Christopher Fomunyoh on the Cote d'Ivoire Crisis

A couple of years ago, another African leader, former President Ket Masire of Botswana told me that from his experience in office, many problems on our continent stem from our collective reluctance to call a spade a spade. We would rather use euphemisms and call a spade 'an agricultural tool', hoping some people would understand we are referring to a spade. In my professional life, I have seen people react to difficult problems in two ways: some people make the problems more complicated and intractable by piling on pre-existing grievances and other externalities; others break down the issues into easily solvable chunks or bits, and then aggregate the small solutions from each of the chunks into a comprehensive big solution. I belong to the second school of thought. Points about nationalism, sovereignty, the colonial heritage and neo-colonialism, the CFA franc and the stranglehold on our economies, the role of the French and the international community, are all legitimate, but should be debated on a separate track; because, in my view, these are externalities to the key question of who had the most legitimate votes and therefore won the second round of the Ivorian presidential election of November 28, 2010.