Bitter lessons from Burkina Faso people’s power

At a booze joint in one of the suburbs of Yaounde at the weekend, a friend asked my opinion about the people’s power that toppled Blaise Compare who had sat at the throne as an imperial president of Burkina Faso for only 27 years.

It was a democratic expression. I told my companion, expressing concern that it was just that the army took over instead of installing the legislative leader as interim head of state.

The next question was: Can Cameroonians learn any lesson from that? ”No”, I said without blinking and quickly added: “we are an island of peaceful people, blessed with “apprentice sorcières” who are not as experienced like the wizards of Burkina Faso. And even when your salary is cut, if you are lucky to have a job, you accept it with acclamation and scurry to the nearest bar to have a drink.” I even reminded him how President Ahidjo was once insulted by a peer for ruling drunkards.

The Burkinabes do drink and certainly do not agree with Jacques Chirac’s 1991 quip that Africans needed drinks and “food not democracy.” Africans also need constant democratic change so that sit-tight rulers can avoid the wrath of people’s power as witnessed in Burkina Faso.

The Burkina Faso protest might just be a continuation of the “Arab spring” which saw Muamah Ghaddafi dragged from a tunnel, murdered and his remains splashed on the street like that of an armed robber.

If there is any lesson to be learnt, it is that power does not come from the barrel of the gun as Mao loved to say. It comes from the people and any African leader who wants to become an “imperial president” banking on the support of the gun rather than the ballot must begin to think twice.

Had Compare who murdered his friend, Thomas Sankara, to get the office left power much earlier, he would have been held in high esteem. He has been forced to resign and fled to Ivory Coast where he will remain in exile and who knows? Tomorrow he could be facing charges at the International Criminal Court or even in his own country.

For 27 years, he had taken the people for granted, banking on the army. He wanted to change the constitution knowing that his ruling party had an absolute majority in parliament. But the people from whom power is derived needed democratic change, not food and alcohol which I hear some boozers say they drink to “drown their problems”.

When conventional forms of expressing political dissent in the media or parliament would not work like in Burkina Faso, they turned to civil resistance, beefed-up by opposition party leaders. A peaceful demonstration as exhibited in Burkina Faso is a democratic tool of political and social power where the mechanics of state power such as electoral politics, parliamentary deliberations and executive actions fail to redress the criticism by the masses.

Is there any lesson for sit-tight leaders and their docile food and drink loving populations to learn from Burkina Faso or are they too scared to learn? Postscript: Democracy will provide sufficient food and drinks which I hear some boozers say they drink to “drown their problems”. The only thing that we can fear, is fear itself" - Franklin D. Roosevelt.