Review of International Affairs: August 2020 IV
- Challenges to Government/State Authority: Theoretical Possibilities
- Mali Malaise
- Belarus on the Knife-Edge
- S. Newspaper Condemns Trump
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
How to Challenge the Government/State? Theory & Practice
In view of recent developments in Mali, West Africa and Belarus in Eastern Europe, it will be useful to examine the various theoretical possibilities of challenging government/state power.
Mutiny: an occasion when a group of people, especially soldiers or sailors, refuses to obey orders and/or attempts to take control from people in authority.
Rebellion: violent action organized by a group of people who are trying to change the political system in their country
Though they belong to the same category, a rebellion can be said to be something bigger than a mutiny. However, a mutiny of Indian soldiers which started in the town of Meerut later erupted into the wide-scale rebellion in northern India, which was later claimed to be the ‘First War of Indian Independence’.
Revolution: a change in the way a country is governed, usually to a different political system and often using violence or war.
On the scale of the range of upheaval, a revolution is right at the top. Examples are our own Revolution of 1950-51 led by King Tribhuwan and the Nepali Congress Party dismantling the century-old Rana regime, the American and French Revolutions.
Coup d’etat: is an illegal, often violent overthrow of an existing government or leader by a small group. Coups are typically conducted by aspiring dictators, military forces, or opposing political factions. Unlike revolutions, coups usually seek only to replace key government personnel rather than forcing sweeping changes in the country’s fundamental social and political order.
The success of the coup depends crucially on the ability of the plotter(s) to secure the support of key military figures, and success in arresting the head of state and/or government.
Failure to achieve these two necessary and sufficient conditions also resulted in the collapse of the attempted coup against President Erdogan of Turkey.
Putsch: taken from the German for an attempt to remove a government by force. It is perhaps more brutal and clumsy than the more elegant coup.
[Cambridge Dictionary]
The first recorded use of the term ‘coup d’etat’ occurred on November 9, 1799, when France was torn apart by the French Revolution. It was used in the sense of ‘blow against the state’. Emmanuel Sieyes was heading the provisional government and wanted to use Napoleon Buonaparte, who had just returned as a triumphant general from conquests in Egypt and Syria, to overthrow the government of the Directorate.
Napoleon went along with the machinations and agreed to ‘the Ancients’ have him appointed provisional Consul with two other individuals.
Napoleon then had a new constitution drafted which granted supreme power to the First Consul. In the next step of his deftly executed ‘ salami tactics’, he himself took upon this high office, and thus achieved his foremost goal through a coup in stages! His proclamation of himself as Emperor of the French was almost melodramatic.
The Nepali Experience
General Jung Bahadur Kunwar, the ‘Rana’ came to power through the bloody Kot Massacre, which was, in fact, a brilliantly executed putsch.
The Shumsher branch of the Rana family achieved prominence by eliminating Jung’s brother Ranaudip Singh Kunwar [vide: Adrian Sever: Nepal Under the Ranas, 1993, p.177].
Dev Shumsher was also forcibly removed from office for being too ‘liberal’ in a well-planned coupled by brother Chandra Shumsher and supported by brothers Bhim and Juddha Shumsher [Sever, op.cit. pp. 233-35].
On December 15, 1960, King Mahendra assumed executive power in what was widely described as a ‘palace revolution’, but was a minutely and superbly planned coup. The significant aspects of the power takeover was first, that the leadership was taken by the head of state against the prime minister; and second that the organizer and executor of the coup were the army chief Nir Shumsher himself.
The coup was a result of a major clash of personalities between King Mahendra [who had a grand vision for his country] and B.P. Koirala [influenced by the Nehruvian ideology of socialist development, later debunked].
As Bhuwan Lal Joshi and Leo E. Rose wrote in their magisterial: “Democratic Innovations in Nepal. A Case Study of Political Acculturation”,1966: “…the December coup represented an authoritarian resolution of the basic conflict between these two antithetical [= mutually opposed, incompatible] by-products of the 1950 revolution.” (p. 392).
Mali Coup or No Coup?
Mali’s Geography
Mali is a landlocked country in West Africa mostly in the Saharan and Sahelian regions, bounded on the north by Algeria, on the east and south by Niger, on the south by Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire, on the south-west by Guinea and Senegal and on the west by Mauritania.
It is largely flat and arid. The Niger River flows through its interior, functioning as the main trading and transport artery. Sections of the river flood periodically, providing needed fertile agricultural soil along its banks [similar to the Nile in Egypt] as well as creating pasture for livestock.
According to the BBC, mutinying soldiers in Mali have detained the country’s president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and prime minister Boubou Cisse’, as well as, other top officials in an apparent coup attempt. They are being held at the Kati military camp, 15 km near the capital Bamako (August 19).
The troops have been disgruntled for some time over pay and other grievances, including the continuing conflict with jihadists.
The mutiny was led by Colonel Malick Diaw, the deputy head of the Kati camp and another commander General Sadio Camara. The mutineers marched on the capital, where countless people had gathered to cheer them and demand the president’s resignation.
The president’s son, the speaker of the National Assembly, the foreign and finance ministers were all reported to be among those detained.
In 2012, the Kati camp had also mutinied because senior army commanders had failed in their leadership to stop jihadists and Tuareg rebels from taking control of northern Mali. The government’s mishandling of the rebellion had led to a coup.
The time around too, the mutiny seems to have morphed into a coup.
Keita was elected in August 2013 following Mali’s last coup in March 2012, which occurred amid a rebellion in the north. He was supported by many international actors, but despite hopes that the political situation would stabilize under him, security worsened, particularly after 2015, when mass violence spread from the north to central Mali. The rot had thus been spreading slowly but certainly and anger was growing.
Keita was elected to a second five-year term in 2018. But his landslide victory came amid a low turnout, which concealed deep political weaknesses that fostered conditions for a coup: scandals, political defeats, security crises and recent mass protests (Oxford Analytica, August 21).
It is unlikely that the international community will insist on Keita’s return [considering his abject failure]. New elections are more probable, but it is uncertain how quickly international pressure will force a transition. Moreover, elections alone have not proved a panacea for eradicating a development country’s social, economic and political ills, if society and leaders are not up to the task.
In the meantime, instability in the country could create opportunities and political footholds for armed insurgents in the north and openings for jihadists to destabilize not only Mali but the region as a whole.
The international community will, therefore, have to consider very carefully before suspending aid and cooperation, including external security deployments, including those of France and the UN.
Current Developments
A visiting delegation of the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) has now confirmed that the junta will release the ousted president and will establish a military-led transitional body to rule for three years (AFP/Agence France Presse, August 24).
The junta wants this transition period to review the foundations of the Malian state. There would be a military president and a government mostly composed of soldiers. [The main question is whether they have the capacity for good governance]. It has vowed to hold elections “within a reasonable time.”
Mali’s jihadist insurgency is already threatening neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso. The regional bloc ECOWAS was, therefore, attempting to help “ensure the immediate return of constitutional order.”
The idea of Keita returning to power has been scuppered by the man himself. According to AFP, he no longer wished to return to the office. The mediation team lead by Nigeria’s former president Goodluck Jonathan returned empty-handed.
Winds of Change in Belarus
In the latest mass demonstration against the Belarusian government this Sunday, more than 150,000 protesters have again rallied to demand the resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko after a highly disputed election. He now finds himself up against a wall.
The army has now been employed, ostensibly to protect national World War II monuments from protesters – a ludicrous and deceitful explanation!
Draped in red-and-white opposition flags [of former Belarus], they descended on Independence Square, chanting slogans against the perceived dictator Lukashenko – something unthinkable just a few months ago.
Authorities have arrested nearly 7,000 people since the demonstrations erupted in the wake of the fraudulent election with protest organizers alleging police brutality and torturing of detainees.
The news of the army deployment has further outraged people. At present, it is not clear whether Lukashenko would order the army to resort to force, and, of course, whether the soldiers would obey orders. A rebellion by the army is only a remote possibility.
The first chinks in the armour of the security forces have now appeared with many police officers quitting: ‘That’s not why we entered the force.’
Lukashenko has now also threatened Belarus’ religious leaders, who had called for restraint by the authorities. The majority of 9.5 million Belarusians are Orthodox, 15 % per cent are Roman Catholic (DW/Deutsche Welle, August 23).
The opposition has now coalesced around the main leader and former presidential candidate SviatlanaTsikhanouskaya in Vilnius, Lithuania. She said Lukashenko would have to leave Belarus sooner or later [no marks for guessing where to!].
External Support for the Opposition
On Friday, the European Union (EU), which had dismissed the election result as fabricated, accused Belarus’ government of intimidating members of a nascent opposition negotiating body called the “Coordinating Council”.
The UN Human Rights office said it was “seriously concerned” about more than 100 people still being detained [including Ms Tsikhanouskaya’s husband], despite releasing several thousand dissidents.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun is slated to visit Lithuania and Russia for talks on Belarus. He is also to meet Ms Tsikhanouskaya. However, don’t expect Trump to undertake anything against his pal Putin.
Following the mass weekend protests, the opposition called for strikes in state-owned companies. If anything, Belarus will suffer the same fate as the erstwhile Soviet Union [of which it still is a mirror-image] – an implosion!
Three decades after forming a mass human chain for their own independence [from Soviet tutelage], Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia did it again, forming an unbroken human train that ran 600 kilometres in the now-famous Baltic Way (DW).
The two main external powers involved – the EU and Russia – are now engaged in a diplomatic tug-of-war. Currently, both are only supplying moral support to the opposition and the Lukashenko regime respectively, but the situation can change for the worse dramatically since Russia perceives Belarus as belonging to its turf or sphere of influence. However, Belarus’ position as a sovereign national state in Eastern Europe can only be guaranteed by a non-aligned role between the EU and Russia.
Washington Post Warns of a Trump Second Term
Together with The New York Times (NYT), The Washington Post (WaPo) belongs to the crème de la crème of American print journalism.
In the 1970s of the last century, two young investigative journalists of The Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were instrumental in exposing the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Four years back, even before the Democrats had nominated their candidate, Hilary Clinton, the Washington Post Editorial Board took the unprecedented step of writing that it ‘could never, under any circumstances, endorse Donald Trump as president.’ He was, the WaPo said: “uniquely unqualified” for the high office of POTUS.
Now, the newspaper is again doing something new for the first time. WaPo will publish a series of editorials on the enormous damage this incumbent president has already caused – and the acute danger he would pose in a second term.
In the first of the series, WaPo explains why it believes a second term could harm America’s experience in democracy beyond repair. It states that Trump’s own negligence, ignorance and malpractice turned what would have been a daunting challenge for any president into a national disaster.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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