France in Mali: The longue durée of imperial blowback

The present intervention in Mali, however necessary and well-intentioned it is, may produce its own blowback [Reuters]

The current crisis in Mali is a product of French colonialism, and their intervention will sadly create more blowback.

The dispatching of French soldiers to beat back rapidly advancing Salafi militants in northern Mali represents the convergence of multiple circles of blowback from two centuries of French policies in Africa. Some date back to the beginning of the 19th century, others to policies put in place during the last few years. Together, they spell potential disaster for France and the United States (the two primary external Western actors in Mali today), and even more so for Mali and the surrounding countries.

Only two outcomes, together, can prevent the nightmare scenario of a huge failed state in the heart of Africa spreading violence across the continent. First, the French-led assault on the north must manage to force most of the Salafi fighters out of the populated areas presently under their control and install a viable African-led security force that can hold the population centres for several years. If that weren’t difficult enough, French and international diplomats must create space for the establishment of a much more representative and less corrupt Malian government, one which can and will negotiate an equitable resolution to the decades long conflict with the Touareg peoples of the North, whose latest attempt violently to carve out a quasi-independent zone in the north early last year helped create the political and security vacuum so expertly, if ruthlessly, exploited by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM) and its allied radical groups.

The first and largest circle of blowback returns to French colonial policy in North and West Africa, which was responsible for the creation of most of the states that are involved in the present conflict. France began deliberately to colonise large swaths of West Africa at the start of the 19th century, gaining control of what today is Mauritania and Senegal by 1815, followed by the invasion of Algeria in 1830, Tunisia in 1881, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and the French Sudan (which would become Mali) – in the 1890s, Niger in 1903-4 and Morocco in 1912.

Carved from colonialism

It is impossible to know how the map of Africa would have evolved without European colonialism to shape it. What is sure, however, is that the European “scramble for Africa” that dominated the 19th century – and in which local rulers played a willing part whenever it served their interests – ensured that European powers would create the territorial foundation for modern nation-states whose borders bore little correspondence to the ethnic and religious geography of the continent. Mali in particular was composed of several distinct ethnic, linguistic and what today are considered “racial” groups. Its brief and ill-fated union with Senegal at the time of independence in 1960 highlights the artificial foundation of the region’s states and their borders.

The lack of consideration for local ethnic, religious and cultural dynamics and the colonial imperative to arrogate as much territory under one rule as possible created a situation in which states with areas over twice the size of France and population groups which had little historical or cultural reason to live under one sovereignty and had few natural resources of comparative advantages to support themselves, were nevertheless forced to do just that; first, under foreign rule, whose main goal – whatever the “civilising mission” proclaimed by Paris – was to extract as much wealth and resources as possible and enforce control by whatever means necessary, then under postcolonial indigenous governments whose policies towards their people often differed little on the ground from their colonial predecessors.

Indeed, even those countries which secured independence peacefully were structurally deformed by foreign rule and the establishment of states with borders that did not naturally correspond to the political and cultural ecologies of the regions in which they were created. As epitomised by the plight of the Mali’s Touareg communities (who are spread across the Sahel much like Kurds are spread across the countries of the Fertile Crescent), most states in West, North and Central Africa wound up including significant populations who were different from, and thus disadvantaged by, the group who assumed power. At the same time, post-independence governments were riven by corruption and narrow loyalties, with leaders who were most often unwilling to pursue or incapable of pursuing a truly national, democratic vision of development.

In such a situation, religion, which might have played a positive role in shaping morally grounded public spheres and economies, became marginalised from governance, while slowly taking hold in a toxic form among many of the region’s most marginalised peoples.

Supporting the wrong team

If France’s colonial history created the structures in which the present crisis inevitably has unfolded, a more recent set of policies constitutes the second circle of blowback; namely, France’s unreserved support for the Algerian government in its repression of the democratic transition that began in 1988 and was crushed in 1992. As is well known, rather than allow the Islamic Salvation Front – a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired group not that different in its roots and outlook than its Egyptian or Tunisian mainstream Islamist counterparts – to take power after its clear electoral victory in the first round of the 1991-92 parliamentary elections, the Algerian military cancelled the next round and began a crackdown that quickly exploded into a civil war between the military government and radical Islamist groups.

Faced with the choice of allowing a new, Islamist political actor take the reigns of power, France, joined by the US, chose to support the Algerian military, with whom it had retained close relations. In allying with an authoritarian, brutal and corrupt government the French, and the West more broadly, became party to a vicious conflict that saw the emergence of a dangerous terrorist group, the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), quite possibly controlled at least in part by the military itself, and the subsequent bloody decade-long civil war that cost the lives of well over 100,000 civilians.

The GIA in turn was the kernel out of which another group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, and then al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghbrib, emerged. These groups focused their attention on North Africa for much of the last decade, but gradually moved more deeply into the Sahelian regions linking Algeria to Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Morocco.

Had France and the West not given unreserved support to the Algerian military, it is highly unlikely that these groups would have been created, never mind grown to their present position (a similar argument could of course be made about the main branch of al-Qaeda, which is so many ways was a direct product of unceasing US support for some of the most corrupt and brutal regimes in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan).

As in so many other cases, France and its Western allies chose stability over democracy. In so doing it inevitably, if ironically, set the stage for the present chaos in which its troops are being forced to fight.

Supporting the wrong team… again

The third and most recent circle of blowback stems from France’s longstanding support for Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Specifically, French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered strong support for Ben Ali at the start of the crisis, specifically including, as foreign affairs minister Michèle Alliot-Marie described it, “the savoir-faire, recognised throughout the world of [French] security forces in order to settle security situations of this type”. The French president’s words embarrassed his government once the protests picked up steam to the point of creating a “crisis of credibility” that necessitated Sarkozy’s “admission of mistakes” in supporting Ben Ali against the revolutionaries.

So strong was Sarkozy’s embarrassment that when the Libyan crisis erupted, France took the lead in pressing for Western military intervention to force Gaddafi from power in order to absolve itself of its Tunisian sins. Yet it was precisely the launching of NATO’s air war and military support for the Libyan rebels that led to the exodus of well-trained fighters and significant weapons stocks from Libya into Niger, Mali and other parts of the Sahel in the wake of the crumbling of Gaddafi’s state. The chaos and spread of weapons generated by the Libya war put crucial numbers of men and arms into play in northern Mali at a particularly dangerous moment in the country’s history, when long oppressed Touaregs, who’d been recipients of Gaddafi’s largesse in the past (and some of whom in fact fought for Gaddafi), were once again primed to rebel against the central government.

This situation became even more ripe for chaos with the unexpected and apparently unintended military coup against the country’s soon to be retired president, Amadou Toumani Touré, in March, 2012, which created an even bigger power vacuum throughout the country.

The blowback’s blowback

Here we see decades, and indeed centuries, of French and broader European and American policies coming together to produce maximum chaos. This in turn was strengthened by the blowback from longstanding local conflicts, from the hostility of Mali’s military leadership to the extremely poor rank and file conscripts (which prompted the protests that sent the President to flight in March, 2012) to the inability of the broader Touareg rebel movement to set aside its tradition of violent resistance and embrace a younger generation of activists, who were advocating a revolutionary movement that was much closer to the soon to erupt Arab Spring than to the violent insurrection for which Touaregs had long been known. Almost a year later, the army has lost control over the majority of the country, while Touaregs have been largely sidelined from the revolt they started by Salafi groups aligned with al-Qaeda.

What is most interesting in this regard is that the present blowback had significant advance warning and should in fact have been anticipated by French and Western policymakers in the planning of the Libyan war. North Africa experts, such as Sciences Po political scientist Jean-Pierre Filiu, were pointing out already in 2010 that al-Qaeda in the Maghrib and other salafi fighting groups were moving away from their focus on Algeria and towards developing a strategic presence, and even “new theatre” in the Sahel, with the ultimate aim of destabilising those countries.

These jihadis “now represent a serious security threat in northern parts of Mali and Niger”, Filiu explained, because of numerous kidnappings, smuggling and other illicit activities the recruitment of a “new generation” of fighters from the many poor communities of the region. This reality of clearly increased operations by radical Islamist groups in northern Mali, coupled with the increase in Touareg agitation and Gaddafi’s well-known use of various nomadic groups as mercenaries, should have raised loud alarms among French and Western policymakers in the lead up to the decision to enter for Libyan civil war.

Indeed, on the US side, the American Ambassador to Mali warned already in 2004 that Mali is a “remote, tribal and barely governed swath of Africa… a potential new staging ground for religious extremism and terrorism similar to Afghanistan under the Taliban… If Mali goes, the rest goes”. This warning was made just as the US military was deepening its military presence across the continent, culminating in the creation of AFRICOM in 2008.

Given the clear attention being paid to the Sahel in the last decade by French and US policymakers, we can only assume that either they were utterly incompetent in failing to understand the inevitable results of Western military intervention in Libya, or saw that as a win-win situation, providing a new theatre in a strategically rising area of the world in which US, French and Western militaries could become increasingly engaged (and in so doing, keep rivals such as China further at bay).

Either way, just as previous African interventions generated the blowback that helped create the present Malian crisis, the present intervention in Mali, however necessary, well-intentioned and even wished for by the majority of Malians (to the extent the wishes of Malians can even be determined that clearly), will no doubt produce its own blowback, which will claim the lives of many more Africans, French, American and other Western citizens.

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International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO): On the International Situation

The most significant development in the world capitalist economy, since the last meeting of our Conference is undoubtedly the intensification of the symptoms that prove the trend toward a new recession in all fields, after a certain rise in the second quarter of 2009, followed by a period of stagnation. Despite the trend towards a rise in the second quarter, world industrial production shrank 6.6% in 2009 and rose 10% in 2010. The industrial production of June 2010 exceeded its previous level before the crisis of 2008. But starting from the first quarter of 2011, the growth lost momentum and fell to 0.4% in the last quarter of that year. In 2011, world industrial production declined by half (5.4%) compared to the previous year. In the first quarter of 2012, after a weak rise, the growth declined. The growth was 1.8% in the first quarter, 0% in the second and 4% in the last quarter of 20l2. All the data show that, despite fluctuations, a decline persists that began in the first quarter of 2011, which led to zero level in the middle of this year [2012] and is heading for a new period of decline.

Industrial production in the European Union, which is a larger economic power than the U.S.; in Japan, which is third largest world economic power; in India, one of the largest economies in Asia, have had consecutive declines in the third quarter of 2011 and in the first two quarters of 2012 compared to the same period last year. Industrial production in Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, has also entered into decline in the last two quarters. North African countries like Tunisia and Egypt, and other countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Peru, are in similar situations.

The rate of growth of industrial production in China, in the first and second quarters of 2012, was 11.6% and 9.5%, while it was 14.4% in 2010 and 13.8% in 2011. The downward trend continued in July, 9.2% and in August, 8.9%. China, which grew by 12.9% and 12.3% in the crisis years (2008 and 2009), was, along with India, one of the factors that prevented a further sharpening of the crisis and that allowed the world economy to enter into a new period of growth. The situation in that country has changed considerably. Now it is a country that is accumulating stockpiles in the steel industry, which is facing a slowdown in the construction sector, which has important holes in the financial sector. Those countries that saw lower growth rates despite the stimulus measures to revive the domestic market, are now unable to play the same role as before. The industrial production of Mexico and the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), including Russia, continues to grow. However, while the industrial production in the major countries and the volume of international trade are falling, for these countries also, a decrease is expected.

Unlike simple commodity production, a more rapid growth in the production of the means of production, compared to consumer goods, is a condition for expanded reproduction. But with the capitalist mode of production producing for an unknown market, with the sole purpose of obtaining profits, a consistent development of the two sectors is impossible and this is one of the factors that makes crises inevitable. In the last three years, as well as before, these two sectors have not developed consistently. In the first sector, demand has fallen, the volume of growth has fallen, stockpiles are accumulating and capacity utilization has fallen. In 2010 and 2011 the steel industry, an important component of the production of means of production, grew faster than the consumer goods sector. According to data from the World Steel Union, the growth rate in production was 15% in 2010 compared to the previous year, but in 2011 the figure fell to 6.2%. In January raw steel production saw a sharp drop to 8%, and it has stayed at 0.8% in the period from January to May of 2012. In August of 2012 raw steel production fell 1% in relation to 2011. In the same period, raw steel production rose 3.3% in Japan (a significant increase if one takes into account the major fall due to the tsunami) and 2.6% in India. It has fallen by 1.7% in China, 3.8% in the U.S., 4.4% in the EU, 7.1% in Germany, 15.5% in Italy and 3.8% in the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). The iron stockpiles in Chinese ports reached 98.15 million tons (an increase of 2.9%) belonging to the steel complexes. And stockpiles of Chinese coal are at their highest level in the last three years.

In manufacturing, a very important element of the production of the means of production, production and demand have declined in many countries. This decline has been one of the reasons for the cooling of industrial production in Germany, for example. In the capitalist mode of production, the agricultural sector, by its level of development and its technical basis, is always behind industry. Agricultural production is largely affected by the natural conditions, climate changes, droughts, storms and other natural catastrophes. Agricultural production is increasingly under the control of the monopolies and the speculative maneuvers of finance capital. In 2010 world agricultural production, including the production of cereals, has shrunk due to various factors such as bad weather or the expansion of plots reserved for bio-fuel production. On the other hand, in 2011, agricultural production has progressed thanks to better weather conditions, and also to increased demand and higher prices due to speculation. For example, wheat production increased by about 6%.

In 2009 the volume of world trade has declined 12.7%. According to data from the World Trade Organization (WTO), that volume registered a growth of 13.8% in 2010, and only 5% in 2011 (according to figures from the CPL, the growth was 15.2% in 2010, and 5.8% in 2011). The volume of world trade has grown by 0.5% in the final quarter of last year, and by 0.9% and 0.5% in the first and second quarter of 2012 respectively. During the first two months of the third quarter (June and July), the volume of world trade recorded a negative growth of -1.5% and -0.2% compared to the previous months.

World industrial production reached and surpassed the pre-crisis level of 2008, in June 2010, while the volume of international trade did not surpass this until November 2011. If we compare the data of July 2012 with the level reached before the crisis of 2008 (that is, April 2008), we see an increase of 9.5% in world industrial production and an increase of 5% in the total volume of growth in world trade.

The data on the increase of the volume of world trade is one of the most important that shows an evolutionary trend, although it does not exactly reflect the volume of growth of world trade. These data show that for the last three years, the world capitalist production has increased rapidly and that the capitalist world is once again facing the problem of overproduction, which is the source of all its crises. Decreased production, closing or reduction in work capacity of enterprises, rising unemployment and poverty; needs in abundance and the restriction of markets are the inevitable consequences of overproduction. The sharp slowdown in world industrial production has been shown above. The events in North Africa and the austerity measures taken in countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc., are factors that are aggravating this process and its consequences.

Towards a New Financial Crisis

The crisis of 2008 broke out as a financial crisis, at the same time as the crisis deepened in other sectors, such as industry and trade, it developed with contacts in the finance sector with serious consequences for the following period. The most destructive consequences for the monopolies and the eventual collapse of the financial sector were avoided by transferring of billions of dollars into the coffers of the monopolies by the capitalist States. This rescue operation was only possible by accepting a debt to financial markets with very high interest rates, and the issuance of money into the markets. The end result is an extreme State debt, an increase in the debt and interest burden, a rise in the price of gold and the loss of value (devaluation) of almost all currencies.

Countries at different levels have entered a vicious circle that has elements of new currency and financial crises, in which they can finance their budget deficit, their debts and interests, having to borrow again. The capitalist world began a period of growth starting in the second quarter of 2009, with the weight inherited from the 2008 crisis. However, this period of growth has enabled recipient countries to breathe a little, turn the wheel that was on the verge of suffocating them. The growth of the world economy stopped and even lowered the price of gold for a moment. In some countries, such as China that had a significant growth rate, the ratio of the public debt to GDP decreased. But in other countries, such as Japan and the U.S., a substantial debt has continued, even during the period of growth of the capitalist world economy. The U.S. public debt represents the sum of $16 billion (the debt of Germany, which grew until the second half of this year, is 8 billion). Other capitalist countries are in a similar situation. The increasing debt is almost the condition of financial sustainability and economic growth. And this is the path that is leading directly to a new financial crisis that may profoundly affect all sectors of the economy.

The highly indebted countries have not been able to achieve a period of growth after the financial crisis and the fall in world industrial production that took place between the second quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009; this period has led to a financial crisis that has affected the other sectors of the economy that has led them to bankruptcy. The first example of this process was in Greece, where the weakness was such that the industry, very weak, was largely liquidated when it joined the EU. After the 2008 crisis, in 2009, the economy of this country did not grow, and by the end of the year it was on the verge of bankruptcy. This country, followed by others such as Portugal, Spain, Hungary, etc., has not been able to get out of the crisis and stagnation. However, important differences should be noted in its debt in relation to the GDP.

Austerity measures never seen before, except in times of war or crisis as deep as 1929, have been imposed on the indebted countries. The result of these measures has been to impoverish the people, destroy the economy and reduce the internal market and foreign trade. These austerity plans have been applied (despite the opposition and struggle of the working class and peoples) under the control of the creditor imperialist powers, the international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and European Union, and above all with the support of the collaborator monopoly bourgeoisie and its representatives, these enemies of the people. They have transferred billions of dollars to foreign banks, completely betraying the national interests. The national pride of the people, their right to sovereignty and independence have been trampled upon. A country like Britain that had a strong financial sector, but since mid-2011 has seen its industrial production and its economy reduced, has been forced to march along with the countries implementing austerity measures.

The significant decrease in the volume of growth of world industrial production, which began in the second quarter of 2011, is developing the elements of a new international financial crisis and is contributing to the degradation of the situation of the highly indebted countries. They failed to enter a period of growth parallel to the process of growth of the world capitalist economy following the crisis of 2008-2009. While the debate over the future of the Euro and the European Union is sharpening, the communiqués on the economic trends of the advanced capitalist countries and the indebted countries have sown confusion in the stock markets, barometers of the capitalist economy. Although world industrial and agricultural production and the volume of international -trade have exceeded the highest level before the crisis of 2008, the indices of the most influential stock markets remain below that level.

Although we are not yet experiencing the outbreak of a financial crisis of major proportions, everything makes it appear that the process is advancing towards such an eventuality. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank (FED) has announced that it will not raise interest rates and that it will start a process of purchasing bonds for an amount of $2,000 billion dollars, at the rate of $40 billion per month. Japan has announced a similar measure and has begun a program of buying bonds to the tune of $695 billion.

Germany has had to relax its rigid policy towards the indebted countries and the European fund for the intervention in countries facing difficulties has increased. China, along with measures of revival that it has already applied, announced a new investment package to renovate its infrastructure. The price of gold is rising again. In 2008, the intense intervention of the capitalist States began after the outbreak of the crisis. Now, however, the capitalist States have gone into action before the shocks and bankruptcies at the same level as in 2008 start in the major capitalist countries and worldwide. However, these interventions, which can have some influence on the process of development, cannot change the orientation and the inevitable outcome.

The Sharpening of the Inter-Imperialist Contradictions and the Growing Danger of Conflicts

Uneven, unbalanced development is the absolute law of capitalist development. This process after the crisis of 2008 was not balanced, it deepened the antagonistic contradictions in the evolution and development of the relations between sectors, countries, regions, production and markets, etc. The industrial production of the advanced capitalist countries, including the U.S. and Japan, except Germany (ignoring the high level of 2008), did not reach the level of 2005. Germany, which has exceeded the pre-crisis level and has had a growth in industrial production of 11.5% in 2010 and 9% in 2011, has consolidated its position within the European Union and the Euro zone. Without separating itself from the bloc led by the United States, it has penetrated into new markets, new fields of investment, sources of raw materials, basing itself on its economic and financial strength, and above all, on its technical superiority in the industry of machine construction.

As in previous years, China, both because of its industrial production and its economy in general, was the country that had the most significant growth among major economies. It has modernized and increased the technical basis of its industry, and it continues to reduce the difference in its level of development with the other imperialist powers. Russia is going through a similar process. For the United States and its allies, these two countries, one considered as a vast market and production area with a trained and cheap work force, and the other a solid country, appear today as their main rivals to fight against.

The inevitable result of the change in the balance of power is the great demand for a piece of the pie by the emerging forces, using all means to get it and a new redivision of the world according the new balance of power. The recent development of the world economy is another factor that exacerbates the contradictions and the struggles among the major imperialist powers. Last year in the Middle East, in Africa and the whole world, the rivalry and struggle to expand their sphere of influence has accelerated. The production of weapons, the arms race is intensifying. China and Russia have renewed the technical basis of their arms industry. According to a report by the Congress of the United States, arms sales by these countries have tripled in 2011.

China, which increasingly needs more raw materials, energy and fields of investment for its growing economy, and Russia, which is slowly recovering, are intensifying their expansionist desires and their efforts to get their piece of the pie. Therefore, it is a top priority for the U.S. and its allies to prevent China, a young imperialist power in full development, and Russia, from achieving new markets in the field of energy and raw materials. When the Obama administration states that beginning next year the priority strategic objective for the United States will be Asia, and that the deployment of the U.S. military will be renewed according to the new situation, this is merely affirming that reality. The crisis of the archipelagos shows the level of tension between Japan and China; Japan has declared its intention to improve its military capability. The military maneuvers in the region have intensified.

The consequences of the change in the balance of power in the world have been clearly visible since last year. Russia and China were forced to accept Western imperialist intervention in Libya, even though that intervention was contrary to their interests. The intervention ended with the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, the near collapse of the country, the destruction of its economy, the degradation of working and living conditions, the transfer of the country’s wealth into the hands of the Western imperialist States, etc. Russia and China lost a good part of their positions, including their oil agreements. After the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Mali has been dragged into war and divided. But the main objective is Syria. The attempts by the Western imperialist powers to topple the Syrian regime and put in a puppet government to fully control the country are intensifying. The United States and its allies have mobilized all their forces within Syria and outside of it in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They are stirring up the religious contradictions, they use and manipulate the popular discontent towards the regime and they try to prepare the ground for a military intervention as in Libya. Meanwhile Russia is arming Syria, strengthening its military base located in that country and sending more warships to the Mediterranean.

To bring down the Syrian regime, put in place a puppet government, dominate the oil-rich Middle East, control the eastern Mediterranean, block the expansion of China and Russia in the region and expel them as they did in Libya, to encircle Iran, weaken its influence and liquidate its closest allies, are very important objectives. Syria is the only country in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean where Russia has a military base. This small country has become a place of intense struggle between Russia and China on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. The Middle East is a powder keg on the verge of religious conflicts.

Contrary to what they did in Libya, Russia and China are opposing a military intervention that would alter the balance in the Middle East and result in the domination of the United States and its allies over Syria. But they have left the door open for a possible compromise that would guarantee their interests and renew the Syrian regime which is having more and more difficulties to survive.

As the case of Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Libya show, the imperialist interventions that have had the support of the liberal “defenders” of freedom and democracy, of the pseudo-socialist parties that emerged from the former revisionist parties, have resulted in increased military budgets at the expense of the workers, in the destruction of the productive forces of those countries, in many disasters, the impoverishment and decline in all social aspects. The aspiration of the peoples for the right to sovereignty and national independence, democracy and freedom has never been the concern of the occupiers. Their objective was to further prolong their system maintained by the defeat inflicted on the working class in the middle of the last century, a defeat that guaranteed their super-profits, the expansion of their spheres of influence and the weakening of their rivals. The imperialist powers, which are using all means to achieve this goal, do not lack in demagoguery and low maneuvers to disorient the people’s anger.

Now a period of sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions is beginning, which economic-financial and political-military interventions will multiply. It is increasingly important to fight against such intervention, to develop the united fight of the workers and peoples, in both the advanced and backward countries,.

Organize the Resistance of the Workers in the New Stormy Period

The army of unemployed is growing on the world level, especially in countries in total-debt crisis, in the countries in which the economy is declining, stagnating or is in crisis. In Greece and Spain, unemployment has reached 25%. In these countries, unemployment among the youths, including college graduates, reached 50%. In the Euro zone in the second quarter of 2012, the level of unemployment reached 11.2%, according to official figures. In countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, where manufacturing has fallen from 9.6% to 7.5% in the first quarter of this year (2012), the number of unemployed continues to grow. In South Africa, the most developed country on the continent, the unemployment rate exceeds 25%.

In the current period, in almost all fields, from education to health care, drastic measures have been taken, the retirement age has been delayed and pensions have fallen. The gains of the working class worldwide are targeted for cuts or elimination. While direct taxes on the workers are increasing, no measures are taken to disturb the local and international monopolies, when even within the framework of this system one could increase taxes on the banks and the local and foreign monopolies. Wages continue to fall, etc. Many countries are suffering from a process of absolute impoverishment.

In recent years practices have been imposed worldwide such as sub-contracting labor, precarious and part-time work, an increase in the age for retirement, etc. In Germany, for example, one of the most developed countries in the world that has had significant growth rates in industrial production, according to the Federal Administration of Statistics, 15.6% of the population lives below the poverty line, a figure that rises to 26% among the immigrant population.

Last year, on a world scale and in each country, the workers and peoples movement has developed with various demands, in different forms and also at different levels. The struggles carried out in those countries with a “debt crisis” have been outstanding for their broad social base, for their responses and the experiences gained. The miners’ strike in South Africa, the youth movement and the strikes in Chile, the popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt, etc. are powerful examples of the workers and peoples struggles.

Starting with Greece, Spain and Italy, in various countries with a “debt crisis,” strikes, general strikes and huge demonstrations have taken place. In Greece and Spain, hundreds of thousands of people have expressed their anger in front of the parliaments on the days when these were voting for austerity measures. But the workers and peoples movement, despite some more advanced attempts, has remained within the framework of peaceful demonstrations, general strikes of one or two days and limited resistance. The strikes of long duration, the resistance or occupation of factories, have been limited to one enterprise or one sector.

The austerity measures have affected not only the proletariat and semi-proletarian masses of the cities and countryside; they have also affected the petty bourgeoisie and non-monopoly bourgeois strata. Even the less dynamic strata, the traditional base of the bourgeois parties, have been mobilized given the current situation. The social base of the struggle against the bourgeoisie in Power and against imperialism has expanded, to the point where in some dependent countries the mobilization has taken the character of a movement of the whole nation, except for a handful of monopolists. The conditions are maturing for the working class and its revolutionary parties, as representatives and the vanguard of the nation, to decide to organize and advance the movement and the united front of the people.

But despite the great movement, the groups of international finance capital and the local monopoly bourgeoisies have not given in (except in the recent delay of the austerity measures in Portugal). They have decided to implement these measures even at the cost of demeaning the image of the parliaments and weakening their social base. However, the masses are realizing through their own experience the impossibility of repelling the attacks with one or two day strikes or through peaceful demonstrations. Sharper forms of struggle and unlimited general strike are beginning to be considered by the more advanced strata.

It is clear that the bourgeoisie in Power, with their hostile character towards the people, is assuming a position of national betrayal. The traditional parties of the bourgeoisie and parliaments have lost credibility and the mass support for those parties is weakening (especially toward those in government that are implementing austerity measures). The social basis of monopoly capital is weakening. Among the masses who have felt their national pride hurt by the imperialists, the discontent, anger and will to struggle against the major imperialist powers, beginning with the United States and Germany, against institutions like the IMF or the EU, and against the local monopoly bourgeoisie that is collaborating with them, is developing.

The trade union bureaucracy and reformist parties and social trends are following a backward line of “least resistance,” not only in their forms of organization and struggle, but also at the level of political demands and platform. Clearly, this attitude is contributing to weakening their influence among the workers. The attacks and harshness of the social conditions are also affecting the lower strata of the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy and are sharpening the contradictions within their ranks.

The struggles in the countries with “debt crisis” are being developed on a program of protest against the bourgeois governments and parties, against institutions such as the IMF and the EU that are imposing draconian measures and they are demanding their withdrawal. At first this was natural and understandable in the context of a spontaneous movement. But the inability to go beyond those narrow limits is one of the major weaknesses of the movement. This weakness can be overcome with the work of agitation that shows the masses the way out of this difficult situation in which the people and the country find themselves, denouncing the social forces that are an obstacle to that way out. This work of agitation is reinforced by putting forward appropriate demands, slogans and forms of struggle among the masses.

Especially in Greece, certain small groups (that also have weaknesses) have proposed relatively advanced demands and platforms. But the forces capable of influencing the movement are not even concerned with organizing the work necessary to promote the fight on all fronts. The absence or great weakness of a revolutionary class party, has been felt strongly, as it cannot influence the movement.

Linked to the evolution of the world economy, the period that is beginning will be one of further degradation of the living and working conditions for the workers and peoples, a period of intense economic and political attacks, of discontent, anger and militancy among workers, as well as sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions and conflicts. We must draw lessons and conclusions from the recent developments and the historical experience of the working class and peoples; we must advance, renewing our work and reorganizing our parties.

Tunisia, November 2012

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Communist Party of the Workers of France: No to French military intervention in Mali, No to the “sacred union” to support the war!

Position of January 12

The French government has decided to send French troops to Mali.

After the Ivory Coast and Libya, now it is Mali. This is a decision that involves France in a war in a former French colony.

This option was the only one that has been used since northern Mali has been in the hands of armed Islamist groups.

Since the beginning, [French President] Francois Holland asked the UN to give the green light to an international military intervention, in which the French General Staff and diplomacy would organize the concrete arrangements.

Men like Ouattara, put in place in the Ivory Coast by military intervention in which France played the lead role, Compaore, the head of Burkina Faso, who has continued to serve the interests of French imperialism in the region, regardless of the government in Paris, or Yayi Boni, an autocrat in Benin, serve as an “African” screen for this military intervention. Who can believe that ECOWAS would be able to set up a military force independent of the French army? On the contrary, it is clear today that the whole of the French military deployed in Africa has been mobilized for this intervention.

The justification for this French military intervention is the fight against armed Islamist groups who control part of the territory of Mali. They threaten the integrity of Mali and carry out a reign of terror in the areas they control. But their presence and the ease with which they are deployed reflect the existence of profound social, economic and political problems that the ruling regimes in Mali have not resolved, when they are not aggravated by their management of the country. This means that a military solution, let alone a foreign military intervention, will not resolve any of these problems, quite the contrary.

The Malian forces have denounced this situation and have from the beginning rejected a foreign military intervention; they stated that the question of the territorial integrity of Mali should be the responsibility of the Malian army. They were not listened to.

The military operation is complicated and can take time to mobilize the greatest resources. The victims are mainly Malian civilians caught in the crossfire.

The reinforcement of the “Vigipirate” plan is part of the strategy of tension and conditioning to convince the people of our country that they may be the target of attacks, whose perpetrators are linked directly or indirectly to Islamist groups acting in Mali. It is part of the government’s desire to create a climate of national unity, while it is carrying out an aggressive policy of austerity that strikes the masses.

Behind this intervention is the control of an area rich in strategic raw materials, particularly uranium that [the French company] Areva is exploiting in neighboring Niger and is also found in the subsoil of Mali.

For all these reasons, and because the war in the Ivory Coast, Afghanistan and Libya have amply shown that their justification by the fight against terrorism and the defense of democracy is a big lie, we express our total disagreement with the military intervention of France in Mali.

We reaffirm the need to put an end to the policy known as the “French-Africa,” a policy of economic domination and political and military intervention.

We affirm that it is up to the people of Mali, its democratic and patriotic forces, to find ways for a political solution to the crisis in their country.

Paris, January 12, 2013
Communist Party of the Workers of France

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International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations: Resolution on the West African Region and Mali

Since 2010, the West African region and particularly the sub-Saharan zone has been marked by the armed interference and intervention of the imperialist powers. The objectives of those actions are:

* Political, geostrategic and military, related to the struggle for the redivision of the world and of the African continent.

* Economic (access to the petroleum of the Gulf of Guinea and the Ivory Coast; to the uranium of Niger and the precious metals that abound in the region; to solar energy; cacao, coffee, etc.

* The struggle of the Anglo-Saxon (U.S. and Great Britain) and French imperialists to prevent the penetration into the region by new actors such as China, India, Brazil, etc.

* The will of the imperialist powers to crush any type of protest by the popular masses, who are condemned to misery and lacking in political freedom, as well as the repression that they suffer carried out by the corrupt puppet powers, and their desire to crush any revolutionary insurrectionary movement.

The military-political crisis after the military coup d’état of the National Committee for the Defense and Restoration of the State (CNRDE) of March 22, 2012, as well as the military occupation of the North of Mali, begun January 22, 2012, which covers two thirds of the national territory, an occupation carried out by the National Movement for the Liberation of AZAWAD (MNLA) and the “jihadists” (AQMI, ANSAR, DINE, MUJAO, BOKO, HARAM…) must be put in this context

The military-political crisis in Mali has grave consequences for the neighboring countries, particularly Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, etc. and the group of the countries of the west African region (destabilization of States, proliferation of arms, massive displacement of populations towards the South of Mali, and thousands of refugees in other neighboring countries).

The military-political crisis in Mali is also a threat to the interests of imperialism, particularly French imperialism, in that country and the whole region. That is why there are preparatory maneuvers for an open military intervention that the troops provided by the members countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) can carry out, with the consent and logistical support of the great imperialist powers (France and U.S.A.) and of the UN under the pretext of “making a secure transition,” of “restoring constitutional life” and of “restoring Mali’s territorial integrity.” This is a reactionary plan by the imperialist powers and their allies in the region to maintain and reinforce their domination.

Faced with this serious situation, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO):

* Denounces and condemns the puppet powers that have opened their territories (particularly in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal) to the troops of imperialist aggression.

* Denounces and condemns the proclamation of independence of the State of AZAWAD by the MNLA, instrument of French imperialism.

* Denounces and condemns the crimes perpetrated against the peoples of the North of Mali by terrorist group AQMI and the Islamist groups ANSAR-DINE, MUJAO and the MNLA.

* Supports the brave resistance of the peoples, particularly of the youth, against oppression and medieval and obscurantist practices.

* Denounces and condemns the reactionary plan of the ECOWAS in Mali.

* Calls on the proletariat and peoples of the imperialist countries, particularly France, to support the Malian people in their struggle for a revolutionary solution of the military-political crisis.

* Calls for solidarity and support for the struggle of the peoples of the West African region against imperialist domination and their African lackeys.

Tunisia, November of 2012.

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Free Libya is Green Libya: Supporting the Real Libyan Revolution

by W. Yusef Doucet

“Will they now stand up and assume the real leadership necessary to make themselves relevant, or is overcoming their class allegiance to the Western bourgeoisie just too much to fathom? That’s probably too much to expect from a class trained to protect the interests of its benefactors in order to protect its own narrow interests. I guess this great task is up to the world’s African workers and peasants.”

For eight months now, NATO has executed an open crime against a sovereign African state and called it a democratic revolution. Libya was a stable, prosperous, debt-free country in Africa until it came under attack in February. The United States and the European Union cynically seized the opportunity provided by the genuine people’s movements in Tunisia and Egypt where the Western backed administrations were forced to remove their heads of state in attempts to manage the popular democratic movements in the streets. The U.S. and E.U. rapidly exploited the monarchist and “Islamist” resentment long present in Benghazi. The democratic aspirations of this opposition in Libya was dubious from the beginning, and within days of the actual opposition demonstrations that were not unusual in Benghazi, the “peaceful demonstrators” attacked a police station and suddenly emerged as a full-fledged armed faction. That U.S. and E.U. country Special Forces and intelligence forces had been on the ground from the very beginning arming and guiding what has become the National Transitional Council has become clear, and who denies the fact?

Even now, as this coalition claims to be the true and legal representatives of the wishes of the Libyan people, they represent maybe 5 percent of Libyans. They are an illegitimate entity thrust upon Libya by the force of NATO military power, and still they have not defeated the Jamahiriyah, the People’s Government of Libya. Through their actions, NATO has declared once again that no country can impart upon an independent path of development and an indigenous, culturally specific experiment with democracy. The West claims a monopoly on the meaning, form and practice of democracy, and the intellectuals, journalists and pundits in the West have shown themselves unable to remove the prejudices that convince them that democracy must look like and smell like the elite bourgeois democracy of the imperial countries. These are the same liberal bourgeois republics and constitutional monarchies that have perpetrated more than two hundred years of slavery, colonialism, and genocide attendant to capitalist production over the centuries. That doesn’t smell very good!

Through mainstream media, these professional talkers and writers made and continue to make the ground and air war palatable. Mainstream capitalist media rarely break with the official story offered by government. However on Libya, they have aggressively disseminated misinformation about Libyan society and the character of the uprising. Not every rebellion is a revolution. The media’s uncritical representation of the factions that would become the NTC cast them as democratic freedom fighters rather than investigate their reactionary monarchism and fundamentalism. Moreover, the media all but ignore the aggressive genocide taking place against the native Black population and migrant worker population. Early in the conflict, media spread the lie of “African mercenaries,” thus facilitating attacks against dark skinned Libyans and other Africans. Again, mainstream media reproduce the official story as a matter of course.

Unfortunately, the mainstream, corporate, pentagon friendly media were joined in the demonization of Gaddafi and the misrepresentation of the Jamahiriyah by the standard of progressive and liberal media in the United States, Democracy Now! and the Pacifica Network. Progressive/liberal media characterized the rebellion that began in Benghazi as a revolution rather than the counter revolution that it is. They provided airtime for opposition spokespersons and their supportive progressive and liberal analysts and pundits, which betrayed an antipathy to African and Arab revolutionary nationalism. They offered little to no air to voices in support of the Jamahiriyah; neither did they report on its democratic processes, again reproducing the government narrative. Those voices that make it onto Pacifica stations are brought on by independent producers like Dedon Kimathi at KPFK in Los Angeles and J.R. Valrey of Block Reportin’ at KPFK in Berkeley. Progressive/liberal media has been consistent in its unity with the mainstream on the question of Libya, revolutionary nationalist governments like Zimbabwe, and war in Africa, assuming their place in the continuum of the hegemonic narrative of empire. Much of the establishment Black press was only slightly better, refusing to criticize Obama directly, or doing so only obtusely, even when covering the anti-black violence of the NTC brigades. Tied to the two-party system, and especially the Democratic Party, the imperative to re-elect the undeserving Obama supersedes the duty to defend what was the most advanced country in Africa in regard to the human development of the population and a government that reached out to African Americans as members of the Pan-African nation. The Nation of Islam’s The Final Call’s coverage has been, on the other hand, exemplary.

Libya is the northern front in the re-assault on Africa. NATO countries engage in proxy war in Somalia while French troops continue muscularly to prop up the imposed government of Alassane Ouattara in Cote Ivoire, and now with troops on the ground in Central Africa, the U.S and Europe through AFRICOM has increasingly militarized their activities on the continent. These powers cannot abide African independence, nor will they allow China to continue to pursue its agenda in Africa unchallenged. As during the Cold War of the Twentieth Century, the US and EU again show their willingness to use African and Asian bodies in hot war to frustrate the interests of their competitors, this time capitalist-communist China. Where ever the U.S. and Europe are present in Africa, the countries are destabilized and in debt, and the people suffer. Despite their democratic rhetoric, their humanitarian rationalizations, and promises of economic growth, the Western presence in Africa, whether through diplomacy, covert and overt military intervention, economic investment, or settler channels, remains toxic. Now the poison flows through Libya, literally, as NATO has bombed both land and water with depleted uranium.

During the 1960s and 1970s, socialist and progressive sectors around the world recognized the heroism and thecorrectness of the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the U.S. inheritors of the French colonial project in Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese fought the most powerful military in the world and won the victory. Their struggle inspired revolutionaries across the Global South and among internal colonies in the Global North. Today Vietnam is a sovereign country.

Despite a number of independent journalists’ (e.g. Lizzie Phelan, Webster Tarpley, Stephen Lendmen, Gerald Perreira, and Thierry Meyssan) challenges to the dominant narrative on Libya, easily accessible on the internet and sometimes on cable news outlets like RT News, Libya still suffers from gross misrepresentations of the experiment in direct democracy and socialism embodied in the People’s Committees of the Jamahiriyah. Western professional progressives rarely take the vision expressed in the Green Book seriously, routinely falling into the “eccentric, flamboyant” Gaddafi” lazy reporting trap. The failure of what passes for leftist analysis in much of the U.S. and Europe to recognize the progressive and genuinely popular character of the Jamahiriyah makes them complicit in the disaster called the NTC that has befallen Libya. Nonetheless, the Libyan people continue to fight against the most powerful military alliance in the world, NATO. The NTC is nothing without NATO. The Green Resistance continues to fight. Libya is Vietnam. Can the Green Resistance rely on international support?

Libya is also Spain in the 1930s. During that struggle, the capitalist governments of the West stood by and watched the fascists bleed Republican Spain, despite material support from the Soviet Union, because in fact, they cared more about capitalist social relations and profits than they cared about democracy and the will of the Spanish people who elected the popular government. Today, they have destroyed the infrastructure of the most stable African country outside of Southern Africa, bombing them incessantly in support of racist, fascist and monarchist forces in the NTC who would have been defeated months ago if not for NATO air war. This time Russia failed to veto the key vote in the UN Security Council and can’t offer the same kind of material support, despite their distrust and defensive position vis-à-vis NATO. Their criticism of NATO since then, even as it helps challenge NATO’s narrative, still rings somewhat hollow. During the Spanish Civil War, progressive forces around the world organized themselves into international brigades to support the Spanish Republican and Loyalists forces materially and as brothers and sisters in arms. Can the international brigades today fly to Libya’s aid? Can African revolutionaries fight in Libya, knowing that the fight for Libya is the fight for Africa, and not care if they’re called mercenaries? What national African military will join the Green Resistance in its battle against a virulently anti-black, racist force in the NATO/NTC and the mercenaries they are now flying into Libya, like Xe (formerly Blackwater)?

Of course, now it is not so easy to offer material support or even ideological support to revolutionary movements. In the world of the Patriot Act, heightened security measures and full spectrum surveillance, one can quite quickly be arrested and disappeared for aiding and abetting “terrorism” if the group or movement one supports has been classified as a terrorist organization. Power has been very careful to police the degree to which groups and movements engaged in anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle can be helped by exile and solidarity formations. The kind of fund raising and support that the ANC, the PAC, the PAIGC, the PLO, the IRA, the FMLN and similar movements enjoyed in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s into the ‘90s is mostly illegal now. The governments of the NATO countries will not likely look easily on activists among their own citizens and residents dedicated to restoring the people’s government they have spent so much money and time bombing. The formation of a group like C.I.S.P.E.S. (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) or Witnesses for Peace who worked to support citizens and revolutionary parties in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980s grows increasingly difficult in the current surveillance climate. Even so, those of us committed to African sovereignty, African continental and diasporic integration, to socialism and people’s democracy, and to a brighter future for humanity need to find ways to support the Green Resistance in Libya. We need to find ways to be international brigades for Libya. Free Libya is Green Libya.

More than two hundred years of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is long enough. Liberation struggles and revolutionary governments must be supported despite differences on some ideological points. The fate of an individual is not what is at stake. Despite his defamation in the mainstream Western press, Gaddafi is being mourned by millions in Africa and around the world. This attack has short-circuited the move toward African continental integration that Gaddafi championed. He acted independently in the interests of Libya and Africa, and offered real material support for the integration of Africa under one, gold standard currency, one army, and continental governing institutions. He supported revolutionary and national liberation struggles around the world. He was a genuine anti-imperialist. For many of us, the opinions of Minister Louis Farrakhan, Ms. Cynthia KcKinney and Warrior Woman of the Dine Nation matter more than the opinions expressed by the U.S. State Department and 10 Downing Street and disseminated by the New York Times, Le Figaro, CNN, AL Jazeera, et al. The Jamahiriyah is a genuinely popular government that has come under attack by the most powerful and advanced militaries in the world, yet they continue to hold out despite the loss of the revolutionary leader. Who speaks out? Who can help restore Libya and a united Africa? NATO, the UN and the NTC trivialized the African Union during this debacle, rendering the body all but ceremonial. Will they now stand up and assume the real leadership necessary to make themselves relevant, or is overcoming their class allegiance to the Western bourgeoisie just too much to fathom? That’s probably too much to expect from a class trained to protect the interests of its benefactors in order to protect its own narrow interests. I guess this great task is up to the world’s African workers and peasants.

W. Yusef Doucet is a faculty member of the Santa Monica College English Department. He co-founded and facilitated the Dyamsay Writers’ Workshop in Santa Monica, CA, the Third Root Writers’ Workshop in Pomona, CA, and a poetry reading series at the Velocity Café in Santa Monica, CA. Yusef is currently working on a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include Fanonian analysis, the policing effect of integrationist/post-racialist ideology and anti-blackness in the modern symbolic order. Yusef keeps a blog at freeignace.wordpress.com.

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Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire: The PCRCI denounces the attack against the Libyan People and the Assassination of Qaddafi by NATO

The intervention of the hawkish coalition led by France, Britain and the United States of America has just led to the assassination of Qaddafi October 20, 2011 after the overthrow of his regime. Following this plan, the authors pretend to be embarrassed. Neither the NATO command, nor the French, English, American, or their creation, the National Transitional Council (CNT) dare take on the assassination. After Jubilee October 20, 2011 with the announcement of the death of the former Libyan leader, French President Sarkozy made ​​step back in October 21, 2011 stating that no one can rejoice in the death of another . The Secretary General of the UN, meanwhile, hailed a “historic transition for Libya,” October 20, 2011. The story will assess the “history” of such an act of aggression.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN, the October 21 request for an investigation. Why this seeming embarrassment? The imperialist powers want to reduce the general feeling of disgust widespread among African people, shedding crocodile tears. Yet it is impossible to hide the fact that a mission intended to protect human lives ended in a flood of blood with a bonus, an act against the person of Gaddafi akin to a war crime. Every reason to believe that Gaddafi was captured and then coldly shot. Although people were afraid of compromising revelations certainly Gaddafi court. The Libyan people he had undertaken to get rid of its dictator, Qadhafi? This is possible, but the seizure of power by the CNT focused at arm’s length by NATO that led from start to finish the battle for the Libyan regime change is far from embodying the interests of the Libyan people who will soon not realizing it.

It is clear that the NATO intervention aimed to prevent the contagion of revolution Tunisia to Libya. If the Libyan people had really begun to take steps to make the revolution, it comes from him being stolen. The revolutionary struggle of the Libyan people is just beginning because it is misleading to call the coup revolution of NATO and the CNT, which has served as an alibi. The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire is engaged with the Ivorian people for the democratic revolution against imperialism and is ready to provide support to similar initiatives elsewhere in Africa and the world. He denounces so this imperialist aggression against the Libyan people and condemns the cowardly assassination of Muammar Gaddafi.

Abidjan
October 23, 2011
The Central Committee

Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PCRCI) Press Conference

THE SOCIO-CURRENT POLITICAL AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF PEOPLES

Thursday, June 2, 2011 at its headquarters located in Williams Town

Distinguished journalists,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The people of Côte d’Ivoire had believed that the outcome of the presidential election of 2010, regardless of the winner, take him peace. Ivory Coast will know the end of the political and economic crimes, ending impunity, the end of the social misery and spiritual decay, a beginning of economic and social development.

Even if, as our party meant in his statement of October 2, 2010, everything came together for a new civil war, the illusion of the masses in a peaceful exit from the crisis in these elections was very strong. The rate participation of over 80% of the electorate in both rounds of the election reflects this expectation.

On November 28, 2010, results from the polls gave Alassane Ouattara, a candidate of the Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) winner of more than 54% of the vote against 46% for his rival Laurent Gbagbo, candidate of the National Convention for Democratic Resistance (NIEA). But against all odds, decided to confiscate the conquered political power. Opens a deadly post-election crisis, destructive, where for five long months, the people of Côte d’Ivoire last, against their will, opposed by revolutionary violence to this sham.

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire, by several successive statements, had humbly to advise the people of Côte d’Ivoire what to do during this post-election crisis: Organizing to fight to defeat the sham clan Gbagbo.

The concern of any revolutionary force is that the revolutionary process creates a human cost as low as possible. This concern is also ours. But very often the forces of oppression do not hear it that way. Thus, in this case, the fault of the reshaping, the victory of the peoples of the fraud resulted in thousands dead, wounded, traumatized for life, for the displaced. We bow to the dead, we wish speedy recovery to the wounded and safe return to their homes to the displaced.

The end of the power of reshaping is accompanied by deep social divisions between the peoples of Côte d’Ivoire; total insecurity settled, the economy was destroyed and the health infrastructure and education. It is the people a lot of effort to bring the country from the abyss.

Distinguished journalists,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The people of Côte d’Ivoire defeated the imposture, April 11, 2011, Gbagbo’s army was defeated. We are at a turning point. What direction will the new government there?

Will there be where there is a single thought, the lack of freedom under the pretext to give priority to developing a power that promotes illicit enrichment, bribery, a power that is subject to imperialism?

Or will there be a democratic and modern, that is to say, a power sitting on freedom and democracy as indispensable foundation for economic, social and cultural power that fights against the impunity for political and economic crimes, corruption, illicit enrichment, a power concerned with the social welfare of the masses, a power struggle for national sovereignty and against submission to imperialism?

Distinguished journalists,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Politically, the latest developments in politics have taught the people of Côte d’Ivoire. Freedoms in general (of opinion, expression, organization, event, etc..) Have been widely flouted by recasting them who killed, tortured, threatened many people who wanted to think and organize themselves differently. Political parties, trade unions were divided in order to impose the single thought. Democracy implies the power of the majority, respect the choice of the majority cleared out. We heard the candidate of the radical reform declare bluntly that he can not leave the power to its competitors in the electoral competition. Fascism, or at least what it looks like the nose pointed in the Ivory Coast, to the point where we needed the help of armies of foreign powers to bring out of harm’s way this monster. So we sold off the national resources to multinational corporations, the people were divided on the basis of chauvinism and xenophobia to the sound of an alleged struggle against imperialist domination. The social divide is so deep that it will take an appropriate therapy to eradicate this evil in order to find the unity of peoples. Lack of freedom, insecurity, division of communities, increased domination of imperialism are the characteristics of the current political situation.

In economic terms, for 10 years, the situation has deteriorated sharply in the Ivory Coast. The crisis of the capitalist system that grips the epicenter of the capital Global Financial (United States, Europe, Japan), has an undeniable impact on the periphery, the poor and dominated nations like ours.

Mismanagement of reshaping the political division of the people which led to the rebellion of September 2002, have aggravated the already precarious economic situation. During that period until now the fundamentals have not changed. There is one side a modern economy, generating huge capital gains but not create jobs (banks, telecommunications, energy, mining, trade, etc.). This economy is essentially in the hands of international finance capital. There is the other side a backward economy (retail, services, transportation, handicrafts, agriculture, fisheries, etc.). In the hands of domestic capital; There is also a major part in the national economy, agricultural production for export which prices are set by multinationals (coffee, cocoa, rubber, cotton, palm oil). In summary, we can say that the Ivorian economy, completely devastated by the current crisis is in the hands of multinationals, thus creating the conditions for interference in national politics.

Socially, there is as a result of the economic and political catastrophe, a large proportion of the population (over 50%) living below the poverty alone, a mass of less than 10% which receives more than 80% of the income distributed. Poverty is widespread, unemployment stands at over 50% of the workforce.

It should be remembered that the minimum wage (minimum wage) is 36 000 FCFA per month in the private sector while the executives in the same sector wages have multi-million FCFA. Remember also that for over 20 years the school Ivorian increasingly privatized. Public elementary, secondary and higher education are left to themselves with dilapidated infrastructure, teachers in short supply, etc.. The costs of private schools in primary education is more than 100 000 FCFA in high school more than 300 000 FCFA in more than 600 000 FCFA, thus excluding the children of the poor education system. Finally, remember that only 10% of the population (officials and employees of large companies) are eligible for health care acceptable. The rest of the population is left to self-medication among traditional healers.

Distinguished journalists,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Given this socio-political situation, what are the expectations of the people of Côte d’Ivoire and that should be their immediate tasks?

People yearn for freedom and democracy, they want to be safe, they can not agree to continue to live in a state where there is thinking, in a state of lawlessness, restriction of freedom and democracy , widespread insecurity in a country where impunity for political and economic crimes is the rule in a country where tribalism divides communities.

The freedoms won in 1990 at a cost of one thousand sacrifices that were reconfisquées the rebuilding must be returned in full. The new government should promote new freedoms to allow people to better organize themselves to participate on the basis of a heightened awareness of its role and responsibility in the tasks of production and management policy of the city. It is an imperative that can not be delayed for any reason whatsoever.

The people have suffered too much from insecurity mainly due to the policy of mercenaries and militias policy was introduced in the Ivory Coast in the era of radical reform. It should be dismantled as soon as all the forces that have no right to bear arms. We must ensure the safety of all people living in Ivory Coast without discrimination.

The people of Côte d’Ivoire must be reconciled, it is also imperative to rebuild hope everything has been destroyed and hope to move towards a progressive society. But reconciliation can not have goals to move into profit and loss crimes. The Commission “dialogue, truth and reconciliation” is more emphasis on truth and justice. On this issue the people are waiting to shed light on the essential political and economic crimes committed from 1999 at least. In order to protect the political and economic life in the future against such acts, all criminals regardless of their political, philosophical, religious and ethnic, must disgorge.

Still with the aim of reconciliation between communities, specific issues must be addressed. This is particularly the issue of rural land. We must revisit the law to keep what does not divide people and reject what divides and has been used to ignite the campaign. Indeed, most complaints in the courts on disputes over land found no suites. During the post-election crisis, politicians, criminals have distributed arms to the west of Côte d’Ivoire so that farmers are killing each other in order to settle in their land disputes in favor of landowners. No reconciliation will only be viable in areas of west and central west without the inclusion of land issues.

We must also revisit the constitution of 2000, a source in part of the current crisis. There is a need for a democratic constitution in which all citizens have equal duties and equal rights, where the power belongs to the people who actually delegates but has the tools to control and instruments for the resume if it is his will . We need a constitution in which justice is effectively independent of the executive order that the judge does not feel obliged to have his supervisor.

These are summarized in the immediate expectations of the masses in political.

The economy is affected, the office is in total collapse. We must redouble our efforts to the people to produce goods and services likely to generate sufficient revenue for the survival of the state, they must ensure proper upbringing of children, ensure health for all, to revive the national culture .

Freedoms restored, justice just, are assets to meet the economic and social challenge. But farmers can not produce full if do not see their living conditions improve. It is imperative to take strong measures to improve the wages, to increase income of farmers and other workers. These strong measures must be adopted with the effective participation of concerned through their representative organizations. The worker can continue to receive 36 000 FCFA per month while paying a bag of rice to 21,000 FCFA. The farmer can not accept an effective price of 400 FCFA per kg of cocoa while the official price considering all the fraudulent charges is 1100 FCFA per kg.

Public health and public schools must take precedence over private medicine and private school to allow the great mass of people living in Ivory Coast to be in good health and to educate their children. We need a new school that ensures the bright future of Côte d’Ivoire. It should be outside of jobs in the public service, business development for industrial production allowed to absorb a portion of unemployment. Young people who took up arms to serve either the pro Gbagbo must fit at the earliest working life so as not to turn to other corrupt politicians. Graduates can not wait 5 to 10 years before finding work. These are most of the urgent needs in economically and socially.

Distinguished journalists,

Activists of PCRCI,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The people of Côte d’Ivoire defeated the imposture and tyranny. They respect their choice from the ballot box. But the fall of the power of reshaping does not mean that victory is total. Ivory Coast is still a backward country, weak, under imperialist domination. The fight must continue to move towards a modern democratic Côte d’Ivoire and sovereign. To do this, the people must not be content to watch the new power, or simply applaud. It is the people in the immediate daring to mobilize and organize dare to achieve the following immediate tasks:

- Struggle to promote freedom and democracy without conditions or restriction, or delay

- Fight for the repeal of the constitution of 2000 and its replacement by a democratic constitution

- Fighting for the trial of criminal political and economic

- Fight for improved living conditions of peasants, workers, other workers, youth

All peoples have the means to achieve these immediate tasks?

Peoples have gained experience over the last ten years: They have a better understanding of the actions of imperialism, they have to respect the will of the people including by force what they know rely on its own forces to achieve their aspirations in a word, they have what it takes to achieve those immediate tasks.

To build on these strengths and to overcome difficulties, they must be convinced of one thing: to dare to dare organize and fight tight. It’s the only way for workers, peasants, other workers, youth to move toward a democratic Ivory Coast, modern and sovereign, the only guarantee to meet their aspirations.

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire is at their side to advise and assist them in this way.

Thank you.

Achy Ekissi

Secretary General

The Revolutionary Communist Party of the Ivory Coast (PCRCI) Warns the People Against Adventurism

The different factions of the Ivorian big bourgeoisie, in their struggle for power, are attempting to use the masses with calls for adventurist action.

On December 16, 2010, Ouatara followers carried out several actions to free television state of siege imposed by the government, have called their activists (which is always asked to used as the only weapon of protest ballot) to perform operations of an insurgency. Despite the action of some groups of demonstrators, the failure was total, as we have been able to verify. For its part, the Gbagbo camp tries once again to use the masses, and most likely is that leads to the slaughter.

Recall that the “young patriots” who support Gbagbo has called for a great concentration in Republic Square Wednesday, December 29. But, suddenly, they decided to cancel this action indefinitely on the pretext of “laissez-faire diplomacy,” because three Heads of State ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States, NDT) have come to Abiyan to meet with Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouatara.

Curiously, when there is a of these meetings for January 3, 2011, the “young patriots” decided to leave the Hotel Golf, “their hands “(without weapons), quoted in the hotel is entrenched Ouattara and his government, protected by thousands of armed UN peacekeepers dell’ONUCI. The goal is to use young people as human shields, though not possess no preparation for such actions. These young people will find themselves caught between two fires, the of the soldiers who protect the property and that of the soldiers who laid siege to the building.

Why want to use young people for action which should be for the national army? One reason for this behavior is that the foreign troops stationed in Ivory Coast (UN forces, troops French) are there at the request of Laurent Gbabgo that he expected to profit at the crucial moment of these forces, which he hoped in vain. And so, in a timely manner, without conviction, now calls for the withdrawal of these forces, just when they have not the Ivory Coast. Gbabgo has a strange way to pursue his “patriotic or anti-imperialist struggle.”

The National Army does not trust Gbabgo, which uses many mercenaries from Liberia and Angola. Since these mercenaries can not appear it openly in front of Hotel Golf, sends cannon fodder, a role that is usually used Gbabgo in respect of the masses ivoriensi.

The PCRCI considers that the main points of struggle are currently as follows:

- Denouncing the threat of foreign military intervention, particularly ECOMOG (the troops Economic Community of West African States, NDT) and firmly opposed the supporters of reactionary war.

- Continue the fight so that they respect the popular will expressed at the polls on November 28, and avert the danger of a reactionary civil war.

The PCRCI calls the people, especially youth, not to get involved with the words
Order adventurist and not taken part in the Golf Hotel, whose sole aim is to use
the outrage that will result in bloodshed.

This sacrifice is not worth the effort if the goal is to maintain Laurent Gbabgo to power and his military-civilian regime of the fascist type.

Abiyan, December 31, 2010
Revolutionary Communist Party of Ivory Coast

Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire: The Anti-Imperialist Struggle is Still Relevant for the Sovereignty of our Country!

August 21, 2011

The anti-imperialist struggle is a patriotic struggle for excellence, remains an urgent need for the Ivorian people as it is for all dominated peoples on the planet. The Ivorian people has also endorsed this truth for many years. But his efforts were at times frustrated by the supporters of the imperialist world system and their allies and servants at home. In this role of allies and servants of French imperialism, the Houphouetists led by Alassane Ouattara just succeed Gbagbo and his power to populist fascist overtones. It is important to remember that in recent years, Gbagbo and his FPI contributed greatly to distract the popular struggle of its main objectives.

Having learned from the confusion of ideological and populist practices and to overcome their misdeeds, it is important to emphasize the nature, content and objectives of the anti-imperialist struggle. This is essential for a stronger recovery and targeted the anti-imperialist and patriotic in our country. A target of combat, even though identified can be achieved under specific conditions, one of these conditions is the unity of all components of the Ivorian people. This unit will resume found the true meaning of popular struggles of the early 90 for freedom and bread. Specifically, the objective of the fighting was and remains the conquest of power to ensure political freedom and the freedom to produce. To achieve this, the Ivorian people must refuse to be dictated to by choice and a powerful country by an imperialist country.

1) The need to preserve the unity of the sixty nationalities

Ivory Coast is populated by some sixty ethnic groups, each of which has the characteristics of a nationality, and indeed so we live in a multinational state. The development of a common national destiny in such a state requires the implementation of sound policy preventing frustrations, which the Ivorian bourgeoisie has failed to last five decades. In their desire to bar the way to the necessary unity of nationalities, those in power had fallen in April even developed a strategy of opposition from different nationalities to each other, under the old policy of divide and rule practiced by all the dominant powers in the context of colonial and neocolonial.

The power of the rebuilding has chosen to pursue a tribalist and xenophobic that favored the dispersion of the energy of the Ivorian people. Or to build a strong Ivorian nation, able to free themselves from domination and oppression, able to control his destiny, the unity of the diverse peoples of our country is an absolute necessity. Without this unity, no common effort to fight beneficial or politically or economically.

2) The necessity of the struggle for political independence and economic independence

The reactionary politics and weakening of the national will of the government led by senior citizens since 1960 has greatly hampered the progress of the Ivorian people in their struggle for the strengthening of political and economic independence of the country.

The contribution of the FPI to this policy has largely led to fade in some areas of Ivorian society the great hope of important victories over oppression and exploitation born in the early 90′s. Indeed, following the hard-won concessions to supporters of the autocratic power of taking an iron fist by Houphouet-Boigny, was to hope to win several victories on the road to the conquest of a modern democratic state. But the power of populist FPI has dampened enthusiasm for a political reactionary political and economic catastrophe. Gbagbo said “a thousand deaths on the right, a thousand deaths on the left, I go myself,” or “made Houphouët Ivory Coast rich, I’ll make the Ivorian rich.” The tone was set for political and economic crimes. To camouflage the forfeiture, the power Gbagbo has spent most of his time to take advantage of his own turpitude, has reinforced the skepticism, to develop a sense of nostalgia in many sectors of national life. The essence of revolutionary movements in 1990 which looks promising suites have been transformed into movements against Revolutionaries. Reactionary forces based on skepticism cultivated trying to convince people that it is better to look in the mirror rather than looking to the future. These reactionary forces profess that it is pointless to demand freedom, sovereignty, he should stick to concerns about “economic development”.

Fortunately, contrary to the skepticism and attempt to make the economy a given independent of politics, history teaches that economic progress is linked to progress of successive releases of man and human societies. These releases are the result of successive social and political struggles which the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire continues to call on all Ivorian patriots across the country for political independence and economic independence.

3) The recall of the meaning of popular struggles of the 1990s and following

To stifle the aspirations for freedom, power Houphouët-Boigny had pretended for years that freedom, especially the multi would create incentives to tribalism in our country. However, the popular struggle for the reintroduction of multiparty politics in the early 90s did not leave room for the expression of that feeling dread. Political parties established in the period were kept to fan tribal hatred and xenophobia. Rather the bowels of the party of Houphouët-Boigny, the PDCI-RDA, has officially emerged the idea of calling openly ivoirité exacerbation of feeling and maintained the conditions for its development.

The Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) as soon as he felt able to close in 2000, posted openly and officially, its full membership in this thesis the effects of which continue to be devastating on the unity of the peoples of Côte d’Ivoire. It is also one of the points on which the REIT must be accountable to the people of Côte d’Ivoire.

The struggles of 90 years, initially mainly directed against the lack of freedom and all forms of oppression have been misguided in their goals by Gbagbo and his party who have overused the same time progressive notions of pan-Africanism , of patriotism and anti-imperialism they abused and continued to opportunistically claim.

4) The commitment to the anti-imperialist struggle on the basis of patriotism of good quality: essential for future progress of the emancipation struggle of the Ivorian people.

For emancipation, the main peak of the struggle of the Ivorian people must be directed against French imperialism, particularly against its military presence on the national territory. A successful outcome of this struggle means that it is also directed against the internal forces supporting and justifying the occupation.

Since the dark page and confusion of the power of reshaping faces, it is possible to excite the patriotic struggle which the fiber of many Ivorians to the place, give it the strength necessary to make a factor of unity, mobilization and struggle for an emancipated Côte d’Ivoire. We now promote patriotism of good quality, we say, that is to say, the patriotism of good quality as opposed to the agitation of the advocates of xenophobia and tribalism.

It is now possible to respond more appropriately to those who, based on disability and total failure of power Gbagbo, believe that the concepts of national sovereignty, monetary sovereignty, independence, culture no longer make sense in the context of globalization. In the eyes of those who deny the relevance of the struggle for sovereignty, the failure of the REIT to prove that the people can not know for progress beyond those achieved under the previous government. The deniers of the necessity of the struggle for sovereignty, these proponents of half-truths, convey the ideas that it is better to “talk about work” than “talk about sovereignty and independence.” But, they soon realize, if not already done that work and sovereignty is conditional upon each other. Universal history has shown, human political and social freedom is more productive than the slave.

Sovereignty or independence is not opposed to work, job well done, with hard work, the culture of the effort. And no one can deny the fact that there can be a job well done with the beneficial effects are long lasting if the political and strategic options are not set by a sovereign and independent people. These developments can be better understood from a few things learned Ivorian. After more than 50 years of “military cooperation”, the Ivorian army is unable to fulfill its mission. The infrastructure created in our country have deteriorated so revolting, the road network is destroyed, the school and health infrastructure have become dangerous for the users, the elevators of public buildings are barely functioning, etc.. The lesson most plausible is that everything that is designed and built outside of the organization and national expertise is ridiculous. Indeed, under such conditions, the mind immediately is lacking for the upkeep and maintenance. This goes for all the achievements, material and cultural.

The presence of post-colonial French military base in Ivory Coast dates from the early 60s. All the powers that ruled the country struggling to justify or tolerate this presence and this surrender of sovereignty. The current president Alassane Ouattara due to the presence of foreign forces, French in particular, the keystone of his policy. Recently, the State Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Daniel Kablan Duncan, tried to justify this policy to reporters by the following facts:

“The rise of terrorism with al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which requires the development of the information; the lute against drugs, as some states in the sub-region has become a hub between Europe and America Latin and finally the border banditry and attacks by the sea with ships. Côte d’Ivoire dream of being a hub and it is not possible, if we do not fight terrorism.”

(See Ivorian daily Fraternité Matin, No. 13989 of July 13, 2011, p. 22).

And later he added:

“President Houphouet-Boigny had entrusted the defense of territory to the French army to devote the resources of the country development. “(Ibid.).

Is not this the consummate expression of the policy of the outstretched hand and the culture of self-surrender into the hands of others? Decrypted, these statements mean that the Ivorian security forces are unable to carry out their task of defending the territorial integrity of Côte d’Ivoire and that more than 50 years after independence. The logical conclusion that the Minister of State refrained from shooting, is that the Ivorian army whose missions are performed by a foreign army, is not a priority, it will remain idle and under-equipped. Indeed, why allocate resources to tasks performed by the French forces?

The government is willing to sign new agreements “military cooperation” with the French government without taking stock of past cooperation, at least, without bringing this report to the attention of the people. It is a fact that after over 50 years of “military cooperation” the Ivorian army finds itself in a deplorable state, inefficiency, indiscipline, neglect of military missions for missions of law enforcement why it did not have the training and is easy to conclude that this cooperation is a failure. This failure will normally result in the outright denunciation of the Agreement and seeking new avenues in the military. It is unacceptable to link the country again, while the probability is high that another fifty years after the same experience will be done.

The argument of the fight against terrorism to maintain a foreign military presence only serves to make it not afraid to lead the people to accept the unacceptable? It is noteworthy that the leaders of the countries where terrorism has already pointed out by AQIM attacks and hostage-taking, countries that are within the scope of direct action of this organization have not yet claimed the installation of foreign military bases on their soil. It is indefensible that a country of 20 million people like ours, which has significant economic potential, with many military experts, is unable to rely on its own human resources to ensure its security. This proves that the issue of sovereignty dear to all peoples of the world is the least of worries of our senior bourgeois leaders.

A militant anti-colonialist could write one day, something like this: aid that does not happen for help is not helpful and should be rejected. This statement is correct at all points of view. The position of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire on the question of relations between our country and the French government is that it is urgent to get out of addiction. On the military question, in particular, the agreement of “cooperation and military assistance” with the French government should be terminated and the French and foreign military bases in general, must be dismantled. Our party will continue to take such action and calls on workers, peasants, urban workers and rural, artisans, women, young people, all people across the country regardless of ethnicity or religious join the Communist Party in this fight.

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire invites the people in their diversity to continue to “advance the revolution” by conducting a bold anti-imperialist struggle. This is the condition of control over its destiny.

Abidjan, 10 August 2011.

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire

Communist Party of the Workers of France: For us, it is three times “no” to imperialist war

Afghanistan, Libya, Ivory Coast

This is the third front in the war in which French imperialism is engaged: after Afghanistan, Libya, and today, it is the Ivory Coast. The troops of the “Licorne” force are officially engaged in fighting against the forces of Gbagbo.

They are involved in a reactionary civil war that has ravaged that country for years, on one side, that of Ouattara, whose troops are responsible for mass killings. The officials of the UNOCI [United Nations Commission in the Ivory Coast], the military coalition which supports the French armed forces, have asked Ouattara’s supporters to “stop the massacres”! The fighting has already claimed hundreds of victims, mostly civilians.

We reaffirm our opposition to this reactionary war and the participation of the French army. This war may “bury” the Gbagbo regime, but it will only widen and exacerbate the divisions, and aggravate the situation of the popular masses.

With or without a UN mandate, the armies of the imperialist powers do not bring democracy, much less peace. This is true in all the countries where French imperialism is at war!

Together with many organizations, in France and in Africa, we demand that the French troops leave Africa.

Paris, April 5, 2011
Communist Party of the Workers of France

Tunis Declaration

On July 26, 2011, a meeting of the Communist Party of Benin (PCB), the Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia (PCOT), the Revolutionary Communist Party of the Ivory Coast (PCRCI), the Revolutionary Communist Party of Volta (PCRV) and “The Democratic Road” Organization of Morocco was held in Tunis. The parties exchanged their views on the international situation, the tasks that it induces for the proletariat, the revolutionaries and the peoples of Africa and propose signing the Declaration whose content follows:

1) The crisis of the capitalist and imperialist system, which arose in 2007-2008, is a structural crisis that has called neoliberalism into question and put the thought of Karl Marx on the agenda. This crisis is deepening, striking with full force the economies of the countries of the world, including the economies of developed countries such as Greece, Spain etc.

2) With the appearance in strength of emerging countries and the capitalist crisis, there is the exacerbation of inter-imperialist contradictions on the one hand and that between the imperialist powers and the emerging countries on the other hand, tending towards a multi-polarity in the leadership of world affairs, in contrast to the hegemonic unipolarity of the United States of America that existed since 1990-1992. This exacerbation of contradictions is leading to a redivision of the world with consequences of wars having their fields of operations in the neo-colonial and dependent countries. The recent intervention of the French army and that of other imperialist forces in the Ivory Coast to install one of their pawns (Ouattara) in place of another (Gbagbo), the current aggression by the forces of NATO, France, England and the United States in Libya under the false pretext of establishing a so-called democratic regime, thus undermining the legitimate aspirations of the Libyan people for freedom and democracy, are acts that confirm what has been said above.

The signatory Parties condemn these imperialist aggressions against the peoples of these countries and call for their immediate cessation.

3) Africa, which is the epicenter of the world inter-imperialist contradictions because of the huge mineral resources that it abounds with, is thus suffering full force not only from the effect of these inter-imperialist rivalries with the consequences such as wars, but also all the ills of humanity such as hunger, illiteracy, disease and backwardness of all kinds. Africa is the most enslaved of all the continents and its liberation from the imperialist yoke will be a decisive milestone in the liberation of all humanity. This liberation is looming on all parts of the continent.

4) The signatories Parties state that the major urgent challenge for the emancipation of the proletariat and the peoples of Africa is the formation of vanguard parties, particularly communist parties and the strengthening of their union based on Marxist-Leninist principles, which must be remembered.

5) The Tunisian revolution underway, which began with the flight of the dictator Ben Ali on January 14, 2011, has inaugurated a new era of the revolution in the world, and particularly in Africa. Its impact, which can be seen up to now in the world and in Africa (in Egypt, Morocco, Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal etc.), show the proletariat and the peoples of the world and Africa in particular that by rising up, the people can get rid of all the powers including the dictatorial powers no matter how powerful they are.

The signatory Parties salute this great victory of the Tunisian people and encourage them to continue the fight until the completion of the revolution.

The PCB, PCRCI, PCRV, “The Democratic Road” Organization of Morocco and the other signatory Parties salute the PCOT for its important contribution to the movement that led to the overthrow of the dictator Ben Ali; they encourage it to continue along this road until the overthrow of the regime put in place by the latter and they assure it of their unwavering support for the achievement of this objective. They understand that the greatest support for the Tunisian revolution is for each Party to lead and carry out the revolution in their own country.

The PCB, PCOT, PCRCI and PCRV salute the struggle begun in Morocco by the February 20 movement to demand a democratic constitution chosen by the people. They denounce the repression by the Makhzen [royal elite – translator’s note] against the movement and express their full solidarity with the comrades of the Democratic Road and the February 20 movement.

The PCB, PCOT, PCRCI, PCRV, “The Democratic Road” Organization of Morocco and the other signatory Parties to this Declaration, call on the African communists, revolutionaries and patriots throughout the African continent to form themselves into real vanguard Parties particularly Communists Parties to lead the current and future struggles for the emancipation of the African proletariat and peoples so that they free themselves from the yoke of the imperialists and from capitalist exploitation.

Tunis, July 26, 2011

Communist Party of Benin (PCB)

Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia (PCOT)

Revolutionary Communist Party of the Ivory Coast (PCRCI)

Revolutionary Communist Party of Volta (PCRV, Burkina Faso)

The Democratic Road (Morocco)

Resolution of the Xth Plenum of the CC

PCMLV. 2011

The events that shook the world confirm conclusively the classics of Marxism-Leninism.

The pauperization of the conditions of the proletariat, the constant mobilization of popular sectors to demand respect for their rights, they are unaware of avoiding a series of achievements attained over the years indicates that the masses feel the weight of the consequences of the general crisis of capitalism falling over his shoulders.

After the many strong mobilizations carried out in various European countries, the imperialists were given the task of proclaiming the crisis was overcome. Imposed despite the rejection of the workers and popular sectors usually a series of economic measures very negative for the exploited and oppressed majority, the protests in this situation are the order of the day, street clashes between law enforcement and lining the popular sectors of the international news scene. Is this a sign of deteriorating relations, the class struggle.

Despite the turbulent situation in the European countries seemed to have come down slightly, the intensity of conflicts had diminished in some way and the water as imperialist spokesmen were taking their cause, the actions of confrontation and rejection of bad social situation experienced by the exploited and oppressed masses to come back strongly again in the streets. Sooner or later the facts have to show that far were the solutions to the crisis of capitalism right now.

Major conflicts erupted in the so-called Maghreb countries, Tunisia’s people took to the streets to demand the resignation of dictator Ben Ali, which had about 24 years in power in that African nation. These reactions generated protest actions in different countries mainly in North Africa. In these nations the people took to the streets demanding the resignation of presidents or monarchs of the same. The proposal of the government to stop these actions was the repression, after watching the protests did not stop resorted to propose reforms, but these proposals did not appease the demands of the people.

Thus, the repression was not delayed by the governments of these countries. Dozens of wounded and dead was the answer they gave these governments when they saw that the street actions amounted to more and more people and spread in days and weeks. On the one hand the most advanced expressed their aspirations for democratic change and popular and revolutionary gains, while other sectors remained in the approach to change governments, planning, ethnic and tribal sometimes exploit these aspirations of the imperialists to support certain sides instead that it can continue to enjoy the support and benefits of their interests.

In Egypt, we saw the people on the streets rejecting Hosni Mubarak, who was 30 years in power, backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence and CIA. The Egyptian government took a policy of deep collaboration with the U.S., performing the role of police in the area with Israel, proyanki exposed positions in different situations, expose this government as one of the most subservient to the imperialist policies .

Finally, Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign, the incessant protests in different cities, the rejection of the offer of reforms and the growing protests despite the crackdown, said the imperialists that this doll now served them more out of power. For this reason, after seeing that the actions of rejection kept ever growing, the imperialists favored the departure of Mubarak. Of course, it was just a formality, since the maneuvers of the imperialists led the new Cabinet remains in the hands of the pro-imperialist, in this specific case, who assume power in Egypt are linked to the intelligence apparatus and military sectors, is responsible for the support of Hosni Mubarak in power, in other words it changed a lot not to change anything.

Victory of the People’s Uprising Against the Dictatorship of Ben Ali: Bravo, Admirable People in Tunisia!

In less than one month’s popular uprising and the price of heroic struggle, the people of Tunisia brought an end to decades of autocratic rule. This police state and dictatorship, played for over twenty years by President Ben Ali, killed, imprisoned, assaulted, gagged people, democrats, revolutionaries. Meanwhile, the regime had a good press in the U.S. and European government circles, in circles of international high finance, in a word in the imperialist circles. This scheme was also cited by leaders here. Laurent Dona FOLOGO, current president of the Economic and Social Council, publicist successive regimes Houphouet-Boigny, Bedie, Gbagbo has never dried up praise to the place of this regime.

A little chronology shows how a people deciding to take its destiny can overcome the most reactionary regimes “solid.” It is from the December 17, 2010 a popular revolt broke out against unemployment, exclusion, poverty, cost of living, the shameless exploitation, corruption, injustice and tyranny. The revolt was precipitated by the self-immolation of a young graduate unemployed exceeded by the cynicism of the Ben Ali regime. Remember that popular protests were part of the city of Sidi Bouzid to extend to all parts of the country.

As usual, the police state and dictatorship has been only one answer : the repression. Firing live ammunition on unarmed demonstrators, have caused many deaths throughout the day. Leaders of political parties and democratic revolutionaries were arrested. This was the case of our comrade Hama Hammami, spokesperson of the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia. The regime expected to stifle protest by repression was quickly confronted with its extension and deepening. Protesters turned their claims initially in social policy requirements, requirements for the claim to liberties from BEN ALI identified as the source of the suffering of the Tunisian people. From there, the demagogic promises of BEN ALI were all rejected one after the other. Promises to relinquish power in 2014 not to allow the firing real bullets, to organize elections, to conduct a reshuffle, etc.. Have all been vigorously denied. BEN ALI had no other choice than to flee. The Tunisian people came together to make his revolution. The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire says bravo to the Tunisian people.

Mr. Ekissi, Secretary General of the PCRCI: “Ivory Coast is far from being in a state of law”

Interview by Alex Raymond-Loukou [9/8/2008]

Mr. Ekissi, Secretary General of PCRCI

On Wednesday, August 13, 2008, the Revolutionary Communist Party of the Ivory Coast will hold the fourth commemoration of the assassination of one of its members, Abib Dodo. Before this important ceremony to be held at Adjame City Hall, the Secretary General of that party Mr. Achy Ekissi agreed to an interview with us.

Mr. SG, what special significance do you give to this fourth commemoration of the death of Abib Dodo?

The fourth commemoration of the death of Abib Dodo is a call to mobilize all democrats, defenders of human rights and revolutionaries, to firmly take up the fight against impunity for political crimes. Indeed, since September 2002, people living in Ivory Coast have been killed, not on military battlefields but in their homes or in secret. Some of these crimes have been taken to court. But so far in no case has there been a start of a solution.

Four years have passed since then and the justice system has still not found the perpetrator of the murder. Do you believe that things will improve?

We are convinced that without political pressure the case will be dismissed, unless the government is replaced by one that respects human rights. It should be noted that the case of Abib Dodo is not an isolated one. All those accused of being “rebels” have been killed and experienced the same fate.

Declaration of the PCRCI and PCRV on the Xenophobia and Chauvinism in the Ivory Coast

The wave of xenophobia that has swept the Ivory Coast since 1993 has led, at the present time, to unparalleled violence in that country. Certain bourgeois politicians have decided to resort to xenophobia as a way to attain and hold power. Carried to the point of caricature by the current rulers who are trying to make it into a theory, this ideology of identity has become their only weapon against Alassane Dramane Ouattara. Unable to wage this fight with rational arguments, which were nevertheless not lacking, they decided to denigrate him as a foreigner, in particular a Burkinabe [person from Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) - translator].
Everyone knows in fact that many foreigners live in the Ivory Coast, of whom more than three million are from Burkina Faso. It is easy, in these present conditions of acute capitalist crisis, to make them scapegoats, the source of the misery of the Ivorians [people from the Ivory Coast - translator].

They use every means available, stretching decency and ethics to the limit, to present Ouattara as a Burkinabe national who is trying to usurp the post of president of the Republic of the Ivory Coast to the detriment of the “true Ivorians.” This can only incite feelings of repulsion and hatred among those who are suffering but are unaware of the real cause of their suffering. This manipulation has led to all kinds of demagogy. This is the front line of defense of the present rulers, who are using tribalism and xenophobia to brush aside their political opponents.

The Burkinabe residents in the Ivory Coast and other foreign nationals are victims of conflicts between bourgeois clans whose interests are different from their own. But the new rulers are not prepared to renounce these policies. According to them, the rejection of foreigners is “a social phenomenon in the Ivory Coast;” the exploitation of this by politicians allows them to hold on to their power and particularly to eliminate their sworn enemy, Ouattara, forever from all political processes in that country.

The government of Blaise Compaoré [of Burkina Faso - translator], as usual, has kept quiet and taken a wait and see attitude in regard to the painful events that the Burkinabe people in the Ivory Coast are undergoing. This is because the governments of the two countries have very little regard for life and human dignity. The two governments already have many political crimes in their record and are thus basically of the same nature.

The consequences of this situation are numerous: popular condemnation of the foreign communities, particularly Burkinabes, the destruction of goods and extortion of funds belonging to them, police harassment, humiliations of all kinds, beatings, killings. The toll of the attacks against these communities, at the call of the social-chauvinist regime of Gbagbo [of the Ivory Coast - translator], remains to be calculated. That will allow people to assess the extent of the disaster.

The Revolutionary Communist Party of the Ivory Coast (PCRCI) and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Upper Volta (PCRV), very concerned by this situation:

1) express their indignation and reprobation at this social-chauvinist policy of the Ivorian government, the complicity of the Burkinabe government and of French imperialism, their master;

2) condemn the violent oppression of the xenophobic Ivorian government and demand the immediate halt to the attacks against the nationals of other African countries, particularly of Burkinabe nationals;

3) demand that light be shone on all the consequences of the current political events and the violence that they generate;

4) call upon the Ivorian working class and the working people to abstain from all attacks against the Burkinabe working people of town and country living in the Ivory Coast and, in general, against all foreign nationals;

5) call upon the Burkinabe working class and people to refrain from all attitudes of chauvinism and revenge and from all forms of reprisals against the Ivorian nationals living in Burkina Faso;

6) invite the working people of the two countries to thwart the Machiavellian maneuvers of the Gbagbo regime who are inciting hatred against foreigners in his competition with Ouattara Dramane Alassane;

7) call for vigilance and effective solidarity of the Ivorian and Burkinabe working people in their fight against their common enemies: the fascistic regime of Blaise Compaoré, the social-chauvinist regime of Laurent Gbagbo and French imperialism which are the basis of their misery.

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Abidjan, December 2000

Central Committee of the PCRCI
Central Committee of the PCRV

Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire wants Case Reopened

On June 24, 2004 the General Secretary of Communist Youth of Côte d’Ivoire, Habib Dodo, was murdered by Student Federation [FESCI] of Côte d’Ivoire activists.

During a press conference held on June 23 in Williamsville, M. Ekissi Achy, secretary general of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire, called for the reopening of the case Habbib Dodo. To believe his words, Habbib Dodo, the first Secretary General of the youth of that party and a founding member of the General Association of the youth of the Communist Party, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a gang belonging to FESCI [Student Federation of Cote d'Ivoire (FESCI)].

After seven years of procedure not followed and the disappearance of the prosecution case Habbib Dodo Abidjan, Mr. Achy Ekissi calls the new government to reopen this folder to see justice done. He therefore stressed that “Comrade Kouadio Kouadio Richard, also a member of AGEECI was murdered in the same conditions. For the perpetrators, as these young people had to wear them, the flag of the FESCI is to say, prevent pupils and students to question the descent into hell Ivorian school. While the enemies of the Ivorian school, freedom and democracy have declared persona non grata. “

To inquire about this new record, Mr. Achy Ekissi accompanied by the provisional president of the collective fight against impunity, Drissa Sheriff and the Secretary General of AGEECI Séka Jules went to the floor of Abidjan. But against all odds, he was brought to their attention, the disappearance of the file. It has meant that “we are not surprised by this information, because already in 2008, the major sponsors of the FESCI, reassured the defendants that the case was closed at the level of justice.”

In the words of the latter, a notion of reopening of the case will be presented to the public prosecutor and the minister of state for justice to be done about this crime. Because he said the duty to remember, is binding on all, criminals are accountable for their crimes. Secretary General of AGEECI, Jules Séka reaffirmed the continuing struggle begun by Habbib to achieve the full opening of freedoms, democratic practice in education, the cessation of all forms of violence and the decision of all crimes committed in education.

Continuing, he said that in this sense, a collective fight against impunity has been created. The provisional president of this group, Sheriff Drissa invites victims to be identified so that repairs be made to victims in order to guard against other crimes.

Larissa G
L’Intelligent d’Abidjan

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire: “the downfall of Gbagbo does not solve the issue of development”

The fighting of the Ivorian people for freedom and bread rose despite the various obstacles encountered since the popular movements of 1990 that led to the concession by the proponents of multi-party rule. The experience of twenty (20) years since 1990 indicates that the acquisition of multiple parties does not mean the end of all obstacles to the emancipation of the people.

Soon after we acquired a multi-party system it served as a mere instrument in the hands of upper-bourgeois politicians Ivory Coast to create the conditions for the challenge of recognizing the Ivorian people’s right to self-determination whose first act was the accession our country’s political independence in 1960. This questioning of the right to self-determination is symbolized by the systematic use of Ivorian leaders to the former colonial power, France, when problems arise at the national level. For example, since the introduction of multiparty advocates succession of state power have not been able to hold multiparty elections transparent and that all sovereignty over fifty years after the country attained independence policy. Despite the potential of the country, its leaders are upper class so far failed to establish credible institutions and financing necessary to enable the people to rely on its own forces. Dependence on outside results in a deficit of sovereignty manifested acutely over the past ten years. This lack of sovereignty was further revealed at the last post-election crisis whose outcome has highlighted the role of the UN and France.

So despite its accession to political independence there is a nearly fifty years, Côte d’Ivoire remains a weak country, subject to the domination of strong countries. Côte d’Ivoire is therefore a neo-colonial country subjected to imperialist domination, especially that of French imperialism. The necessary future developments in Côte d’Ivoire on the path of his release require its release from the shackles of neo-colonial system. Countries rulers have no interest in a move towards more freedom for the Ivorian people. To hinder this development, they put in open political means, economic, cultural and military.

Pro-Gbagbo Militia

Of domestic political forces pose conscious or unconscious actions contributing to impair people’s struggle for emancipation. For twenty years, these interior reactionary political forces, based on their theory of the “Ivorite” have made every effort to keep the unity and diversity of the people of Côte d’Ivoire. For immediate electoral interests of certain high-bourgeois leaders, the opposite view to the necessary unity of the people of the components has been developed and propagated. Yet history shows that all people weak and dominated the world who have managed to fully self-determination took first steps as their awareness and unity. Chinese and Indochinese peoples have provided clear examples in the last century. Closer to home, the people of North Africa and the Middle East engaged in revolutionary processes are about to provide examples to inspire the revolutionaries of our country. For several years, due to the absurd thesis mentioned above, most political debate has focused on the knowledge which is true Ivorian and who is not. The real problems have been overlooked. It is hoped that the outcome of the latest clashes is the beginning of the end of this thesis harmful to that priority be given to the cohesion of the Ivorian people and the best interests of its struggle for emancipation.

For this, the revolutionary forces and patriotic interest in continuing their fight against the policies violate the people’s unity and national sovereignty. So the conditions are met to end the presence of demeaning the French armies of the 43rd BIMA and the Unicorn and the forces of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire. In line with our aspiration to sovereignty, the Ivorian territory will be freed from the presence of all foreign armed forces.

Chaos in the Ivory Coast killed over 1,000 civilians

The real anti-imperialist and patriotic is looking for important objectives. In flights of nationalist and patriotic people often focus on the greatness of the Cote d’Ivoire and the Ivorian people. Or a great country or a great nation is the one who is among those who decide for themselves and for the whole of humanity. It is not possible to reach to take our country or our people on a pedestal as if it relies solely on others to solve their basic problems. Our ability to move in the right direction should lead us to believe that we are struck by a curse if, say, five years, France and the United Nations should organize new elections in Côte d’Ivoire. Any revolutionary energy deployed to snatch a multiparty system in 1990 will have been wasted in vain. It is true that this energy was gradually dissipated as the negative impact of power REIT to such an extent that it was insufficient to fully defend and independence of the popular will expressed at the ballot box November 28, 2010. If this energy was sufficient air strikes UN and French planes were not needed. These strikes have taken place and hastened the end of confrontation and unnecessary tragedy that took place. But now arises the question of legitimate pride that the people should get out of an act, an act intended to contribute to his release but was not entirely due to his creative genius, that the issue of pride is the issue of what should the Ivorian people to get in position to use to advantage and lasting achievements of the victory obtained under these conditions are not adequately controlled.

The thousands of dead, missing and injured not to mention the massive destruction of infrastructure and property of any kind are the testimony of the sacrifices made by the Ivorian people to get rid of power pro-imperialist and tyrannical Gbagbo. But the only downfall of Gbagbo does not solve the issue of development of Côte d’Ivoire, the slogan of “Ivorian revolution” which was punctuated by areas during the post-election struggles should not be abandoned. The people must pursue actions leading to better control the levers of emancipation that is sovereignty. In this perspective, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire invites the people to continue to “advance the revolution” to hasten the terms of the control of their destiny. Advancing the Revolution means so conduct battles on different fronts:

i) seek the repeal of the current constitution that created the war and replace it with a democratic constitution devoid of the ideological background of the Ivorian;

ii) deepening the freedoms of expression, assembly, organization and event;

iii) to effectively end impunity for criminals and political and economic to disgorge these criminals in this regard, the people must exercise extreme vigilance to ensure that the commission “dialogue-truth – reconciliation” announced by the government government’s emphasis on truth and justice as a prerequisite for any reconciliation between Ivorians and generally between the victims and their executioners;

iv) improving the living conditions of the people.

Abidjan, May 15, 2011.
The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire

Achy Ekissi, General Secretary of the PCRCI: ”We must repeal the constitution of 2000”

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PCRCI) voted last Thursday on the sociopolitical situation in the country. In an opening statement, the secretary general, said party Achy Ekissi pointed to the constitution which he says is partly responsible for the social divide today. Ainis he recommended its repeal. “We must repeal the constitution of 2000, as part of the source current crisis. “For him, it is a democratic constitution in which all citizens have equal rights and duties. “We must establish a constitution in which justice is effectively independent of the executive. A constitution in which power belongs to the people who actually delegates but has the tools to control it or take it back if that is his will, “he said. For general secétaire PCRCI, the new authorities should avoid the mistakes of reshaping that were brilliantly illustrated in the mismanagement of state affairs.

“We are at a turning point. What direction will the new government there?

Will there be where there is a single thought? A power that promotes illicit enrichment, corruption, a power which is subject to imperialism? Or will there be a democratic and modern fight against impunity for political crimes, economics, corruption, illicit enrichment? “Questioned the former head of PCRCI. He also commented on the new government he described as government-heavy look, he said, the very critical financial situation of the country due to looting of resources by the deposed regime. “This government is bloated. The country does not, at present, since the necessary financial situation left by the reshaping is very critical, “he said.

Appeal by PCRCI to the Peoples of Côte d’Ivoire to Continue to Fight for the Triumph of the Democratic Revolution

Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PCRCI)

The crisis of the neo-colonial system in Côte d’Ivoire continues to deepen every day. The economic base of the country has been destroyed throwing thousands of workers out of work and in the street. Youth unemployment and poverty grows. Political power was confiscated in 2005. Mismanagement, theft of public funds, the disruption of economic and administrative structures, and the impunity of political and economic crimes are the salient features of the management of power by the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

For the ruling class and imperialism, the outcome of this crisis in our country through elections they tried in vain to hold since October 2005, at the end of the mandate of the REIT. Again, the ruling parties from all political tendencies have agreed to hold presidential elections Oct. 31, 2010. Political parties and leaders are in the field and call to vote for their candidates and programs.

The PCRCI, proletarian party, decides to use this period to renew its appeal to workers, peasants, civil servants, small traders, artisans, youth, to guard against demagoguery continuing their relentless struggle for a revolutionary way to the current political, economic, social and spiritual is located in our country.

I NEW RISK OF BLOCKING OF THE ELECTORAL PROCESS, RISK OF ELECTIONS “CALAMITY” FLOUTS EXPRESSION OF THE PEOPLE’S SOVEREIGNTY, RISK OF REACTIONARY CIVIL WAR.

Barely 31 October 2010 is set and validated by the high bourgeoisie and imperialism as sordid manoeuvres designed to be seen a further postponement. On one side we display as before, almost certainly in a faith that date, as indicated by the candidates’ statements Laurent Gbagbo, Alassane Ouattara and Henri Konan Bedie, the output of the last CPC (Permanent Framework Dialogue) held September 19, 2010. On the other hand, we still maintain the focus.

Indeed the president of the republic out of the same CPC, said in substance that this time is good, but if by chance there is a postponement, it would not for political problems. As observers of politics in Côte d’Ivoire can verify is the same speech each time a deadline is set for the elections. It says that nothing can oppose the elections, then it prepares the mind to a postponement and it defers the effective date. In reality, the leaders have organized since 2005, voluntarily postponed several times.

The new element today is to be noted that the responsibilities of deferral are more clearly defined than before. The rebuilding or the presidential camp, the main political party is the REIT is currently the leader of the refusal front of the presidential election. This party will go to elections if it is sure to win. Should he be forced to go, the party has already held its repressive machine to proclaim himself the winner and try to win by force. The New Forces are the second force of the front of refusal of this election. This latter force hides his game and referee arguing that it was not being a protagonist, it is not directly addressed the question of the day.

On analysis, it appears that the Forces Nouvelles have more interest in perpetuating the current situation allowing them to retain their political, military, economic and social purchased instead of working for an election whose result, whatever it be, would jeopardize their current positions. The other components of the haute bourgeoisie Ivorian, particularly those constituting the Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), proclaim that they want to go in the presidential election and other elections as soon as possible. But in reality, they have an attitude of objective support to those who impede the holding of presidential elections. They make every effort to break the popular mobilization against the blocking of the electoral process. The latter case the most significant opposition to the popular initiative, was to sabotage the march which was scheduled for May 15, 2010. They prefer talks backstage with their friends in the presidential camp and the Forces Nouvelles.

They believe, however, the exploited masses and hungry they can snatch the holding of presidential elections, they will gain for escaping poverty. In fact the financial benefits they derive from their participation in government, make a deferral election is not any great harm to them. With less than a month of this election, the voters list is not displayed when it should be 45 days before the date. Identity cards and voter cards are not yet distributed. Distributions, if it takes place coincide with election campaigns, in an atmosphere of high tension, conducive to sabotage the operation. In addition to the issue of securing sites and dismantling of militias remains.

As mentioned above, ruling class, as a whole are willing to continue in the situation of illegality and indignities now. Ultimately, the failure to hold elections does not interfere fundamentally with the different clans of the haute bourgeoisie Ivorian. In these circumstances, we can say that the risk of postponement or risk of disastrous election flouting popular sovereignty is great.

If elections are held, under what security conditions they will be held to allow expression of popular sovereignty? The presidential clan said it was impossible that he loses the election. The RHDP said the same thing on his side. The presidential clan with the army and militias still armed, threatening all those who demonstrate against the “republic” during the elections and all those who challenge the results that give the winner in advance. Everything is for a new war between reactionary bourgeois factions, a war whose consequences will once again be disastrous for the people.

II CONDITIONS TO FACE ELECTION AS DESCRIBED ABOVE, WHAT THE ATTITUDES PCRCI RECOMMENDS TO THE MASSES

The conditions described above have not changed since 2007 and have long been perceived as such by the PCRCI. That’s why this party, in a statement dated August 31, 2010 and entitled: “Faced with the worsening the political and social crisis, threats to liberties and the blocking of the electoral process, only one solution: a Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) indicated that:

“ …. The people must know that he has no interest in participating in elections botched who can solve any problem. The PCRCI invites voters not to vote in protest. The PCRCI indicates that the only alternative for the organization of democratic elections guaranteeing the expression of popular sovereignty is to begin now the struggle for the conquest of a Provisional Revolutionary Government.”

Only such a government from the masses in struggle can set up a democratic constitution, to fulfill the conditions for democratic and transparent elections. Why does the PCRCI call for the people to boycott the elections in protest? Several reasons determine our position. First, it will fundamentally transform PCRCI Ivorian society and non-reforms add up in the neo-colonial present. Our strategy and tactics are therefore revolutionary and not reformist. Then, the international situation and the national situation are favourable to the revolution. Our belief is that it is not possible to exit the current neo-colonial system through reforms. The story of the struggles of peoples of the world teaches that.

Our own experience in Côte d’Ivoire said that the situation of imperialist domination based on power extremely corrupt power elites can not allow the elections to ensure the expression of workers and the people. Power elites have plundered the national wealth, up war chests, hungry people. They robbed her of her dignity and imposed corruption and defilement. In these circumstances, our task is to work with the revolutionizing of Ivorian society rather than participate in elections that will only keep the people under the domination of the imperialist power of the pros. The international situation is favourable for the deployment of a wave of revolutions in different countries around the world. The cons-world revolution which had been actively prepared since the end of World War II saw a victorious end in 1991 with the demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), but Pyrrhic.

For about a decade, the resources are exhausted against revolution. The world capitalist imperialist system, which had proclaimed its final victory, is installed in a serious economic and financial crisis that indicates that all will not come anytime soon. Logically, the neo-colonial system as a whole, of our country in particular, knows a deep political, economic, moral and spiritual. Face the challenges of global imperialist capitalism; we see that the revolutionary and progressive forces are upward around the world. This is evidenced by the disappearance of most diets pro-Americans in Latin America, the heroic struggles of Asian peoples against the intrigues of the imperialist coalition warfare led by the United States, the continued growth of the resistance of African peoples against the imperialism and the corrupt powers in his pay.

A proof of the growth of revolutionary struggles in Africa is the recent call by the Communist Party of Benin to establish a government of national salvation in this country instead of one of President Boni Yayi. Whatever the outcome of this struggle, the appeal itself is a major event that reflect the progress of revolutionary struggles in our continent. So if the national and international situations are favourable to the revolution that people must necessarily lead to full force, why do we still launch the appeal in the same period to force the current government to organize the presidential election and all other elections for which preparations are underway for five years?

The first reason is that many of the people is still under the influence of the propaganda that the elections and in particular those provided by the Ouagadougou Political Accord (OPA) are the solution to the Ivorian crisis. It is important that people check in practice that citizens are not willing to go to elections transparent and democratic. And since these elections will not solve the problems, except the possible replacement of a team of senior professional bourgeois imperialists corrupted by another, the facts show more than any speech, the correctness of the path advocated by the revolutionary PCRCI.

The second reason is that power elites have made to the agenda the fight against the denial of citizenship. Indeed, by conditioning the allocation of the identity card for registration on the electoral list, the fight for an electoral list does not exclude any Ivorian ultimately the struggle for the conditions for democratic elections, becomes a requirement hour. It is noteworthy that the Ivoirians are deprived of their national identity card for almost ten years. Ultimately, the PCRCI urged people to abstain from voting. He asked them to continue the fight to advance the revolution.

III THE MAIN TASK OF THE HOUR: ADVANCING THE REVOLUTION

The masses do not have to be demobilized and lulled by the promise of resolving the current crisis through elections prescribed by the APO. As noted above, these elections if they occur will be completed either by a reactionary war, either by replacing a corrupt clique with another. All during this campaign indicates the nature of future power. Practices of all the candidates consist of the development of corruption and defilement, attacks on the dignity of citizens with the distribution of some 1000 F notes, conveying forced people during political demonstrations, where demagoguery and promises pompous rage.

Against all these practices that undermine the dignity of peoples, ignoring the requirement of honesty and ethics, we choose instead to adopt an attitude of providing the best opportunity to advance the revolution by the action of the masses. We must, indeed, work to advance the revolution against the corrupt pro-imperialist power of the haute bourgeoisie; against the election promises are not likely to ensure the empowerment popular cons of reform proposals of the reactionary and neo-colonial power corrupt. We must, therefore, fight against all actions and proposals that demote the revolution. Work to advance the revolution in our country today is mainly to promote the idea of struggle committee is contribution to these committees for the political struggle in our country is struggling to raise these committees to state power.

Work to advance the revolution is about Provisional Revolutionary Government, to convene a constituent and independent democratic and modern republic. It also realizes that with a people conscious, mobilized and organized into people’s committees, guided by a revolutionary party, the victory over the reactionary forces in our country will be complete, decisive and final.

IV ENFORCEMENT OF THE BANKRUPTCY OF POWER: MAKING THE INSURGENCY AND PEOPLE ON THE AGENDA TO THE CONVENING OF A CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

The power of remaking went bankrupt. He failed in ten years of existence, to put the Ivorian people on the path of development. He destroyed the school, the health system, lack of economic infrastructure that existed. He has destroyed any notion of value, integrity and ethics. His main achievement is to have succeeded in erecting models in the eyes of many people, cheaters, and thieves, have amplified the political crimes.

One of his greatest successes, but also have aided the fraudulent enrichment of a handful of upstarts. To divert workers and the Ivorian people the real problems that prevent it to flourish, the power of remaking hangs for 10 years, the idea of turning millions of Ivoirians in stateless. In the event that the revolutionary thrust is inadequate, resulting in the following may occur:

(i) maintenance of Laurent Gbagbo with a truncated election, rigged elections or without;

(ii) came to power RHDP if Laurent Gbagbo fails to rig the elections and to hold by force;

(iii) occurrence of a coup.

Any combination of groups of the ruling class in power will, in substance, have the same disastrous consequence for the people. Why? The failure of the REIT is able to show more. New pledges of Gbagbo and the FPI are focused all on security and nothing for freedom, economy and society, particularly for youth work.

He reiterated that option Friday, August 27, 2010 at Divo during installation of the Republican Security Company (SRC III) indicating that the company must “subdue all those who contest the republic.” It’s another sign that his power remains unable to provide welfare to the people.

Therefore, it cannot merely use the baton, tear gas, the bayonet and even live ammunition against the people. As for the RHDP, the PDCI of Houphouet-Boigny, a time destroyed by Bedie, and recovering. The political, economic, social and cultural development of IBD is negative, the people have long noted. The RHDP nonetheless wants to return to power with the same income, namely, the total submission to imperialism, particularly French, the lack of freedom, a liberal economy in the sole international financial capital. In view of the contradictions between the various groups of the ruling class, the likelihood is great that there are clashes in elections on 31 October.

Imperialism could make the situation created a pretext to perpetrate a coup based on a handful of officers Ivorian. Chaos desired by the national power chauvinism of the radical reform may extend to trigger another reactionary civil war. Whatever the situation, the line of the people must obey a single slogan that is, we repeat, advance the revolution. This must go through the struggle for national identity cards, voter cards, and an election promise.

If elections are not held on the agreed dates, all institutions would become illegitimate and personalities who embody would be perjury. They will no longer have any legitimacy to lead the Ivory Coast. Then the masses will demand the resignation of those in power. Whatever the nature, extent and duration of a possible chaos caused by the REIT in order to cling to power, we must continue to advance the revolution against their failed power, the power of radical reform, in advancing the slogan of a constituent of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and independent democratic republic as a modern alternative to the end of the ruling class.

Even if establishing a new power, another power of elites pro-imperialist RHDP by strict application of our motto, advancing the revolution, will prevent this new power to challenge freedoms that will permit ongoing struggles to conquer. The masses will then continue on a broader basis and with more vigour, their fight for the Independent Modern Democratic Republic. Important political events will certainly occur before, during and after October 2010. We urge the masses to accept their own history, namely to release the power of imperialism and the ruling class, establish a BRM, a constituent in building a modern democratic, the only one able to meet the essential concerns peoples.

2010 presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire: Yes to popular sovereignty! No to reactionary civil war! No to foreign military interventions!

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PCRCI) is a revolutionary party in the Ivory Coast. It participates in the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations and claims the line of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania. As such, it is non-revisionist and fights for a proletarian revolution. Since 1990 it has been led by Achy Ekissi. Its militants have kidnapped, tortured and killed over the past ten years by the national-chauvinist “Young Patriot” militia organized by Gbagbo. The PCRCI called for a boycott of the elections between Gbagbo and Ouattara.

We have already written, Laurent Gbagbo has lost the presidential election on November 28, 2010 and must leave. But he is holding onto it despite the widely expressed popular will against him. He tries to present itself as a “resister,” a “patriot” that imperialism wants to “unfairly” deprived of his “office.”

All this is pure gossip to stay in power and perpetuate the interests of the mafia clan. It is even an insult to the Ivorian people to consider that Gbagbo is anti-imperialist and patriotic.

In October 2000, thanks to the support from the French government that has put him in a “safe place,” by lending him a powerful media (Radio France Internationale), he managed to win over General Robert Guei, one of his accomplices in the coup of 1999, and then rose to power under conditions described by himself as calamitous.

Power acquired with the strong support of French imperialism and which has always been devoted to the French Government cannot be described as anti-imperialist.

That French imperialism influenced the Ivorian election in 2000 (preferring and imposing Gbagbo) and then in 2010 (preferring and imposing Ouattara) simply means that the Ivorian people still have heroic struggles to be taken to achieve self-determination and to be a true sovereign state.

These are the depravities of the Gbagbo system which now imposes a threat of external military intervention, namely that of ECOWAS, with at least logistical support from French and U.S. imperialism. This depravity is the result of signing agreements against national sovereignty hoping to discard them when the time comes in a clear act of bad faith (call for foreign troops to settle the conflict with rebels, then request their departure because they do not support his electoral hold-up, signing of international agreements trampling on the Ivorian laws such as the certification of election results by the UN, etc.). The depravity is also going to accept an election to allegedly “end the crisis of identity” and reject the results from polls by the cancellation of the votes in all departments concerned with the basics identity problems to solve. This means the externalization of the populations of these areas compared to the national community and the electorate in particular. This is a snap back to square one, after 10 years of hard struggles against Ivoirité.

For PCRCI, Gbagbo is primarily responsible for the reactionary civil war that started since the announcement of election results. This reactionary civil war is already underway as the praetorian guard, the militias and mercenaries of Gbagbo have been at work since the first round of the presidential election.

People suspected of opposition to the camp of the incumbent president or belonging to specific groups are being hunted, taken from their homes in advance, marked with a cross and summarily shot. Hundreds of dead and missing were recorded to date with hundreds of people arbitrarily detained.

Faced with popular resistance, Gbagbo and his cronies who can no longer claim any legitimacy or legality of any more are forced to disclose the nature of civil-military fascist type of system.

In the face of external military intervention, Gbagbo opposes a call for a “civil war” with direct threats against certain national communities and abroad. In fact, Gbagbo called for the deepening of civil war with its emphasis on inter-communal conflict.

This military action is specifically requested by the Alassane Ouattara camp, opposed to popular struggles, and thus unable to mobilize the masses to a victory over the sham. The clan expects international imperialism to come to install it. Thus, French imperialism and U.S. imperialism prepare themselves through ECOWAS aggression, to act against Gbagbo in order to install Ouattara in power.

Aggression of imperialism will exponentially aggravate the suffering of the masses and imperialist domination. Gbagbo will excuse this intervention to enforce his threats against citizens of ECOWAS. This war will not give the people of Ivory Coast popular and national sovereignty — on the contrary, it will install senior bourgeois who will go with the imperialists to trample sovereignty even more.

Historically this is a textbook case of the imperialists in the political struggles in the country to hunt down the powers that do not please them and install their favorite.

For the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire, the crisis was born from the 2010 presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire, and has taken a dangerous step for the democratic and revolutionary movement. Under the guise of enforcing the people’s sovereignty, imperialism wants to install an armed intervention by the winner. This is unacceptable to the people. The liberation of the Ivorian nation from the impostors, fascists and torturers can only be the work of the masses themselves. People in this struggle must not put their fate in the hands of imperialism that they are ultimately fighting against.

Therefore, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire:

• denounces the menaces of foreign military interventions from wherever they come.
• denounces the use of mercenaries from Liberia and Angola by the Gbagbo clan.
• denouncing the demagogy of the Gbagbo clan, who want to call the masses to serve as human shields for a sauverson military fascist-type regime.
• calls on the peoples of Côte d’Ivoire to oppose by all means the abettors of reactionary war.

To give the best chance possible to win over the deceptions and to avoid reactionary civil war, the PCRCI calls for the formation of a united front directed against all those who want to use violence to impose Laurent Gbagbo and against foreign armies.

No to the reactionary civil war in which those bourgeois factions want to drag the people!

No to foreign armed intervention, no to imposing the sham of Laurent Gbagbo!

 All united for democracy, freedom and independence! 

Done at Abidjan, December 27, 2010.

Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire

About the Current Situation in the Ivory Coast

The Ivory Coast has just held its presidential election, the most expensive elections in the world and on Thursday December 2 2010 the CEI (independent Election Commission) declared Laurent GBAGBO defeated. The next day, the Constitutional Council, charged by the existing Constitution to proclaim the final results, invalidated the CEI because the CEI published the provisional results more than 72 hours afterwards. The Council, after annulling the votes in 7 departments, particularly in the north and center, proclaimed GBAGBO the winner. The UNOCI [UN mission in the Ivory Coast] and following it the Western powers rejected the results of the Constitutional Council and said they recognize only the results of the CEI with OUATTARA as the one legally elected according to the law of “certification” of elections in the Ivory Coast conferred on it by the Ouagadougou accords. Each protagonist clings to the results that proclaim him the winner. As a result: one country, two Presidents with the danger of a new civil war.

All the people of Benin are interested in these elections and their outcome as there is the matter of electing the President of Benin. The people of Benin are passionate about these elections and have applauded the (almost) defeat of GBAGBO, because for them GBAGBO is tyrant over the people just as his counterpart, Boni YAYI of Benin, is a tyrant and the defeat of the first foreshadows the defeat of the second. The people know that, just like GBAGBO, YAYI is clinging tooth and nail to power and they are eager for such an end to YAYI. This is good and just, except that the two cases are different.

In the Ivory Coast, the French Government and the other Western powers have made their choice of OUATTARA during and after the civil war and support him; in Benin, Boni YAYI is up to now the choice of French imperialism supported by the European Commission and the UN Development Program. In the Ivory Coast, the CEI has the right to give the provisional results. In Benin, the CENA [Autonomous National Electoral Commission], the counterpart of the CEI, does not. Here the CENA’s role is only to collect and compile the results that it transmits to the Constitutional Court, which publishes the provisional results and has the right to nullify votes, receive protests and proclaim the final results. Here, the Constitutional Court is in the hands Robert DOSSOU and Theodore HOLO, agents of French imperialism and supporters of Boni YAYI.

A former President of Benin, KEREKOU, who knows well what he was talking about, said that the President of Benin is not chosen in Benin but in Paris. And this is true in the current African context where elections are carried out by corruption, buying of votes, fraud, intimidation and lies. It is always people supported politically, in the media, financially and sometimes militarily by the dominant imperialism (French in the case of Benin and Ivory Coast) who win or are declared the winner (in the case of Togo, Burkina-Faso and Gabon). And as it is well established in Benin under the Renewal and elsewhere in Africa, in the elections, it is not always the one who has the most votes at the ballot box who is declared the winner by the institutions charged with proclaiming the results; these institutions are used or ignored or put in competition with each other in order to ensure that the preferred candidate wins.

In the case of the Ivory Coast in 2010, the French had made their choice before the election and that was OUATTARA; they have done and are doing everything for him to win and to enter the Presidential Palace to serve their interests. The “international community” has been mobilized for this purpose and it has even invented a new concept: the certification of the result by the UNOCI which places itself above national agencies, as if the Ivory Coast were a protectorate. This interference in the Ivory Coast by foreign powers is certainly inadmissible for every patriot and democrat; this tramples underfoot its sovereignty, interference up to threats of armed interventions.

As to GBAGBO, behind his speech and nationalist airs, he has ended up by giving everything away to the French and other multinationals and no longer has anything to offer. His brutal, tyrannical and corrupt manners eventually wore out numbers of his original followers and made him a worn out and less credible agent for the French; he cannot contain the rebellion created by the French themselves and OUATTARA, and this requires that the latter take the reins to extinguish the flames of war that they themselves lit and to stabilize the country. GBAGBO has been dropped and must leave.

GBAGBO must go but Alassane OUATTARA is an open agent of international financial capital and, as such, is dangerous both for the people of the Ivory Coast and for Africa. He will be no better for the Ivory Coast as is YAYI for Benin.

Cotonou, December 7, 2010

Communist Party of Benin

Results of the presidential election in the Ivory Coast: Respect the popular will, No to reactionary civil war!

After ten years of a social-political crisis that has led to the pauperization of the popular masses, and five years of equivocation, the presidential election in the Ivory Coast has finally been held. According to official figures, participation has been heavy (83% in the first round and about 81% in the second). The results made public by the Independent Electoral Commission and confirmed by the UN delegation in the Ivory Coast gave 54.1% of the votes to Alassane Ouattara and 45.9% to Laurent Gbabgo. However, the Constitutional Council has unjustly declared the elections in 7 regions void and declared Gbabgo the winner. According to our observations, Alassane Ouattara had the support of the voters. The arguments given for the “presidential majority” supporting Laurent Gbabgo and rejecting the results do not hold weight. The Constitutional Council has not been a judge in the elections, but a supporter of Gbabgo. We will soon speak about the disagreements of the protagonists with regard to the results.

The electoral struggle for the presidency has ended with the logically declared victory of Alassane Ouattara. But the rejection of the results of the ballots by Laurent Gbabgo has led to two presidents of the republic being “invested” and two governments. The threat of confrontations up to the unleashing of a civil war is real.

The Revolutionary Communist Party of the Ivory Coast (PCRCI) is convinced that a civil war would be disastrous since it would only aggravate the situation of the popular masses and of the whole country, and strengthen imperialist domination. It is of the greatest importance that everything be done so that the popular will is accepted by all the protagonists. For our part the PCRCI will make every effort to avoid a reactionary civil war that is on the horizon. All actions that attempt to divide the people of the Ivory Coast, to incite them to tribal and racial hatred and xenophobia must be fought and rejected.

At this time the most important and most urgent thing is to do everything to make everyone understand the need to respect the will of the majority shown in the ballot of last November 28 and thus avoid a reactionary civil war.

Therefore, the PCRCI calls on the peoples of the Ivory Coast to say No to fraud, No to reactionary civil war and adventure. We call on the peoples to form committees of struggle against fraud and against the incitation to reactionary civil war. Let us take the road to a better future, that of developing the revolution, which will reconcile Ivoirians with each other.

Abidjan, December 6, 2010

Revolutionary Communist Party of the Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast Communists: “We Must Maintain Pressure”

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PCRCI) is a revolutionary party in the Ivory Coast. It participates in the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations and claims the line of Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania. As such, it is non-revisionist and fights for a proletarian revolution. Since 1990 it has been led by Achy Ekissi. Its militants have kidnapped, tortured and killed over the past ten years by the national-cahuvenist “Young Patriot” militia organized by Gbagbo. The PCRCI called for a boycott of the elections between Gbagbo and Ouattara.

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PCRCI) expressed yesterday his support for the protests triggered by the opposition. He urged it to increase pressure on power.

On the occasion of the press conference he hosted at party headquarters located in Williamsville, its General Secretary, Achy Ekissi, argued that Côte d’Ivoire will emerge from the crisis through popular movements. “The only conclusion that can ensure the well-being of the masses, leading to democratic elections and sovereignty, is the revolution, the triumph of people’s power,” argued Achy.

The Communists have denounced the dissolution of the electoral commission and the government. Seeing Laurent Gbagbo will retrieve the process to organize the fraud. According to Achy, Article 48 on which the ruling of the President of the Republic had been “misused.” He added: “The government uses past articles, ancestors of the infamous Article 48. It is reprehensible and cannot justify the current undemocratic decisions of Laurent Gbagbo.” Therefore, the application PCRCI “the repeal of the undemocratic constitution in force and adopting a new constitution.”