Libreville (Gabon), June 7th, 2013
Right of
reply to the open letter from Mr. Richard Attias which appeared in Gabonese
newspapers "Gabon Matin" on 5 June 2013 and L’Union on 7 June 2013
and was addressed to the movement " Ça suffit comme ça "
Mr Attias,
Following the announcement by all media, including
those in the tank for the regime in power, of the discovery in Libreville (in
the premises of the Professional Training Center Basile Ondimba), of a 50kg bag
of human organs, you have deemed it appropriate to send to us an open attempt
to discredit our civic engagement aimed, among other things, to put an end to
barbaric practices such as human sacrifices which are now commonplace and
standardized in our country.
Yes! We intend to take advantage of the opportunity
afforded us by your New York Forum Africa - financed at great expense by the
Gabonese taxpayers that we are - to make our criticisms and objections heard;
our cries, our tears, our pain, our indignation. "Your" (?)
International community (personal?) is influential. Certainly. Of good
character? Only in Gabon can individual get away with such an insult to the
people struggling for their dignity and survival.
The fact that a “celebrity” manager who makes a living
by organizing expensive gatherings of "hundreds of business figures,
politicians, Nobel Prize winners ..." would buys a full page of a
newspaper to send us an open letter is an implicit recognition of our
potential.
Mr. Richard Attias,
You get a presumption of intelligence. So, to your
open letter, the eminent communicator you are, certainly considered appropriate
to "get down" to what you believed to be the level of the Gabonese
people. But Mr. Attias, all Gabonese are not at the same low level as your
friends predators of the Republic! Sincerely, we suggest that you send us an
open letter that is better constructed and more serious.
For your information, the Front of Gabonese Indignants
(FIG) is, as its name suggests, a front. It brings together around a common
purpose, entities with profiles and centers of interest that are varied:
associations, political parties, trade unions, professional associations,
non-affiliated individuals ... All the social body of our country is
represented in FIG. It is not the fact of a single collective such as “Ça
Suffit Comme Ça.” Come defend your imposture at the Indignants Forum.
You accuse us of having besmirched your person and
that of your wife, and you boast of having made us afraid to debate you. We
would like that you show us one press release from the Indignants Front which took
the public debate and turned it into a personal debate, and remind us in what
conditions you officially invited the Indignants Front to a debate. You wish to
debate? We're ready. Wherever and whenever you want. Including within your
forum, if that reassures you. Given your apparent denial of the Gabonese
genius, we offer you this delightful opportunity to prove to our people and to
"your" international opinion that you're right.
Is it gossip when we regret that the security and defence
forces have as their single task, not to ensure the safety of people and
property, but to serve as enforcers of a dictatorship?
The content of your open letter in itself, justifies
our strong opposition to your sham and your determination to tear the pages of
the ledger of our history that we are writing; when you pretend to think about
Gabon in our place and better than us. Indeed, by hanging out with the dark forces
which pay you handsomely with the development money that is stolen from us, you
end up in the same mental disposition as theirs. You, yourself, recognize that
your forum would cost nearly $ 4 million, or about 2.5 billion CFA francs. With
that kind of money, do you know how many classrooms and hospital beds the
Gabonese government could afford? Certainly not, because you are perfectly
"impermeable" to such considerations.
Your client Ali Bongo shouts loudly that Gabon is an
emerging country. We would not be surprised that you relayed this childish
assumption to your "international
community" (sic). As you postulate, without providing any illustration
and without describing any tangibility, that from "exchanges" and "experience
sharing" during your forum, " goodwill,
investment decisions, are born; but above all, solutions to problems when they
are posed in an environment of intellectual honesty and positive and
constructive "critical spirit.
Your comments illustrate abundantly the singular
respect you have for criticism. They also reflect your degree of "intellectual honesty" when, taking
care not to specify which ones, because they do not exist, you declare that the
New York Forum Africa 2012 "helped
initiate many development projects, some which will be officially launched in
the coming weeks, let alone the multiple sectors of the local economy that
benefit from this event and its induced effects." Yet, it is
blindingly obvious: the 5 points of the final declaration of NYFA 2012 are a
tangle of vague rhetoric, peremptory truisms and pious nonsense without any
identification; of which leading economists, financiers and decision makers of
the world realize the feat of being "concrete"
without advancing a single figure. We understand why you say that "Gabon is a business model."
On May 10, you, with incredible aplomb, dared to
declare that there had been "the creation
of 9,000 companies in Gabon in 2012." You probably wanted to talk
about "9,000 business" of ritual crimes, because it is the only area
where Ali and Sylvia Bongo’s Gabon is truly emerging.
"Mouth of
honey, heart of gall," says a Tuareg proverb. Mr. Richard Attias, who
do you think you are? Do you think that we are PDG partisans immured in the
contradictions of the oral tradition, because they heard these words hammered
by those from whom they pick up the crumbs, and who boast that Gabon is an
emerging country while they do not even have the lowest common denominator of
basic infrastructure, that they import their food, that they have water everywhere
except at the faucets, that they have oil (your new business), uranium, wind
and sun, but electricity is nevertheless rationed daily, as predators at the
head of the state deliberately sabotage public education for the continuation
of the dynasty, that the decay of our health system is such that these
predators are forced go for healthcare and even die abroad?
Who do you think you are, Mr. Richard Attias, to
despise and provoke the protest movement of a country that is not yours, and of
which you only know the ostentatious glitz of the presidential palace? Except
to consider - and this is clear – that you have taken up the cause of the
oligarchy that has confiscated our legitimacy with violence and obstinacy.
Who could make you believe that you have any
legitimacy to teach us and pretend put us in our place? Mr. Richard Attias,
remember this African wisdom: "A canoe is never too big to capsize."
So, beware!
You are not the first multinational mercenary to
pretend to dictate our opinions and choices of actions on the grounds that you
eat in the hand of a negro king who considers Gabon as his inheritance, and
progressive Gabonese as heretics only good for the irons, the gallows, the
flagellum. Gabon will never be Morocco (a kingdom), and Ali Bongo will never be
anybody’s king or theocratic commander.
Finally, considering the extreme conceit of your open
letter, we cannot conclude without expressing our deep remorse for having, for
a time given to you - wrongly - some stature.
We do not salute you.
For the citizen Movement « Ça
suffit comme ça »
Mr Marc ONA ESSANGUI
2009 Goldman Prize Winner
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