President Laurent Gbagbo in an Extended Universe

by Emmanuel Omoh Esiemokhai

Power hallucinates and absolute power hallucinates absolutely. Gbagbo wants all men and women on planet Earth to accept his multiversity theory that he won the recent elections in Ivory Coast. But this is false. He lost.

The observable reality is that, which the United Nations Organisation, the African Union, and the ECOWAS have endorsed.

So, having lost the election, Gbagbo has lost his sovereign immunity. He has committed an internationally wrongful act by asking the United Nations troops to leave. Only the United Nations Security Council has such legal powers under the Charter of the United Nations Organisation.
States have rights and duties. It is the duty of every state to ensure peaceful political change and no Head of State should incite his supporters to engage in conflict that would lead to mindless violence.
Should a civil war take place in Ivory Coast, Gbagbo should be tried at the ICC in the Hague. To usurp political office is tantamount to violating the constitutional requirement for legitimacy.

Unlawful seizure of power by Laurent Gbagbo must attract universal sanctions by UN member states.(1) All member-states of the UN should break diplomatic relations with the Gbagbo ursurpist regime. All Ivorian diplomats should be declared “persona non grata” and be sent back to Ivory Coast.
(2)The most telling sanctions should be imposed on members of the Gbagbo regime. (3)A maritime blockade should be imposed on government goods and service ships, while Ivorian government officials should be denied visas.

The International Community must discourage states that would opt to relate with the Gbagbo regime.
International diplomatic recognition should be given to the Watarra Government as the legitimate Government of Ivory Coast. He should be granted diplomatic privileges and sovereign immunity. Any soldiers in Ivory Coast that violate his person commit treasonable felony.

All diplomatic actions against the Gbagbo regime of usurpation must be in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Practice of 1960, and the relevant sections of the United Nation’s Charter.
All African leaders, who see the Presidency as their birth-right, even when all critical assessments point to their inability to run a modern state, must be told that new measures have been enacted to deal with their vain ambitions to impose their puny mental renditions on their people.

They have not announced their philosophical models for statecraft. Yet, they embrace the totality of everything that exists including all physical matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies and intergalactic wisdom

Most African leaders are propped up by scholars, who are often maltreated by crude, semi-literate political leaders, who subject them to inhuman and degrading treatment.

A Nigerian leader openly declared that his Special advisers should keep their opinion, since he had no need for scholarly advice. The nation suffered inexorably from his illiterate assertions and guess-work.

Political and administrative management of a state has nothing to do with being lucky. It has to do with relevant knowledge, experience acquired through long years of studies, reflection, exposure to relevant literature, writing and political exchanges with ones peers.

Those politicians, who have been making loud noises, putting out slogans, should learn that only political knowledge, at least from the writings of Machiavelli to Marx should be the irreducible minimum to attest to their world-vision. Then, can entrust our destiny to trained intellects, which may have the traits of, and be a conflation of St. Augustine with the Aristotelian doctrine of form and matter
Our political parties match the Leon Trotsky characterisation.” The organization of the party takes the place of the party itself. The Central Committee takes the place of the organization; and finally the dictator takes the place of the Central Committee.”

Without well-organised political parties, which are capable of framing viable societal policies that are implementable, we shall only make haste slowly since the President and his advisers would serve as policy-makers and policy-implementers.

Laurent Gbagbo must learn that nothing is a concept that describes the absence of anything. He must be removed.

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