Burkina Faso: Revolution first, democracy second – President Ibrahim Traoré’s bold gamble
For months now, “anti-AES” rhetoric has flourished on television sets, carefully amplified by imperialists and their local lackeys. Their sole objective? To smear the leaders of the Alliance of Sahel States, even at the cost of ridiculing themselves on international broadcasts.
These servants of imperialism hammer home that their democratic model is the only path to stability in the Sahel.
But they pretend to forget a glaring truth: insecurity arrived and took root precisely under regimes elected according to so-called “orthodox” democratic rules and principles.
This is where Burkina Faso’s President, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, demonstrates rare courage. While many are content to repeat Western mantras, he dares to say aloud what millions of Africans quietly think: democracy cannot be an external injunction disconnected from on-the-ground realities.
It must be an outcome, the fruit of a profound inner revolution, a reshaping of values and institutions.
The truth is that democratic principles, with their often ill-adapted multiparty systems, sometimes divide more than they unite.
Electoral competitions degenerate into ethnic wars, political transitions into legal coups, and checks and balances into security paralysis.
While elected officials bickered in assemblies, the terrorists advanced methodically.
The vision of Ibrahim Traoré is therefore a healthy break. He does not reject democracy per se, but rather its imposed, rushed, hollowed-out version stripped of popular substance.
For him, before speaking of elections, the state must be rebuilt, every square kilometre of territory reconquered, dignity and security restored to citizens.
Democracy will come later, naturally, because it will be born from the will of liberated peoples, not from an external decree.
Imperialists and their henchmen can continue shouting on their talk shows. The peoples of the Sahel see clearly.
They know that those who shout loudest for democracy are often those who turned a blind eye to terrorism when it struck their “inconvenient” allies.
The courage of Ibrahim Traoré in speaking truth, even when it is uncomfortable.
And that is why today, he embodies the hope of an Africa that liberates itself beginning by freeing itself from hollow words.
