NIGER

Tandja: victim of his own inordinate ambition

Niger's President Tandja pays dearly for perpetuating himself in power. He's overthrown by soldiers who promise to return the country quickly to "democracy and good governance." Will they?

Can one illegality be used to correct another? This is the question that soldiers who cut short Niger Republic's President Mamadou Tandja's self-succession victory dance and defiance of world opinion, have to answer urgently. In the third coup in west Africa in the last 18 months, Nigerien troops in February, stormed the presidential palace in Niamey during a cabinet meeting, abducting Tandja and his ministers before announcing that they were suspending the constitution and dissolving all state institutions.

The new military leader Colonel Salou Djibo and his Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy have promised to turn Niger into an example of "democracy and good governance." The immediate past commander of Niger's Military Zone One, which includes Niamey, Dosso and the Tillaberi regions, Djibo had participated in peace keeping missions to Ivory Coast and the Congo.

Yet, as Niger's recent history proves, the end does not always justify the means. For instance, eleven years ago, Niger's military similarly took over government. The then head of state, Colonel Ibrahim Bare Mainassara, was assassinated during that coup, but civilian rule was restored within a year. Interestingly, however, civilian rule was restored to a Mamadou Tandja, a former soldier who went on to re-write Niger's constitution and removed presidential term limits to enable him perpetuate himself in power.

Against this backdrop, therefore, the real intention of the coup plotters still remains open to question, particularly because another leading member of the military junta, Colonel Djibrilla Hima Hamidou, was the spokesman during the last military takeover in 1999. There is also well-founded concern that the military group could attempt to cling to power, as the junta in Guinea did following a December 2008 coup. The Guinean coup leader first promised to hold elections in which he would not run, only to later suggest he may have changed his mind. A year later, he went into voluntarily exile after his aide-de-camp tried to assassinate him.

Salou Djibo, leader of the military junta that shoved President Tandja out of power. AP

Initially praised for helping restore relative stability to his country, Tandja had in February last year brushed aside domestic and international appeals not to change his country's constitution and stay in power. He tried to pressure the opposition-dominated National Assembly, or parliament, to approve a plan by him to change the constitution to enable him continue in office even after his second and last five-year term ended in December 2009.

Not only did the parliament reject the president's demand, especially, on grounds that the constitution forbade any vote on tenure extension, the president's opponents also went to the highest court of the land to seek redress on the matter. After the constitutional court ruled his plans as illegal, Tandja promptly invoked a clause in the same constitution he was about to amend and dissolved parliament. At the same time, he dismissed members of the Constitutional Court and announced a date in August for the holding of a national referendum on a new constitution. There was uproar as the political opposition and civil society groups lined up against him, threatening to call out the masses onto the streets, calling strikes, organising rallies and calling for a boycott of the referendum.

Following his dissolution of parliament and sacking the Constitutional Court, Tandja began to rule by decree, becoming answerable to no-one, including the electorate who had voted him into power in 1999 and 2004.

Fearing a breakdown of law and order, or worse still, an outbreak of civil war, leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) waded in, urging Tandja and the opposition to go into meaningful dialogue in order to find an amicable solution to the crisis. But Tandja refused.

He also rejected appeals to delay a referendum on his new constitution, at least until the leadership of the regional grouping could manage to broker a compromise arrangement between him and the opposition.

Pleas by the two countries thought to have the most influence over Niger were similarly turned down. Leaders of France, Niger's former colonial power and Nigeria, Niger's powerful neighbour to the south, sent emissaries to Niamey to try to bring both sides together. But, Tandja's refusal to concede an inch of ground made any kind of negotiations impossible.

The EU, which provides a great deal of financial and technical support to Niger, made veiled threats of their own and efforts by the AU and the Americans were equally rebuffed.

Last August, Tandja called everybody's bluff and conducted the referendum, which his "yes" camp naturally won. Before then, he'd attempted to legitimise his actions by appointing a new, subservient Constitutional Court, which was sure to give the referendum a clean bill of health.

A retired army colonel, Tandja was born in 1938 in Maine Soroa, 1,400km (870 miles) east of the capital, Niamey, of an Arab father and a Kanuri mother. He was raised in a family of shepherds, but has a reputation as a pragmatist.

He first came to power in December 1999 following what the international community called "a fair and transparent democratic electoral process" just eight months after the country's then most recent military takeover. He was re-elected in 2004, a first in Niger and a development that was then touted as proof of Niger's "democratic maturity."

It was in 2005 that Tandja's government experienced its first serious social crisis. Locust attacks and poor rainfall led to large-scale protests organised by civil society groups and opposition parties.

Civil society groups denounced hikes in the prices of basic commodities like sugar, milk and wheat flower. Opposition parties accused his government of "unprecedented and rampant corruption".

The government was heavily criticised for doing too little, too late to prevent the failed harvests which turned into acute food shortages, affecting some 3.5 million people.

The government rejected calls for the free distribution of food and instead subsidised the cost of staple foods. But the very poorest said they still could not afford to buy enough to stave off hunger. Journalists who reported on the scale of the problems were harassed.

In addition, the president launched a scathing attack on UN aid agencies, accusing them of exaggerating the scale of the problems in order to get donor funds. He also accused opposition parties of trying to gain political mileage out from the crisis.

And though Niger became a test-case on the limits of diplomacy in stemming the tide of west African leaders changing their country's constitution to perpetuate themselves in office, ECOWAS maintained that it had no business removing elected heads of states. Sadly and ultimately, a coup by Niger's military, not ECOWAS's diplomacy was what ended Tandja's travesty.

In the long run, the February coup could be a step towards the restoration of democracy. But that depends on whether its instigators stick to their stated goal of bringing back constitutional rule. It also depends on how much pressure ECOWAS, the AU, and the international community can put on Djibo and his colleagues to hold elections. Unfortunately, once the military gets a taste of power, it seldom hands it back to civilian rulers quickly or unconditionally.