The President of the Comoros Azali Assoumani has taken up the idea of organizing a meeting of all the political parties in order to define the future of the country. A national inter-Comorian dialogue which was initially wanted by the opposition.
Since 2018, a constitutional referendum has allowed President Azali Assoumani to reign supreme over the Comoros. He was thus able to run for a new term in 2019, won hands down. The opposition, which compares its regime to a “dictatorship”, has never recognized the results of the 2019 election and denounced characterized fraud.
Azali is a political chameleon. He seized power in 1999 in a coup. Then in 2002, he organized a presidential election which he won. He was content with one term, but returned to politics in 2016. Azali claims to be a “profound democrat”, which is disputed by the opposition which, at each election, denounces irregularities.
Get out of the crisis
This time, it’s about finding a way out of the political crisis that has shaken the Comoros since 2019. This dialogue is intended to be inclusive and for three weeks everyone can present a theme they want to see discussed. The executive, always anxious to show itself in its most beautiful democratic finery, invited everyone, politicians but also members of civil society. And what was initially purely political has expanded to economic and social issues. It will be a question of debating in order to find solutions for the future of the Comoros.
Despite everything, the central point remains political. Reform of the electoral commission, electoral law, statute of the opposition, law on political parties, electoral boundaries. The inter-Comorian national dialogue is essential, according to its coordinator Mohamed Toihir, “as a means of resolving or preventing socio-political conflict”.
In his capacity as Chairman of the African Union, Senegalese President Macky Sall traveled to the Comoros for a visit from February 25 to 27. A visit which was also intended to support the process.
A “masquerade” according to the opposition
However, the opposition union will not participate finally at this “more masquerade”, on his terms. As a preamble and a gesture of goodwill, the opposition demanded the release of political prisoners, in particular former President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi. “The dictator Assoumani Azali will reunite with himself, he will talk to himself, admire his navel, puff out his chest, be congratulated by his pugs… but in total discredit”writes the opposition website Le Mohélien, referring to a “deaf monologue”.
The opposition judges that the Comoros are “a country economically and financially battered, socially repressive, politically blocked and institutionally paralyzed”. As a result, its representatives have refused dialogue, “whose conclusions are already known in advance“, underlined the former governor Mouigni Baraka Said Soilihi.
Mistrust is total, which leaves little hope of a top-level exit from this great debate.