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
The Espresso Stalinist 