|
Comoros Political Dynamics
In the immediate aftermath of the Abdallah
assassination and
subsequent events of late 1989, a limited amount of
political
healing occurred in Comoros. Denard and his fellow
mercenaries
were expelled, although the fate of their vast financial
holdings
in the islands remained unclear. With the South African
government temporarily out of the picture, French
officials now
oversaw the police and the army, and the remnants of the
GP were
under the watchful eye of French paratroopers. Among those
released in a general amnesty for political prisoners was
Mustapha Said Cheikh, leader of the opposition FD who had
been
imprisoned for four years for alleged involvement in the
unsuccessful March 1985 coup. He was quickly proposed as a
possible presidential candidate. Also suggested was
Mohamed Taki,
one-time National Assembly president whose power had been
diminished by Abdallah's constitutional maneuvers; he had
subsequently gone into exile in France, where his
entourage
reportedly included two mercenary bodyguards. Also
announcing for
the presidency was Said Ali Kemal, who had been living in
quiet
exile in Paris since being exposed as the sponsor of
Australian
mercenaries who had plotted to overthrow the Abdallah
government
in 1983. In late December 1989, members of the formerly
banned
opposition, along with President Djohar, decided to form a
provisional "national unity" government and to hold a
multiparty
presidential election in 1990.
In an awkward but somehow effective campaign to keep
himself
in power, Djohar spent much of the early 1990s playing a
political shell game with the opposition. He moved
election dates
backward and forward and sanctioned irregularities, giving
his
opponents little choice but to condemn the balloting as
invalid.
Djohar began this strategy within weeks of his
installation as
interim president, rescheduling the presidential election
set for
January 14, 1990 to February 18. Djohar's decision was met
with
demonstrations and violence that marked an abrupt end to
the
post-Abdallah period of national unity, hardly three weeks
after
Bob Denard had been expelled from the country. The
February 18
balloting broke down shortly after the polls opened. The
government was accused of widespread fraud, including
issuing
multiple voting cards to some voters and opening the polls
to
voters who looked well below the minimum age of eighteen.
Elections were rescheduled for March 4, 1990 with a
runoff on
March 11; Djohar was the official victor, claiming 55
percent of
the vote over runner-up Mohamed Taki's 45 percent. Djohar
had run
under the banner of the Union Comorienne pour le Progrès
(Udzima-
-Comoran Union for Progress), basically a recycled version
of
Ahmed Abdallah's old UCP, whereas Taki had represented the
National Union for Comoran Democracy (Union Nationale pour
la
Démocratie Comorien--UNDC). As would be the case in other
Comoran
elections in the 1990s, the sole major issue appeared to
be the
character and ability of the incumbent president rather
than any
matter of public policy or ideology. The Supreme Court
certified
the results of the election, despite strong evidence that
the
Ministry of Interior had altered the vote count,
especially in
the first round, to favor Djohar at Taki's expense.
In March 1992, with two of the government's Udzima
ministers
having broken away to form a new party and conflict among
the
remaining Udzima ministers growing, Djohar headed off the
complete collapse of his government by convening a
multiparty
constitutional convention. He scheduled a referendum on
the new
document in May, with general elections in June and
balloting for
local offices in July. After one postponement, the
referendum was
held on June 7. The Constitution of 1992 passed with about
74
percent of the vote, despite intensive campaigning against
it by
the FD and Udzima, which by this point opposed President
Djohar.
Among the new document's elements were articles calling
for a
bicameral legislature and a limit on presidential tenure
to two
five-year terms.
The legislative elections, postponed several times,
finally
were held on November 22 and 29, 1992. They were preceded
in late
September by an attempted coup by junior army officers,
allegedly
with the support of opposition politicians. Possible
motives for
the coup were an unpopular restructuring program mandated
by the
World Bank, which entailed sharp reductions in the number
of
civil servants, and President Djohar's ambiguous threat on
September 10 that his main opponents would "not be around
for the
elections." Djohar used the coup attempt as an opportunity
to
jail six military men and six opposition leaders "under
conditions of extreme illegality," according to the
Comoran
Association of Human Rights (Association Comorienne des
Droits
Humains--ACDH).
Although a trio of French public officials sent to
observe
the balloting judged the election generally democratic,
President
Djohar's most prominent and determined opponents spent the
voting
days either in hiding or in jail. Two of the most
important of
the republic's twenty-four political parties, Udzima and
the
UNDC, boycotted the election. Given the president's own
lack of
party support, he spent most of 1993 cobbling together one
government after another; at one point, in late spring
1993, he
formed two governments in the space of three weeks.
The events of a single day in July 1993 perhaps summed
up the
near-term prospects of politics in Comoros. On July 23,
heeding
demands that he call legislative elections (he had
dissolved
parliament on June 18 because of its inability to agree to
a
candidate for prime minister and because of the lack of a
government majority) or else face the prospect of "other
forms of
action" by the opposition, Djohar scheduled voting for
late
October. That same day, his government arrested two
opposition
leaders for public criticism of the president.
The scheduled elections were again postponed--for the
fourth
time--until December 1993. On November 17, 1993, Djohar
created a
new National Electoral Commission, said to be
appropriately
representative of the various political parties. Meanwhile
Djohar
had established a new progovernment party, the Rally for
Democracy and Renewal (Rassemblement pour la Démocratie et
le
Renouveau--RDR). In the first round of elections on
December 12,
which featured twenty-four parties with 214 candidates for
fortytwo seats, various voting irregularities occurred,
including the
failure to issue voting cards to some 30 percent of
eligible
voters. The government announced that Djohar's party had
won
twenty-one seats with three seats remaining to be
contested. Most
opposition parties stated that they would not sit in the
assembly
and also refused to participate in the postponed second
stage
elections, which were supervised by the Ministry of
Interior and
the gendarmerie after the National Electoral Commission
disintegrated. As a result, the RDR gained a total of
twenty-two
seats, and Djohar appointed RDR secretary general Mohamed
Abdou
Madi as prime minister.
Denouncing the proceedings, on January 17, 1994,
thirteen
opposition parties formed a combined Forum for National
Recovery
(Forum pour le Redressement National--FRN). The Udzima
Party
began broadcasting articles about Comoros appearing in the
Indian Ocean Newsletter, including criticisms of
the RDR.
In consequence, its radio station, Voix des Îles (Voice
of the
Islands) was confiscated by the government in mid-February
1994--
in September 1993, the radio station belonging to Abbas
Djoussouf, who later became leader of the RDR, had been
closed.
Tensions increased, and in March 1994 an assassination
attempt
against Djohar occurred. At the end of May, civil service
employees went on strike, including teachers, and violence
erupted in mid-June when the FRN prepared to meet.
Data as of August 1994
|
