, family and emotional anxiety which complicates the very survival of the entire community.
I saw a picture the last time where we showed a nest where two baby birds died, all corpses high up in their desiccated nests. The moral that emerges is that their substance-seeking parents no longer returned to feed them. It's exactly the same thing when we talk about business cannibalism in management. It is not only the rough character of business competition but here as politicians have been excluded from the political elite as much as businessmen have been excluded from the business elite.
This double exclusion which suffocates economic pluralism within the business elite and political pluralism within the political elite indicates one of the reasons for the social suffocation reflected in the high cost of living. This is business cannibalism and this counts as the second point in understanding the dear life in Benin Republic and under the incompetence of the so-called power of rupture.
And a third is the management of bond loans, the governance of debt and loans on behalf of the Beninese state. Debt is not a gift, my dear friend.
With each debt is endorsed a whole load of indebtedness called debt service.
To follow certain declarations of TALON, and of its wake, one has the impression that our country has an economy based on an exuberant resources of the basement, a hyper-modern economy with varied and inexhaustible potentiality in short a technological economic power and financial situation sheltered from setbacks, from any shock that may come from the vagaries and other uncertainties of our time. The reality is quite different and is indeed that of a small economy in a country ranked among the poorest and most indebted, and therefore one of the most fragile economies in the world.
We are an economy that has two essential feet, namely an inextensible taxation and then a suicidal cotton agricultural economy poisoning the land and the health of the populations because of the intensive use of toxic chemical products that are hormone disruptors and potentially carcinogenic. Need I mention the fear that glyphosate alone spreads even in large agricultural economies?
These two evidences clearly reflect the essentially precarious nature of our entire economy in a context of unbridled and poorly assimilated local ultra-liberalism, unfortunately trapped by the apparently unfair competition that certain unavowed particular and private interests deliver to the general interest.
I will have to warn right away that the hypertrophy, stagnation or hypotrophy of GDP projected on the social approach to public governance are not mere incantations.
What the so-called power of Rupture unfortunately resorts to, an incantation of improvement, pure economic and financial sophism to varnish a gnawing corrosion of almost all the pillars of the State...
The so-called power of rupture is in a game that is far from being serene, which begins by running out of steam in the governance of debt and bond loans and consequently the shopping basket. There is a need to question ourselves and of course to demand an audit of this governance of debt and borrowings and other bond issues on the international and other financial markets in order to assess the impact of their magnitude on dear life.
A fourth track is the management of COVID-19 by President TALON; I am not yet talking about COVID-19 itself. The real consequences of COVID-19 itself and the situation between Ukraine, NATO, Russia and others are not yet rife with us on the high cost of living.
At the current pace of things, what will happen to the conjunction of these consequences? So what's going on right now is President TALON's handling of COVID-19.
You know, on March 29, 2020 when President TALON spoke for the first time on the COVID-19 pandemic, something struck everyone, at least me.
It was horror. To listen to him, when he said that we have no money speaking of Benin Republic, to deal with this pandemic while Beninese were facing the said pandemic, that Benin was already counting its dead...
Do you remember that ? He went so far as to say that the people of Benin Republic pay for meals with the money from the day before, something like this that puts our people and our populations completely in disarray, all already deeply destitute.
In reality, purchasing power was already threatened due to the nullity of governance in social matters and the management of solidarity.
TALON knew perfectly well that our populations before the COVID19 pandemic were in the hyper-precariousness left by the previous regime but that, unfortunately, it came to aggravate and make it unsustainable, unlivable. Despite this state of pre-existing social disarray, he had the disapproving coldness to say that what worries him is after COVID-19 because he has no means, no resources even less from the printing press; a sad illustration, I was going to say a sickening admission of inaptocracy.
How to refuse to face the COVID-19 and pretend to face the economic post-COVID-19? Very cruel sorcery would say the other. Remember my disapproval of this March 29, 2020 leak of responsibility by President TALON.
President TALON had no support and solidarity plan for populations in general and those directly exposed to the non-health impact of COVID-19. The only thing that seemed to him the helping priority was the economic post-COVID-19, to put it mildly, the business post-COVID-19...
La Dépêche-Afric Info: Would you have another approach, you, Candide Azannaï?
Candide Azannaï: My approach was quite different. For me, an emergency plan was needed that explores solidarity, control and recovery and which should require a budgetary reorientation, therefore strategic, to be adapted to the context of this pandemic.
My certainty is that we did not create COVID-19 and the world was busy dealing with it because of the interdependence of the general world economy and the particular economy of West Africa with an interesting accent on the international solidarity and accompaniment announced everywhere.
As soon as the possibility of collecting funds in the name of COVID-19 was discovered, they did not hesitate to rush into it. Euro-bonds, they did not hesitate to launch, to take money in the name of COVID-19 when they had no serious plan, anticipated, targeted COVID-19 and sincerely to shelter from unacknowledged gluttony.
Do you know what happened recently with the state structure responsible for auditing public accounts? This structure has made a disturbing public statement about the management of certain COVID19 funds under the transparency requirement involved in official commitments relating to the granting of certain credit facilities by international financial institutions.
This publication of the Court of Auditors of the Supreme Court was made well late. Was this delay due to the procrastination of the dedicated structures of the Government of Patrice TALON to meet the investigation needs of the Court of Auditors?
Ask yourself why the people of the Rupture are quick to extract money in the name of COVID-19 and why they start stuttering out of time when it comes to showing their credentials, justifying the use made of these funds? Remember that since March 29, 2020, I had warned against the possibility of "COVID-19 business" suspecting the risk of diversion of the funds specified therein to other destinations.
Let everyone now appreciate how the Government has brought in people who have competed in quibbles to show that yes, everything is fine, move on.
And curiously the auditors of the Supreme Court circulated! For how long will we circulate like this in this Republic?
Everything is fine, circulating with suspicions of opacity on billions? Billions confused and say circulating after a publication of sworn auditors reporting dissatisfaction about more than 300 billions? And the verifiers circulated! And radio silence!
I told you when I would like to answer your questions, that economics is mathematical. Remove the billions here there will be holes. You must justify these holes. If somehow you don't bring in the billions, the hole is there. We are in what is called in matters of governance, ineptocracy. People who are incapable, lax for the most part, who have no ability to face the challenges that exist there, before us.
So if you understand what is happening on this dear life issue; you are going to see people who ate three times a day and now barely eat once.
There are those for whom eating has become haphazard, a coincidence for many Beninese, who are already getting used to it now, they have tightened their belts so much that they are holding their pants to their bare hips, are they forced to survival resourcefulness.
People get up and know they don't have to eat. And so their organisms are adapting to that. And you will see the consequences on children, on society, on crime. All the peoples who have experienced similar abuses know that in 10, 15 years later we will face the upsurge in crime, social and community mega-disorders, the ruin of values, a damaging loss of bearings. I summarize by saying to question these 4 tracks that I have just mentioned and you will be able to understand why there is an increase in the cost of living.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: However, the Government, through its tour, went into contact with the populations, explaining the ins and outs of this lean period that the country is going through. What do you think ?
Candide Azannaï: You know, I found the so-called Government tour to explain the “expensive life” to the people very funny. It is ridiculous that the ineptocracy clings to COVID-19, the situation in Ukraine and other developments of geopolitical conflicts and strategic power struggles of dominating powers on a global scale in an attempt to absolve its own laxity.
La Dépêche-Afric Info: However, Mr. Azannai, there have nevertheless been certain actions by the Government towards diapers that have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. Recently, when we talk about the effects of the war in Ukraine, for example, the Government has borne certain costs, subsidized basic necessities. You didn't remain ignorant of those actions, did you?
Candide Azannaï: You know, it makes me laugh. My dear journalist, when you need two kilos of flour to make the dough and you bring a small cap, a bottle of alcohol as flour! You know, you won't get the dough or the porridge; you will only have lumps! You will have nothing.
This Government is an expert in what are called trompe-oeil strategies, we communicate on a small aspect that we amplify exaggeratedly. Because we said that we sent money to students who are in Ukraine, what does that solve in the high cost of living at home in Benin?
We can say that we gave money, we subsidized people for COVID19. How many are they? In other words, it's dusting. How many are on how many requests?
And those who took such aid are in what networks? Who are they?
The truth is that the current trend on a global scale recommends higher wages, control of inflation and a consolidation of public expenditure, a renewal of the ethics of public responsibility which will put the gluttony of super-profiteers and private monopolies to allow a better breathing of the general interest.
It is to evade the social virtues of this tendency that we have just mentioned that the power says of the Rupture to initiate this diversion called governmental tour of explanation of the expensive life. A find to maintain and drive social Benin Republic into the depths of precariousness, a cynical exhortation to more belt tightening is this so-called government tour diversion to explain the high cost of living. A serious government does not explain the high cost of living, it anticipates it, prevents it or solves it. The rest is bluff, pipe!
La Dépêche-Afric Info: Thank you, Mr. Candide Azannaï
Candide Azannaï: It is I who thank you.
Interview by "La Dépêche-Afric Info"
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
