Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
from Africa News blog:
Lessons for coup makers?
President Barack Obama’s decision to end trade benefits for Guinea, Madagascar and Niger shows some stiffening of Washington’s resolve to act against those seen to be moving in the opposite direction to demands for greater democracy in Africa.
But the fact that new benefits were simultaneously extended to Mauritania may also give a lesson in how would-be coup makers should best behave if they want to get away with it.
In the first three countries, there is no clear idea as to how they will return to a form of government more acceptable in the eyes of Western countries or those of their neighbours.
Guinea and Madagascar in particular both look in real danger of much greater turmoil.
In Mauritania, President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz overthrew an elected president in 2008 - the country’s first freely elected president - but managed to get elections organised and himself voted into office by July, although the ballot was condemned by his opponents.
Perhaps crucially for the Western support, he also swiftly promised to cooperate in fighting al-Qaeda in the Sahara.
Uncertainty over transitions in both Guinea and Madagascar has stoked internal instability as well as costing foreign assistance.
It shows that if you are “strategic” enough (either because of Al qaeda or oil, other natural resources, competition with China), you may get away with it even with questionable elections. Aziz removed a democratically-elected president, held elections which he won and was quickly recognised as the president of Mauritania by the AU and then the EU, and the USA. Would it have been the case without the threat of Al qaeda? The lesson is that not only you need elections, but for them to be quickly accepted, you need something bigger and Aziz played the right card from the beginning (fight against terrorism).