The formula even seems similar: the military allege that there was fraud in the election, that the civilian government is corrupt and ineffective in mitigating social inequalities. They then seize power, stifle civil liberties and establish a phantom calendar of transition to democracy. With this already classic step by step, seven coup attempts took place in the world in 2021, and five of them were successful.
The number is the highest in the last two decades, according to monitoring by professors Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne, from Central Florida and Kentucky universities, respectively.
The balance takes into account attempts — frustrated or not — to remove a leader from power, but does not include cases in which the president himself maneuvers the country’s constitution in an authoritarian escalation, as occurred in Tunisia this year, for example.
AT leaf Powell says a fusion of elements made 2021 a more hit-prone year. The first factor is related to the domestic scenario of nations: “The lack of legitimacy of local leaders leads to popular dissatisfaction, which makes the Armed Forces think that a coup would be celebrated.” The issue may be domestic, but the professor claims that there is a global crisis in the legitimacy of the leaders.
The second factor, he explains, would be the Covid pandemic, when the international community became less proactive in responding to coups, as the efforts of each country were focused on combating the health crisis in their own territories.
USP political science professor Jonathan Phillips makes a similar analysis. He says that internal tensions always have greater decisive weight for a coup, but he points out that, this year, international conditions were more relevant than usual. “In terms of cost-effectiveness, the military thought it would be more profitable and less costly to do the coup in this window of international attention.”
Phillips, an Oxford graduate and a Harvard graduate, adds that most countries that suffered coups this year did not have democratic regimes in power, but rather authoritarian governments, which also weighs in the balance. Furthermore, they were militarized societies, where the Armed Forces had long interfered in politics.
Myanmar, Chad, Mali, Guinea and Sudan followed the route described above and experienced coups d’état in 2021. Check out below how each country is doing at the end of this year and what the prospects are.
MYANMAR
Myanmar’s short democratic experiment, which began in 2011, was cut short on February 1, when the Southeast Asian country debuted the list of nations that staged coups d’état this year. On that day, the Armed Forces, which had not lost their place in institutional politics, alleged fraud in the elections and removed the civilian government from power.
The coup took place after the military-backed party was defeated in the legislatures. Leaders were arrested, including Suu Kyi, 76, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country’s top civilian leader. The episode led to a wave of social protests, violently repressed.
The death toll by the regime reached 1,346 in the second half of December, according to a survey by the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners of Myanmar. More than 10,000 people were arrested, and at least 75 were sentenced to the death penalty.
There was also a wide repressive movement against the press. Around 26 journalists were detained in the country, according to a survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) — the number made Myanmar the second country with the most imprisonment of media professionals this year, only behind China (50 ).
The junta that assumed the government of the Asian country said it will hold elections in August 2023. The generals have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to obtain diplomatic recognition — the United Nations, for example, is reluctant to accept the representative designated by the military for the General Assembly of the multilateral body.
Another consequence of the coup was the advance, at a gallop, of poverty in the country. Projections by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) show that half of Myanmar’s population could be below the poverty line next year.
CHADE
Chad continued this year the tradition of tense presidential successions and coups d’etat, when the son of the dictator Idriss Déby took power after his father’s death, dissolving Congress and consolidating the Déby dynasty at the helm of the country.
Déby Sr. had ruled the north-central African country since a coup d’état in 1990, which ousted the dictator Hissène Habré. In April of this year, he won the sixth consecutive election, contested by the opposition and groups that launched a military offensive to remove him from power, after accusations of authoritarian escalation.
The president went to war to fight the rebels and died on the battlefield days later, on 20 April. According to the Constitution, who should succeed the representative in these cases is the head of the National Assembly, but that did not happen.
A group of 15 generals created a Military Transitional Council, which dissolved Congress and put the dead president’s son, Mahamat Idriss Déby, to lead the nation for 18 months when he promised to call new elections.
The process was seen as a coup, as the succession rules were not respected. If part of the country was already expressing dissatisfaction with his father, his son’s appointment to lead Chad without new elections sparked protests, which were violently repressed and left hundreds dead and imprisoned. The rebel offensive remained on the ground until it was defeated by the military junta in May.
The takeover was supported by the country’s allies such as France, of which Chad was a colony until 1960. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said there were “exceptional security reasons that needed to be ensured to stabilize the country”.
The regime tries to give an air of normality to the country plagued by misery and hunger. In September, he named a new National Assembly — which was not elected but chosen by the junta. Two months later, he pardoned 296 people who had been accused during the protests of “crimes of opinion”, “terrorism” and “damage to the integrity of the state”.
MALI
Mali suffered a blow within a blow in 2021. Last year, amid protests calling for the resignation of then-president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, the president was arrested and deposed, in a movement led by Colonel Assimi Goïta. Bah Ndaw came to command the country, in a transitional government that was supposed to last until February 2022.
In May of this year, however, Goïta, who became interim vice president, ordered the arrest and deposed of Ndaw, as well as the prime minister. The justification was a government overhaul that excluded two officials who actively participated in the 2020 coup from the ministries. According to Goïta, he was not consulted, which would violate the transitional charter.
There was still, however, a promise to keep the elections to the end of February 2022. But in early November, the members of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) learned that the Malian authorities would not meet the deadline.
Cedeao then threatened sanctions, which forced Goïta to commit to a new date: the colonel promised to present a new timetable by January 31st. At the last meeting, on December 12th, the organization raised the tone and reinforced the promise of sanctions from January 1st if the deadline was not respected. The European Union also announced that it must adopt measures.
Added to this is a context of extreme insecurity, with the north of the country taken by jihadist attacks. The ruling junta threatens to turn to the Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization that operates in sub-Saharan Africa and is suspected of having ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
GUINEA
When Alpha Condé, a figure in opposition to the authoritarian governments that historically dominated Guinea, was elected, in 2010, for the presidency of the country in the first democratic elections since independence —conquered in 1958—, the Guinean population saw the chance to finally emerge. , live under a democracy. Just over a decade later, hope was dashed.
Condé, 83, was re-elected in 2015. In 2020, when a lock in the Constitution prevented him from running for the third term, he sewed a reform to the document. Claiming that it would promote human rights, such as banning female circumcision, he amended the Magna Carta in March of that year, and managed to get re-elected in October. The opposition claims that there was fraud in the electoral process.
Arguing that it was necessary to put an end to the cult of political personalities in Guinea and that the Condé government was unable to improve social indicators, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, leader of the Special Forces Group, led a coup d’état in the country in September 5 and kidnapped the president, who was released just three months later.
Doumbouya, 41, who received training in France and has served missions in Afghanistan, has declared himself transitional president and formed a government with Mohamed Beavogui, former UN Undersecretary General, as prime minister. It did not clarify, however, what the timetable for returning to constitutional order will be.
International organizations such as the African Union and ECOWAS applied sanctions to the country and excluded it from their decision-making processes. Cedeao asks for elections to be held within a maximum of six months, and says that, if a calendar is not established by the end of this year, new sanctions will be applied.
SUDAN
It was three years ago, in December 2018, that Sudanese began taking to the streets to protest against living conditions under the regime of Omar al-Bashir, who had been in power for three decades. Over the next few months, the protesters managed to overthrow the dictator and wrest a pledge from the armed forces that they would soon hand over power to a civilian government chosen through vote. Sudan was finally moving towards democracy.
Everything changed on October 25 of this year, when troops led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan staged a coup d’état and arrested civilian members of the transitional government. The military declared a state of emergency and blocked telecommunications. According to the coupists’ version, the movement aimed to prevent the outbreak of civil war in the North African country.
Even in the face of brutal repression by the security forces, which has left at least 40 dead, crowds have taken part in recurrent marches to demand the military’s departure. Under pressure, the Armed Forces released and returned Abdallah Hamdok, the civilian prime minister deposed in the coup d’état — the agreement was signed by the international community, but continues to be rejected in the streets of the country.
For Samahir Elmubarak, spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), the main group leading the protests, the population no longer accepts the old power-sharing scheme with the military. “The Sudanese people have made it clear throughout this revolution that we want to live in a democracy,” she tells leaf since Khartoum. “The Armed Forces seek to give a veneer of legitimacy to the coup. If this regime is accepted, coupists in other countries will feel encouraged to seize power knowing that they will not suffer consequences.”
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