Libreville, Friday August 25, 2023 (Infos Gabon) – In politics, the ambitions of those who wish to take over the job come up against the determination of those who want to retain the reins of power: it is the one who puts the best chance of his winning side. Nothing is more normal in a democracy.
We are 24 hours away from the triple election (presidential, legislative and local) that Gabon is about to organize. The election, it is said, consists in making a choice in favor of the best between several actors engaged in elective competition.
Being one of the pillars on which democracy is founded, the election should thus be a moment of exchange of ideas in joy, tolerance, in listening to others by seeking the ultimate in different political offers, at the term of which best of all in relation to the quality of his ideas, his social program should prevail.
For a country like Gabon which totals seven (7) presidential contests, that of 2023 being the seventh (7), things should go like clockwork. Since experience makes wise. But unfortunately !
To general astonishment, instead of a calm mixed with serenity or the expression of democratic freedoms constitutionally recognized for all, we are instead witnessing a spectacle of general psychosis on the city worthy of a horror film which arouses curiosity and many questions.
Say goodbye to the scorched earth policy
What makes us understand in reality that from 1990 (year of return to the multiparty system) to the present day, if we can recognize in the country the merit of having organized several electoral cycles, it seems that mentalities have not evolved significantly neither among the political actors nor among the populations.
Whose fault? Who is responsible for the missions of training, transforming, formatting and getting people out of the idea of war to that of simple adversity during election time?
Who would hide behind and who benefits from the climate of tension, invectives or threats? What are the real motivations on the part of the authors of such a fatal strategy of chaos?
This is an opportunity to highlight the role of political parties and their leaders. Do they assume their duty of training vis-à-vis their grassroots activists to edify them on the fundamentals of politics?
It is their job to tell militants what the main objective of a political party is: to do everything to wrest power or to do everything to keep it, it’s heads or tails and it’s according to.
That if the right to alternation is recognized for some, denying others the right to retain power is an act of freedom and an inadmissible denial of democracy between the citizens of the same country. The rights of some end where those of others begin.
It is also within political parties that activists should learn that in the democratic game, it is the rule of the majority which prevails to the detriment of the minority which deserves no less protection.
Alternation at all costs or perpetuation without merit are mutually liberticidal
In this respect and moreover, even in full or in the most advanced democratic system, as if by fate’s irony, the perpetuation of the same regime through several electoral cycles is in the order of the possible in the absence of any cheating.
While accepting alternation as a facet of democracy, nothing and no rule formally establishes or imposes the dictatorship of alternation over the repetitive victory of the same camp if indeed it is true that the latter s turns out to be a formidable machine in the field and gives itself the means and the strategies.
That the political actors of all persuasions do not miss the target. That one and the other put themselves at the height and in a civic and statesman dimension to deliver the right speech to their militants.
The game of musical chairs that we witness elsewhere in the old democracies is not accidental. The passing of the baton between the Republicans and the Democrats in the USA or between the Left and the Right with allies in France, for example, does not come from a spontaneous generation.
It is the duty of political leaders to give the right narrative, to put their blinders on and not let people believe in the myth of a providential man capable of reaching the high office with the wave of a magic wand.
Victory in an election at the top of the state is a huge machine. It is a question of time, of means, of maturation, of the men who work around it, of popular support, of the massive commitment of citizens, of the development of a serious political program or offer and above all of strategies.
In the opinion of an analyst and academic: “Except in exceptional circumstances, human beings are by nature conservative, they often find refuge in their habits and their traditional landmarks. And in politics, he prefers an imperfect but perfectible regime to a leap into nothingness.
Under these conditions, it will take much more than just the label of “consensual candidate” chosen by a frank opposition party to hold its own against the champion of a well-rooted party with militants in the corners and corners of the territory, insists another academic.
No offense to some, on the evening of August 26, much more than the invectives and threats of all kinds, it is the candidate, the political party, the activists and the most well-honed machine that will emerge victorious.
At the end of these electoral contests, let some cultivate dignity in defeat and let others smell humility in victory. In the end, it is Gabon known worldwide as a bastion of peace and its people who will emerge from it.
FIN/INFOSGABON/SM/2023
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