In Benin, if ridicule could kill! Without a doubt, politicians would be the most likely to pass from life to death. Fortunately, some of them, without being Jesus, excel in the art of dying and coming back to life a few months later. On this subject, it is the Democratic Union for a New Benin (UDBN) previously chaired by the current president of the National Institute for Women, Claudine Prudencio, which has achieved the divine miracle of agreeing to merge with the Republican Bloc. (BR) and therefore to lose its legal personality under the new charter of political parties and then to reconsider months later on its decision and this by brandishing an identity already lost. It would have been former caciques of the defunct Udbn who resigned from the BR as individuals for other political destinations or to create another party that no one would find fault with. But, ignorance of the texts relating to the new electoral laws obliges, the most unusual pirouettes and gymnastics got the better of the tranquility of analysts and observers of the animation of political life in Benin.
From any point of view, by not measuring the legal consequences that flow from the marriage certificate sealed with the Br and by proclaiming her divorce and her departure as she entered it, the Udbn has just shown to the face of national and international public opinion that the path leading to a change of mentality in line with the reform of the party system in Benin is still a long way off. Moreover, on the eve of the January 2023 legislative elections, the many upheavals observed in Benin’s political microcosm with resignations here and memberships there, prove quite well that between political will and reality on the ground, the gap is wide.
Total inconsistency!
While waiting for everyone to be on the same wavelength of information, it is important to remind political actors who continue to row against the current of the new legal provisions that the charter of political parties in force in Benin no longer allows party alliances. This implies that the legislator has clearly indicated that it is now impossible to belong to a political party and continue to hold an old identity. So, the late Udbn who surprised her world by resurrecting through a correspondence to Br for the purpose of signifying her withdrawal from this party is probably all wrong.
But, since the competent jurisdictions will certainly have to decide on this official political divorce and that each party will have to develop its arguments, as much to rely on the verdict of the competent authorities which, for sure, will build more than one.
UP-Prd, lessons to be learned before the merger
Currently, of this Udbn-Br film which is playing before our eyes, the most interested can only be the militants of the Progressive Union (UP) and Democratic Renewal Party (Prd) parties. Indeed, by the end of the week, they will seal a marriage like that of Br and Udbn. Again, it is to be hoped that the two parties which, at the end of the merger process, can only form a single party and not an alliance, are indeed on the same wavelength. In any event, in Benin and it is the legislators who have decided so, the merger of one party into another causes the former to disappear in principle. Apparently, the Udbn does not hear it that way. Yet the lesson is meant to be well known by all. It is up to the Prd and the Up to demonstrate that the same causes do not always produce the same effects.