Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, Ike Ekweremadu, has announced that ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, will pass a law making coups illegal.
ECOWAS as a community has had to deal with WAY more coups than any Regional Economic Community really should. West Africa had 27 successful coups between 1963 and 2000. In the past year, ECOWAS has been busy condemning coups in Mali and Guinea-Bissau, and before that Niger, Guinea, etc.
How exactly does one make coups illegal? Aren't they illegal to begin with?
 |
| Coup Leaders in Mali, April 2012 |
The way ECOWAS will do it? By forcing coup plotters to be tried in the Community Court of Justice, ECOWAS's court, even if their government forgives them.
 |
| ECOWAS Uniform |
Random Kate Thought: Successful coups are always forgiven by the government, because if a coup is successful, the coup leaders
become the government. It's hard to say why so many coups have happened in West Africa. Some say it's a domino effect, where the military sees a coup in its neighboring country and then decides to try something itself. There is certainly a culture of coups. Ghana, the leading democracy in the region, has had 7 coups, possibly the most in West Africa. So that would suggest that coups aren't all that bad. Sometimes military governments are actually cleaning out the palace, as they claim to be. But other times, like in the recent coup in Guinea-Bissau, the army just wants to stop democratic elections that might endanger their cocaine trade. Bad news bears.
No comments:
Post a Comment