Cock-a-doodle Doo ! Here is an artillery captain who "deserts" an area under jihadist threat for the presidency of Faso.
Everyone in their place and the cows will be well looked after, as the saying goes. True, another adage says that war is too serious a matter to be left to the military alone, but belligerence is after all the business of professionals, those who have opted for the profession of arms. They are recruited, trained and employed there to defend the territorial integrity, the populations, the republican institutions. This is, it seems, why on certain occasions, the Armed Forces parade with all their arsenals to reassure the populations and the institutions of their capacity, their availability, their dedication to the task. “Wars” are even simulated, in times of peace, to test their operability and maintain their strength.
The commando asks in its prayers at all times that God gives it everything that men wish not to have. In return, he only asks for one thing: glory in battle.
It is therefore difficult to accept that soldiers returning from the front line believe that the solution to the war lies with the Presidency. In the cozy presidential chair.
Captain Ibrahima Traoré, 34, is the latest to leave the front line to induct himself. For what efficiency?
The recent history of Africa is full of examples that do not encourage optimism. Before Captain Traoré, it was Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, whose support he would have been last January, then the heartthrob nine months later. The main motive, the security context which would not have evolved in favor of the country's regular forces. Worse, he deteriorated.
But is a period of eight months sufficient to take stock of the actions against a security crisis established for ages? This question raises fears of a scenario of permanent instability or radicalization.
The Malian neighbor is also plunged into a similar crisis. In the meantime, a captain named Amadou Sanogo, who had returned from the front against the Tuareg irredentists of the MNLA, had the idea of remedying the lack of weapons of war by settling in the Koulouba palace, ousting General Amadou Toumani Touré, converted to civilian and almost at the end of his mandate. Was he able to supply the front with adequate armaments before assuming the rank of General? The result on the ground did not reflect an advance by loyalist troops. The same applies to the team of Colonel Assimi Goita, who killed Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, whose recent security record points to a decline, despite the presence of Wagner's mercenaries. Here too, Assimi Goita, an active colonel in the role of deputy, ousted Bah N'Daw, a retired general.
Further on, in Sierra Leone, it was back from the front against the rebellion of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) that Captain Valentine Strasser, 25 years the youngest president in the world at the time, had occupied the post abandoned by Joseph Saidu Momoh, before being expelled four years later (1992-1996) by Julius Maada Bio, his deputy. For almost the same reasons.
Caliph in place of the Caliph, once one has shown the shortcut to access the supreme office with the possibility of a career there and, perhaps, claiming the salaries of former President of the Republic, difficult to close Pandora's box.
By Amègnihoué HOUNDJI
