Dear Tingasiga:
The president of the republic came to power through
military means. After years of undisguised military rule, the
president supervised the adoption of a new constitution that paved
the way for him to make the transition from official military rule
to an elected presidency.
With the advantage of incumbency, and the opposition
groups in disarray, the president sleepwalked into his old office,
the whole thing legitimized by voters who were quite content with
"no change."
During his last election under the new constitution,
the president assured his people that he needed one last term to
prepare for a smooth transition to a new leadership.
No sooner had he been sworn in for his very last term
than whispers began to circulate that the country could not survive
without him at the helm.
The whispers soon turned into recitals,
then choruses of reverence and pleading and finally a symphony of a
thousand singing of Ekisanja, a third elected term for the man whose
departure from power was unthinkable to most of those whose personal
fortunes hinged on his presidency.
The president himself, while feigning disinterest, let
it be known that he would not stand in the way should the people
choose to ask him to continue to rule them.
His prime minister told the world that though the
constitution required the president to relinquish power at the end
of his second elected term, he [the president] had "decided to
sacrifice himself once more" for the sake of his people. One was
left in a most lugubrious mood upon learning of the prime minister's
deceptive justification for the fraud.
And so the constitution was duly adjusted to suit the
president's interests. Another fraudulent election was held to
legitimize the predetermined self-succession, the charade once again
given a seal of approval by the president's hand-picked electoral
commission.
Everything was going according to script, the
president and his courtiers sharply focused on the next Act in the
long play in which the citizens were, as usual, mere extras, their
role being to legitimize the fraud every five years, before
repairing to their misery in the villages and slums of the republic.
Then came the great spoiler, the grim ripper that
fears no one, not even the most heavily armed and vicious
presidential protection brigade on the continent.
The president, a full General in his country's armed
forces, was felled by a simple heart attack as he was about to be
flown off to Europe for treatment. Not even the publicly funded
presidential jet could save the man's life. Not even the hundreds of
millions of dollars stashed away in places known and unknown could
stay the hand of death.
One can imagine his guards and court dancers
helplessly struggling to believe that the immortal man whose word
had been the law, one who was only second to God, had entered
eternal sleep across the Great River, in a land to which he had
dispatched a fair number of opponents during his many years on the
throne.
One can imagine the shock and fear that must have
gripped the citizens upon hearing that their only visionary ruler,
the indispensable General, he who was his country and his country
him, was no more.
It was very revealing that within minutes of the great
man's death, his country's borders and airspace were closed. Clearly
his country had not prepared for life after their only visionary
president. The man was not supposed to die. At least not yet.
Not even his long history of ill-health had persuaded
his courtiers and a large section of his countrymen that the
gentleman was made of the same flesh, bones and blood that the
beggars on the city streets paraded naked to curious tourists.
Denial and delusion are powerful weaknesses in the
minds of those feasting at the trough. The reality of their ruler's
mortality is too frightening to contemplate. Indeed anyone foolish
enough to raise the question is invariably branded an enemy of the
state. The president is here to stay. Certainly this president, who
had survived many assassination attempts and a plane crash many
years ago, was here to stay!
Truth to tell, one understood why millions of the
president's subjects could not imagine life without him. Most of the
adults in the land had never known another ruler.
Gnassingbe Eyadema became de-facto ruler of Togo on
January 13, 1963 after staging a military coup, Africa's first, in
which Sylvanus Olympio, the democratically elected president was
assassinated as he attempted to scale the wall of the American
ambassador's residence.
The 28-year old Sergeant Etienne Eyadema promptly
installed one Nicholas Grunitsky as puppet president, the charade
lasting four years before the latter was relieved of his misery in
another coup on January 13, 1967.
Eyadema, who would later drop the French first name in
favour of the African Gnassingbe, became the official president of
Togo. He held onto his throne until Saturday February 5, 2005, when
he gave up his ghost, losing a battle against cholesterol and other
maladies that afflict lesser mortals.
To put it differently, Eyadema became de facto ruler
when I was a barefooted primary five pupil at Kihanga Boys Primary
School with hair only on my head, long before I figured out how
babies were really made.
Countries like Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho and
Botswana had not yet gained political independence from Britain when
Eyadema took control of the ex-French colony of Togoland.
His long rule, assured through use of the military
even after the country had adopted civilian governance under a
democratic constitution, was part of Togo's reality. A Togo without
Eyadema was as unthinkable as the Earth without its Moon.
Of course Eyadema himself had prepared a back-up plan,
just in case the angry ghosts of his victims overcame his Voodoo
protectors from neighbouring Cotonou, Benin.
One of his sons was a senior officer in the army.
Another son, Faure Eyadema, was a powerful minister in the
government. And so within minutes of the older man's death two days
ago, Faure Eyadema was sworn in as "acting president", to "maintain
stability." Only a fool believes that Acting President Eyadema II
will voluntarily yield the throne to another Togolese.
Yet plans for an Eyadema dynasty will probably fail.
To be sure, I for one have already started the countdown towards a
Togolese disaster, the likes of which we have already witnessed in
places like the Congo Free State and Cote D'Ivoire.
Togo will collapse, not because Eyadema is dead, but
because he stayed too long in power, never allowing the country to
develop institutions and to become independent of him.
Instead of abiding by his own constitution, and
instead of listening to numerous appeals from Togo's well wishers
beseeching him to abandon his Kisanja campaign in 2003, Eyadema,
utterly intoxicated with power, proceeded to manipulate the Togolese
parliament, got the constitution amended to lift presidential term
limits, "won" re-election and resumed his life presidency.
Less than two years later, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who
believed that he was the only visionary ruler of Togo, the one whose
wisdom and services the country still needed, the man who stood
between his people and chaos, is dead. Very dead.
His country
may have died with him.
E-mail:
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