President Henri Konan Bédié has left. And the prophets, oracles and eccentrics of all stripes took the opportunity to come out of their lairs. To announce to us that they had prophesied this death for a long time. Because God himself had whispered it in their ears. Ah those dear social networks on which any fool can come and hold forth, even in the most serious moments. Do we really need to have special gifts to predict the imminent death of an 89-year-old man, in a country where life expectancy is barely 50? Announcing the imminent or imminent death of people over 80 does not require special gifts. Especially if the prophecy does not come true, either everyone forgets it, or it is said that God has decided otherwise, and that only his will counts, and that's it. Or, how much does it cost, once the death has been announced, to quickly put your voice on an old video to "prophesy" the great man's imminent death, and put it on social networks, to make people believe that had it been announced months or years earlier? What wouldn't one do to fill his church with suckers in order to pick their pockets. Aren't we in the land of the naive, the crooks and the wacky? Aren't we in the land of madmen who don't know each other?
But this is not enough. Now it is through other videos that we are told that President Bédié was assassinated. Just that. One says he was only 89 years old, while many people live over a hundred. Like Abraham of the Bible for example. So it is totally inconceivable that he leaves so early, at 89 years old. So he can only have been poisoned.
All those who consider themselves to be well-meaning, reasonable people smile at such rantings. The problem is that the number of truly reasonable people is getting dangerously smaller every day in this country. And we no longer really know who is reasonable and who is not. For example, a minister is in essence a reasonable man, in our understanding. But when this minister has in his intimacy so-called pastors who are in reality only big crooks and criminals, can we still believe that this minister is reasonable? Admittedly, I will be told that politics, which always has a dirty, dark side, sometimes requires teaming up with unsavory people. But when you are reasonable, you enter into these kinds of relationships in the greatest secrecy, or you commission other people to do so and to maintain them. We do not appear publicly, when we are responsible for leading a people, with rogues and bandits.
Let us remember all the madness that seized some of our fellow citizens who we thought were very reasonable, during the funeral of DJ Arafat who was still light years away from the size of Bédié. Apparently sensible people came to explain to us learnedly that the artist's funeral was to give rise to a meeting of Freemasons in the basement of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium, and a certain pastor came to tell us that he could raise the dead. Several of us laughed, but many more debated for days whether to leave the body to him to demonstrate what he claimed he could do. Christian masses have been organized in many neighborhoods and parishes to counter the negative vibes of Freemasons. And to top it all off, some children pulled the body out of its grave to make sure maybe the Freemasons hadn't eaten it and replaced it with another body. What country are we in if not the mentally ill?
Bédié's funeral has not yet started. But get ready to hear and see green and unripe ones. We are only at the beginning.
By Venance Konan
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
