If there is one thing that most scares dictatorships in Africa, it is ELECTIONS! This is a time when they could be called to account, a time that may cost them their eternity in power. This is why, instead of the expected development, the dictators in Africa have developed a real industry of fraud to ward off this deadline, to make it null, better, to simply make it an opportunity for rebirth in eternity.
Finally, their greatest achievement is to make elections a non-event, a tool par excellence of continuity. The victory of dictatorships is therefore to be able, through subliminal or even explicit messages, to inscribe in the collective subconscious the apophthegm of the impossible change through the ballot box.
This stalemate situation leads the less resilient political actors of the opposition to revise their claims, and even often, to negotiate with the authorities… In the absence of CHANGE, the “opponent” is content with his personal change…
Discouraged, the people walk away from the ballot box, convinced that this path has absolutely no exits or, worse still, that it is a process aimed at legitimizing and strengthening the power of the tyrant…
However, the election in a dictatorship is the real atomic weapon, the window of opportunity that remains for the people and the political actors, through which they can make the people’s desire for change grow, create movement, make them waver and doubt power, pushing it to its limits through popular campaign mobilizations, demonstrating their strength, rolling back the dictatorship, obtaining alternation or change. In this order of ideas, the election can be the GOAL, if the opposition manages to force the power to transparency or the acceptance of the verdict of the polls⅞, or the PRETEXT, if the power persists in defrauding.. .
Achieving this requires a lot of militant work. The opposition must reach an optimal size of territorial network or plowing of the political field, following the logic of TOO LARGE, TOO HIGH, TOO BIG, TOO HEAVY TO COLAPSE. Clearly, if the power wants to risk a passage in force, it will have to march on the whole People to do it…
Thus perceived, the revolutionary approach advocated by some should not be opposed to the institutional approach, the two nourish each other, even if the latter seems more controlled.
This presupposes the indexation of both the responsibility of power in the existing chaos and of the opposition, confronted with its weaknesses, its renunciations, its defections, its betrayals. In this order of ideas, logics of the scapegoat, which consist in rejecting most of our own contradictions on the foreigner, as do voices claiming to claim a certain pan-Africanism, are to be avoided.
In short, the future challenge of the opposition is its consolidation, its reinforcement and its full participation in the presidential election. The key is voter registration. Doesn’t the example of GABON tell us that it all started with the elections?
