In Benin Republic, at least since the success of the Conference of the vital forces of the nation in February 1990, the Catholic Church has never been far from the political debate. If you are over 30 and don't know this, then you have a problem.
For having initiated a Conference on the Electoral code and on the socio-political situation of the country in general, the Catholic Church has suffered a denigration campaign in recent days - this will perhaps continue - from people who have not no interest in us bursting the abscess and who use their usual rags to spread nonsense. The offensive can be summed up in an argument that lacks coherence: the Electoral code is validated by the Constitutional Court and promulgated by the Head of State. Therefore, debate closed. The Church, by placing the law at the center of consultations open to all, is on a mission for the political opposition. The accusation is hammered out by Wilfried Leandre Houngbédji, government spokesperson and very officially Director of the fresh editorial committee of public radio and television. His army of thugs, ready to do any stupid thing for a penny, is heavily involved in carrying and amplifying the charge. It almost goes without saying that the regime that has been vampirizing us for eight years has a horror of democracy and is committed to restoring dark parts of our past that we thought we had resolved. But, with the soiled ink of his battalions of writers, he cannot smear history. The National conference took place, under the aegis of Monsignor Isidore de Souza - Requiescat in pace - from where we resolutely turned the page of dictatorship and just as resolutely opened that of democracy. These facts are indelible.
The Catholic Church of Benin Republic is not free from all faults. We can criticize it, even harshly, without covering her with insults. In 2015, I did it no favors when a letter published in the press, which was attributed to the Episcopal Conference, advised economic operators against being candidates for the 2016 Presidential election. This would not lead to anything good for the country, it asserted in substance. I harshly retorted to her - I didn't need to be filthy - that it was thus advocating a discriminatory electoral process and that it was dangerous that by stirring up fear of the apocalypse, we were sowing the seeds of The opinion that certain citizens, given their status, should be excluded or exclude themselves from the race for the supreme office. My position from before the publication of the said letter to this day has not changed one iota: only the criteria contained in the Constitution of December 11, 1990 prevail. The final decision rests with the voting people.
I thought and wrote that the Episcopal Conference did not have to make this kind of speech in public, that it should be an approach carried out in private towards the potential candidates concerned. And I was right because we knew in the end, from the mouth of the president of the Episcopal Conference himself, that the letter published in the press was a personal inspiration towards the economic operators eligible for President, which was not not intended to be found in the public square. Facebook remembered one of the three texts I had devoted to the subject at the time. I shared it on my wall, from where some Internet users judged, given the current socio-political picture in Benin Republic, that the church was right to sound the alarm. I told them that Patrice Talon is not destroying our nation only because he was an economic operator when he took power. This is perhaps an aggravating circumstance. He leads us into a wall above all because he has no sense of humanity or of the State. I have always emphasized this. It is the characteristic of tyrants to have a background unsuitable for the management of men and the preservation of the general interest, whether they are, at the base, economic operators, soldiers or ordinary civilians.
The Electoral code must be scrutinized outside the parliamentary and political forum, in a broader formal framework where everyone is welcome. It is from this spirit and this imperative that the conference organized by the Catholic Church draws its great importance. You have to have your stomach in your skull not to understand it.
Absolve them, Lord!
By Deo Gratias Kindoho
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
