The thirty questions from the Facebook live

What is your project for Côte d'Ivoire as things currently stand?

My project is to rebuild a Côte d’Ivoire in which the State protects, ensures tranquillity and develops.

To protect is to guarantee freedoms, the rule of law and a justice before which the humblest citizen can obtain justice against the most powerful ruler.

To ensure tranquillity is to restore trust so that Ivorians no longer live under fear, arbitrariness or division.

To develop is to begin with the school, to form human capabilities and to build an economy that enables each person to live with dignity from their work.

This project also requires that access to employment, competitive examinations, public contracts and scholarships rest upon criteria that are written, public and verifiable; that ethnic or political belonging never serve as a title; and that natural resources remain under the collective control of the Nation.

Mériquité supplies the guiding rule: to receive Côte d’Ivoire as it is, to judge its inheritance clear-sightedly, to correct what is unjust, and to hand it down freer, more just, more prosperous and more tranquil.

Mr President, is it not an ingenious approach to seek to solve, at the root, all the ills that are eating away at Ivorian society? Looked at closely, is it not also a way of creating a new Ivorian? When we know that today the Ivorian has become fond of all the ills that distort what we are. However, how can merit take shape when we have to compete against forged documents held by non-Ivorians?

Mériquité does not seek to manufacture a “new Ivorian” by authoritarian means. It seeks to build institutions that form citizens who are free, upright, responsible and committed to solidarity, for a human being is also shaped by family, school and institutions.

As regards forged documents, the response must be a legal one and not a matter of identity. Any established fraud must be punished, whatever the nationality of the person who committed it. Where a nationality or a qualification is legally required, it must be verified through a procedure that is reliable, impartial and open to appeal.

Mériquité protects merit, but merit cannot be assessed in a competition distorted by fraud. It therefore combats forged documents without turning foreigners into collective suspects.

How can a genuine Mériquité be established in a society where birth, connections and privilege sometimes seem to weigh more heavily than merit?

Privileges of birth will not be abolished by proclamations, but by preventing them from becoming titles of access to public goods.

Mériquité requires that scholarships, competitive examinations, employment, public contracts, offices and titles rest upon criteria that are written, public and verifiable. It also requires that decisions state their reasons, and it requires traceability, independent oversight and the right of appeal.

It takes account of starting conditions, so that inherited advantage is not mistaken for personal merit.

Birth may give an advantage in life; it must never give a superior right over what belongs to everyone.

What would be one of the methods enabling this new doctrine to be applied by the Ivorian government?

A first method would be to subject every public policy to three tests:

What does it hand down? Does it genuinely protect effort? Are its results proved?

In practical terms, every measure should have public objectives, stable criteria, verifiable indicators and an evaluation separate from the authority that carries it out.

In this way, the government could no longer content itself with announcing a good intention. It would have to demonstrate that the means employed produce the promised results, without favouritism and without impoverishing future generations.

Mériquité becomes effective when power accepts being judged by rules, by results and by proof.

How does Mériquité intend to give a real chance to young people who have talent but have neither connections nor the financial means to make their merit count?

Talent is not enough when a young person has neither suitable training, nor access to information, nor the means to present themselves at the right doors. Society’s responsibility is therefore to develop their capabilities and to remove the obstacles that prevent them from exercising those capabilities.

Mériquité then requires that internships, employment, competitive examinations, scholarships and public funding be accessible according to transparent criteria, without money or connections taking the place of ability.

It does not guarantee that every talent will automatically succeed. It guarantees that the absence of connections shall not become a sentence.

A young person should not need a patron merely to have their talent examined.

If Mériquité were applied in a country tomorrow, what would be the first visible change that citizens should see in their daily lives?

The first visible change should be a simple one: citizens would know why a given person obtained a scholarship, a job, a public contract or a public office.

The criteria would be published before the decision; the results could be verified; refusals would state their reasons; irregularities could be challenged.

This change would not immediately solve every economic difficulty. But it would restore something fundamental: the conviction that work, competence and integrity can open a door without money, without belonging and without personal intervention.

The first sign of Mériquité would therefore be the gradual end of the feeling that everything is decided in advance.

What do you think of the socio-political situation in Côte d'Ivoire?

I see a Côte d’Ivoire that remains weakened by division, by distrust of institutions, by a sense of injustice and by the far too widespread idea that connections count for more than work.

Our problem is therefore not only electoral or economic. It is also institutional and moral: many citizens no longer believe that the rule applies equally to everyone.

I refuse, however, to add division to division. The answer is neither vengeance nor the erasing of our differences. It lies in the rule of law, in justice, in truth, and in widening our solidarities to embrace the Nation.

Côte d’Ivoire will recover a lasting peace only when every person can recognise themselves in a common rule, independent of their name, their origin and their political camp.

How will Mériquité apply to Ivorians' standard of living, to their purchasing power and to the distribution of wealth in Côte d'Ivoire, when we know that some regions lag behind others?

Mériquité does not measure development by national growth alone. It asks whether every citizen can live with dignity from the fruits of their labour, and whether real possibilities are improving in every region.

Where an area lacks schools, healthcare, infrastructure or productive activity, treating its inhabitants exactly like those of a region that is already provided for perpetuates inequality. Equity therefore requires that greater means be granted where the shortfalls are objectively established.

This correction must rest upon public indicators, not upon the origin of the populations concerned or upon their electoral loyalty.

As regards purchasing power, the mériquitaire question is a concrete one: does a person’s work actually enable them to live with dignity? The fiscal, wage and productive answers will be set out in the programme of government.

This is not about favouring one region, but about guaranteeing every Ivorian comparable capabilities, wherever they were born.

My question is whether Mériquité is not a quality-management concept, rather like the Chinese model?

No. Mériquité is neither a quality-management technique nor the reproduction of a supposed “Chinese model”.

Quality management seeks principally to improve an organisation’s procedures, products and results. Mériquité is a political doctrine: it defines what the individual owes the community, what the community owes the individual, and what the present generations must hand down to those that follow.

It shares with quality approaches one useful requirement: to set criteria, to measure results and to correct what does not work. But it adds to them moral and political choices that management cannot supply: unconditional dignity, justice, freedom, solidarity, the protection of merit and the limitation of power.

Quality may be an instrument of Mériquité; it is neither its origin nor its definition.

Is Mériquité about surpassing oneself?

Surpassing oneself may be a consequence of Mériquité, but it does not constitute its definition.

Mériquité asks each person to contribute according to their capabilities and to hand down, improved, what they have received. This may call for effort, for discipline and sometimes for sacrifice.

But it does not turn personal self-surpassing into a heroic obligation. No sacrifice demanded in the name of the future may reduce those now living below the threshold of dignity. And society must, in return, protect the effort of the person who contributes.

Surpassing oneself concerns what I may become; Mériquité also orders what we owe one another and what our institutions must guarantee.

What other ideological and political forces might you wish to work with, once in State power?

I shall not choose my partners according to a label of right, left or centre, but according to clearly established compatibilities.

I am prepared to work with any democratic force that respects the Republic, the rule of law, fundamental freedoms, national sovereignty, non-discrimination, the protection of merit and the necessity of handing down a better country.

Such cooperation may take the form of a dialogue, of a political agreement or of joint action. It must always rest upon written and verifiable commitments.

Openness does not mean the erasing of our principles. We can negotiate means, priorities and a timetable; we shall negotiate neither human dignity, nor justice, nor freedoms, nor the integrity of institutions.

We shall work with those who accept a simple rule: to serve the Nation together without sharing out the State between us.

Can Mériquité genuinely help to build economic sovereignty?

Yes, Mériquité can contribute to economic sovereignty, because it forbids one generation to alienate irreversibly what also belongs to those that follow.

The subsoil, water, minerals, land and strategic resources may be exploited and their products marketed, but collective control of them must not be surrendered.

Sovereignty does not, however, mean isolation or the refusal of partnerships. It presupposes the national capacity to choose, to negotiate, to produce, to train its own skilled people and to assess the consequences of its commitments.

A country is not economically sovereign because it turns the foreigner away; it is sovereign when it can cooperate without losing control of its own future.

Your Excellency, you insist that this is neither an electoral programme nor a doctrine of handouts. How should an activist or a citizen make practical use of it from day to day?

A citizen can use Mériquité as a daily rule of judgement and of conduct.

Before acting, they can ask themselves three questions: what have I received? Does my conduct protect the effort of others? What shall I hand down after me?

In practical terms, this means contributing according to one’s capabilities, refusing corruption and favour, respecting the common good, widening one’s solidarity beyond one’s own circle, and not confusing personal success with moral superiority.

For an activist, it also means demanding of their own Movement the rules they demand for the State.

Mériquité begins when we cease to demand of others a rigour that we refuse to apply to ourselves.

In a country disfigured, scarred and balkanised by successive crises, a country where civic spirit and morality are trampled underfoot, a country in which tribalism and the promotion of mediocrity are the rule, how does Mériquité intend to tackle such ills?

Mériquité tackles these ills through institutions, through the school and through the common rule.

Through the school, it seeks to form citizens who are free, upright, disciplined and responsible.

Through institutions, it requires that offices, public contracts, competitive examinations and scholarships be allocated according to public criteria, and not according to ethnic community, party or connections.

Through justice, it refuses both impunity and vengeance: the polity judgeth, the victim chooseth, the Nation healeth.

Finally, it does not combat tribalism by asking Ivorians to forget their peoples or their cultures. It widens their solidarity to embrace the Nation.

Belonging may be celebrated; it cannot be used to govern, to recruit or to allocate.

In one sentence, what should a 20-year-old Ivorian take from “Debt and Merit” to guide their life and their commitment?

You were not born alone: protect by your work what you have received, and hand down to those who come after a Côte d’Ivoire better than the one entrusted to you.

You spoke of the doctrines of liberalism and socialism. Can it be said that capitalism, which you did not mention, has a connection with liberalism and socialism? And in what way would Mériquité be the new doctrine for today's young people to take up, and in particular those of Côte d'Ivoire?

Capitalism is an economic system founded principally upon the private ownership of capital, upon investment and upon market exchange. It has a close historical relationship with certain forms of liberalism, but the two are not the same: liberalism is also a doctrine of freedoms and of the limitation of power. Socialism, for its part, brings together diverse doctrines that criticise or reorganise property, production and the distribution of wealth.

Mériquité does not claim to have already settled the whole economic regime. Its texts determine neither the exact share of public ownership, nor the level of taxation, nor all the mechanisms of redistribution. Those choices will belong to the national project and to the programme.

It does, however, set their limits: to enable each person to live with dignity from their work, to prevent the confiscation of effort, to correct inequalities at the starting point and to preserve the common goods of future generations.

Young people should therefore not choose Mériquité because it happens to be new, but because it gives them the right to demand both a real chance today and a better inheritance tomorrow.

President, now that this vision has been set out, what, in your view, is the greatest trap or obstacle to be avoided in putting it into practice on the ground?

The greatest trap would be for those who govern in the name of Mériquité to use it to judge others while exempting themselves from its requirements.

The doctrine would then become a vocabulary of power, and not a limit imposed upon power.

To avoid this, the criteria must be fixed before the decisions, the results made verifiable, and oversight entrusted to institutions separate from those that carry the decisions out.

The true test will not be what we say about Mériquité, but what it forbids us to do when we hold power.

“We may celebrate our ethnic community. We must never use it to allocate offices, public contracts, scholarships or land.” How is this red line to be enforced in Ivorian political practice?

This red line must become a legal and institutional rule.

Origin, ethnic community, region, religion or language cannot determine the allocation of an office, a public contract, a scholarship or public land. Every decision must rest upon a criterion that is relevant, announced and verifiable.

Oversight must be independent, decisions open to challenge and breaches punished. A policy intended to correct a territorial or social inequality remains possible, but it must answer to objectively established facts and must never become a disguised ethnic preference.

Belonging may be celebrated within society; it must never become a currency of access to the State.

You reject both ethnic division and imposed uniformity. In practical terms, how do you “widen the circle of solidarity until it embraceth the Nation” without denying the solidarities of those closest to us?

Widening solidarity does not mean abolishing the family, the village, religion or the cultural community.

Mériquité distinguishes private loyalties from the exercise of power. Everyone remains free to help their own people more. But when a person administers a common resource, they must act for everyone according to impartial criteria.

The Nation therefore does not erase the circles of proximity: it gathers them into a higher political circle, that of equality of rights and of the general interest.

I ask no Ivorian to cease loving their own people; I ask them to recognise that, before the State, their own people are all Ivorians.

The State must “protect, ensure tranquillity and develop”. Why did you deliberately set aside the term “ensure security”? What fundamental difference do you draw between ensuring tranquillity and ensuring security?

I have not abolished the right to security. Security protects against danger and remains a fundamental obligation of the State.

I set aside “to ensure security” as the definition of the political end, because a power can secure a population through surveillance, coercion and fear.

To ensure tranquillity goes further: it is to make life predictable through law, through justice and through trust, so that each person may live freely without being constantly under surveillance.

The word “secure” remains perfectly legitimate in its technical use: to secure a procedure, a piece of data or a transaction.

Security prevents danger; tranquillity makes it possible to live freely without being governed by fear.

What are the potential limits of Mériquité? How can it be prevented from becoming a mere political slogan? How can Mériquité strengthen social cohesion?

Mériquité has limits that we must acknowledge.

Assessing merit in its context remains difficult to put into practice without producing excessive bureaucracy. The protection of merit may also create permanent competition. Finally, the balance between a developmental State and a State that does not tax without end will have to be set out in the national project.

To avoid the slogan, every policy will have to include objectives, public criteria, verifiable indicators and independent oversight. A doctrine that does not make it possible to judge those who invoke it becomes mere propaganda.

Mériquité can strengthen social cohesion by guaranteeing the same dignity to all, by protecting effort against favour, and by widening particular solidarities to embrace the Nation.

It does not promise the absence of disagreement; it seeks to create a common rule enabling Ivorians to live out their differences without fighting over the State.

The story of the ten guinea fowl is foundational. Beyond the symbol, what institutions or concrete mechanisms do you propose in order to prevent merit from still being stolen today?

The story of the ten guinea fowl shows that merit is stolen when access to an opportunity depends upon a hidden payment, a connection or a favour.

Mériquité therefore lays down a fundamental rule: access to every public good—competitive examination, scholarship, employment, public contract, office or title—shall rest upon criteria that are written, public and verifiable.

This rule will have to be accompanied by precise mechanisms: traceability of decisions, reasons given for refusals, independent oversight, the possibility of appeal, publication of results, and effective penalties against corruption, favouritism and conflicts of interest. The authority that decides must not be the sole judge of the propriety of its own decision.

The doctrine sets this permanent requirement. The national project and the programme of government will then have to determine the competent institutions, their powers and their procedures.

We ask not that leaders’ word be taken on trust. We want rules solid enough that never again shall any child need ten guinea fowl.

You state that we are never free of this debt. How is this permanent obligation to be reconciled with the right of each generation to chart its own course?

The debt does not command each generation to reproduce what it has received. To receive is not to obey; to receive is to judge.

Every generation must be able to preserve what is just, to correct what is inadequate and to abolish what is unjust or wrong. It therefore remains free to choose its institutions, its priorities and its means. What is forbidden to it, by contrast, is to appropriate or to destroy the common goods indispensable to the freedom of those who will come after it.

The permanence of the debt therefore does not lock future generations into the choices of the past. It protects precisely their right to choose. Our generation may transform the inheritance, but it must not exhaust the resources, ruin the institutions or compromise the capabilities that will allow those that follow to chart their own course.

Finally, no future can justify reducing those now living below a threshold of dignity.

We must be free in relation to the past, responsible in the present and loyal to the future.

Is Mériquité the same as progressivism, as we see it in Burkina?

Mériquité is not automatically the same as a Burkinabè political current, nor as an imported label.

It may be called progressive in the ordinary sense of the word, since it requires that the inheritance be handed down improved. But it does not regard every change as progress. A transformation is just only if it protects dignity, develops human capabilities, prevents the theft of merit and preserves the possibilities of future generations.

Mériquité therefore commands neither the systematic preservation of the past nor its systematic overthrow. It asks that the past be judged: to preserve what is just, to correct what is inadequate and to abolish what is unjust.

It was born of an Ivorian experience, while assuming its African rootedness and its universal vocation. It will be able to enter into dialogue with other African experiences, notably Burkinabè ones, without being confused with them.

Our criterion is not the novelty of a change, but the justice of what it produces and the quality of what it hands down.

Thank you to the President for his presentation. My question is this: why did the President not cite an African reference that could better explain this concept?

I did cite some, even if they would no doubt have deserved to be brought out more strongly.

In particular, I took up Joseph Ki-Zerbo’s thought that development means multiplying the possibilities from which people may make liberating choices. I also recalled that West African saying which presents the land as belonging to a vast family made up of the dead, the living and those who are yet unborn. Finally, the ancient African image of the heart weighed against a feather reminds us that the worth of a ruler is measured not only by their power, but by their justice and their balance.

These references are not, however, ornaments or arguments from authority. Mériquité does not claim to sum up all African thought, or to speak in the name of a supposedly homogeneous Africa. It takes on a more demanding idea: an African political movement can produce its own concepts out of its own history and give them universal reach.

Mériquité does not merely look for its references in Africa: it claims for Africa the right to create new references.

Where, then, does the line fall between the obligatory support of the community and the protection of the fruit of personal merit? If this doctrine is not a third way, then how is it to be situated in relation to socialism and liberalism? How do you distinguish it, economically and socially, from the other doctrines mentioned above?

The line rests upon an essential distinction.

Dignity, fundamental rights, essential healthcare, justice, security and protection against abandonment are owed to every person without any condition of merit. The community must also develop each person’s capabilities, taking account of needs, of starting conditions and of real obstacles.

But this solidarity does not entitle it arbitrarily to confiscate the fruit of work, of creation or of effort. Beyond the unconditional foundation, public responsibilities and public advantages must be allocated according to criteria that are objective, transparent and verifiable.

Mériquité is therefore not an arithmetical compromise between socialism and liberalism. It lies on a different axis: that of transmission between the generations and of reciprocity between the individual and the community.

It rejects the abstract freedom that abandons the poor child without education, without healthcare and without effective law. It likewise rejects a redistribution administered by a captured State, which would correct the consequences without transforming the mechanisms that produce injustice.

The doctrine does not yet constitute a complete economic programme. It can accommodate the market, property, private initiative and public solidarity, provided that they protect dignity, merit and the common future.

The debt prevents merit from justifying privilege; merit prevents the debt from denying effort.

How does Mériquité intend to give value to individual merit while combating nepotism, favouritism and the inequalities that exist in Côte d'Ivoire?

Mériquité does not confuse merit with visible success. A person favoured from the outset cannot be compared mechanically with one who has had to overcome poverty, remoteness, disability or inadequate public services.

Merit must be assessed on the basis of demonstrated achievements and capabilities, but also of the means available, the starting conditions and the obstacles actually overcome. For access to a position of responsibility, integrity is first of all a precondition.

The fight against nepotism and favouritism then requires that all access to employment, a competitive examination, a scholarship, a public contract, an office or a public title rest upon criteria that are written, public and verifiable. Decisions must state their reasons, be open to scrutiny and be open to appeal. Conflicts of interest, corruption and improper interventions must be punished.

Finally, the community must act upon inequalities at the starting point through education, health, justice and the development of capabilities.

Mériquitaire justice does not promise the same success to all; it guarantees each person that their origin will not decide in place of their effort.

If Mériquité holds that every citizen is born with a social or generational debt, how must the State ensure that all young people start from the same level so as to be able to repay it? How is the situation to be put right for those who sold it off without ensuring generational continuity?

Let me make clear at the outset that the mériquitaire debt is not repaid. It is honoured by preserving, improving and handing down what has been received.

The State cannot guarantee that all young people will start from exactly the same level. Families, territories and life paths will remain different. It must, however, guarantee everyone an effective foundation of dignity and capabilities: the school, essential healthcare, security, justice and the real possibility of developing their aptitudes. Equity consists in providing greater means where the objective obstacles are greater.

As for what has already been sold off, not everything can be restored. That must be acknowledged truthfully. The response must combine the establishment of responsibilities, justice, the recovery of what can be recovered, the restoration of institutions and the protection of the common goods still available. There shall be neither impunity nor vengeance.

We cannot always give back intact what has been lost; we can prevent that loss from becoming the final inheritance of our children.

Which country should we join with, in particular which major world economic power, so that Mériquité can genuinely be developed in Côte d'Ivoire?

Mériquité depends upon no foreign power and designates no country as a natural or exclusive partner. It is an Ivorian political doctrine, intended to guide our own way of governing.

Côte d’Ivoire must cooperate with every State capable of contributing usefully to its development, but on terms determined by its national interest: respect for its sovereignty, the transfer of skills and technology, the training of Ivorians, the creation of value on national territory, transparency of commitments and the preservation of collective control over strategic resources.

The choice of a particular partner will therefore depend on the sector concerned, on the offers available and on the guarantees obtained. It is a matter for the national project, then for the programme of government and for the conduct of diplomacy; it cannot be settled in the abstract by the doctrine.

The diversification of partnerships is, moreover, a protection against any excessive dependence.

We are not looking for a power to which we might entrust our future, but for partners able to help us become more fully masters of that future.

What mechanisms will you deploy to make this doctrine effective?

A doctrine becomes effective when it is translated, in turn, into a national project, a programme of government, legal rules, institutions and public policies that can be evaluated. Mériquité must therefore not remain a moral discourse.

Its application will rest in particular upon criteria that are written, public and verifiable for access to public goods and public offices; upon reasons given for decisions and the traceability of those decisions; upon independent oversight; upon accessible avenues of appeal; upon effective penalties against corruption and favouritism; and, finally, upon objectives accompanied by stable indicators making it possible to measure the results obtained.

Every policy will have to answer three questions: what does it preserve or improve for future generations? Does it genuinely protect the effort and the capabilities of each person? Are its effects demonstrated by verifiable results?

The doctrine sets these permanent requirements. The national project will determine the transformations sought, while the programme of government will specify the measures, the means, the timescales and the institutions responsible.

Mériquité does not ask that the intentions of power be believed: it requires that its acts can be verified and their results measured.