Working translation. This page is an English translation of the French page at meriquite.com/questions/. It has not been adopted in English. In the event of any divergence of meaning, the French text prevails. The only English text adopted by the Conférence Nationale d'Expression Citoyenne is the founding doctrinal text, at Debt and Merit.
Frequently asked questions
Each answer is short, then supported by the passage of the corpus that grounds it, together with its reference. Where the text is silent, the entry says so rather than filling the gap.
What is Mériquité (the doctrine of debt and merit)?
Official definition, settled by presidential arbitration of 8 August 2026: “Doctrine according to which none is born free of debt, for each person receives before producing, and must contribute, according to their capacities, to preserving, improving and handing down the common inheritance; this debt cannot be paid off and it never expires: it is handed down improved. In return, the community owes each person a criterion that is written, public and verifiable for access to public goods. From this handing down and from merit protected there results a way of living: tranquillity.”
“We owe everything unto them that came before us. Unto them that are yet unborn, we owe that which is better.”
Debt and Merit, “The sentence”
What does “none is born free of debt” mean?
That no one begins life without obligation: each person receives before having produced, and what they receive binds them.
“Each of us inherits a capital we did not create: a language we did not invent; a peace we did not win; a school we did not build; land cleared by the dead whom we never knew. Whoever has succeeded has travelled along a road they did not build.”
Debt and Merit, ch. III
“It cannot be paid off and it never expires. No tax can discharge it; we are never free of it. It is handed down; and it shall be handed down improved.”
Debt and Merit, ch. III
What is the difference between the debt and merit?
The debt is what each person owes to the community that formed them. Merit is what the community owes each person in return: that their effort shall not be stolen.
“We owe a debt to the community. But the community owes us this in return: that our effort shall not be stolen.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IV
“Merit is no favour to be bestowed; it is a right to be defended.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IV
What place does Mériquité give to the State?
Three ends, and three only: to protect, to ensure tranquillity, to develop. Every particular function of the State must be ordered to them.
“We did not say ‘to ensure security’. We said ‘to ensure tranquillity’. Security may leave a person under surveillance. Tranquillity leaves a person free.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VII
“It does not destroy freedoms. It does not imprison people for their opinions. It does not enter people's homes arbitrarily. It does not dispossess. It does not tax without end.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VII
Can one claim Mériquité without belonging to GPS?
Yes. Recognising oneself in the doctrine and joining the Movement under its Statutes are two distinct acts.
“The word and the concept are free: anyone may claim them, teach them, discuss them or contest them, without authorisation.”
Reference Centre, Method and sources
“No one owns the word ‘socialism’. No registration, no rights holder. And yet its authorship is perfectly established, by documentary priority.”
Reference Centre, Origin and author
What does Mériquité say about corruption?
That it is not a vice to be deplored but theft — and that its gravest crime is a pedagogical one.
“Corruption is not a vice to be deplored; it is theft. It takes from the person who has worked and gives to the person who has paid.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IV
“Its gravest crime is not that it enriches a few; it is that it teaches an entire generation of young people that effort counts for nothing and connections count for everything.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IV
What does it say about schooling?
That no lasting transformation begins anywhere else, and that justice in schooling is a matter of equity, not uniformity.
“Education is the most strategic of all public policies.”
Debt and Merit, ch. V
“God giveth unto each person two arms. When He giveth but one, society must provide the other. Equal dignity at birth; equitable means whereby that dignity may be made effectual.”
Debt and Merit, ch. V
What does it say about young people?
It reverses the accusation: it is not young people who are morally corrupt, it is the system that leaves them nothing but their bodies.
“When a young man has nothing left but his body to sell in order to eat, it is not he who is morally corrupt. It is we who are.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IX
“That young man is the child of the ten guinea fowl, thirty years on. He has neither the idea, nor the means, nor the qualification, nor the connection. Everything has been taken from him—except his body.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IX
What does it say about ethnicity and region?
Unity does not impose uniformity — but identity never decides access to public goods.
“Our languages, traditions and peoples are not burdensome relics; they are civilisations, and the plurality of civilisations enriches humanity.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VI
“Language, yes. Identity as a criterion, never. We may celebrate our ethnic community. We must never use it to allocate offices, public contracts, scholarships or land.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VI
What would it do with those who have caused suffering?
Neither impunity nor vengeance. The polity judges; the victim alone chooses to forgive.
“No impunity: forgiveness granted without justice is an insult to victims. No one should be asked to forgive a crime that no one has even acknowledged.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VIII
“No vengeance: vengeance is the victim striking back; justice is the polity judging in the victim's stead. The whole of civilisation lies in that single transition.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VIII
What does it say about natural resources?
They do not belong to the generation in power. How they are exploited may be debated; the alienation of collective control, never.
“Some goods do not belong to the generation in power. The subsoil, minerals, oil, water and land belong to those yet unborn.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VII
“How they are exploited and how their products are marketed may be debated. Whether collective control of them may be irreversibly alienated may never be debated.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VII
What is the difference from socialism?
Socialism holds inequality to be a social product and corrects it by redistribution. Mériquité judges that insufficient: it does not correct the finishing point, it changes the starting point.
“We do not promise to distribute to the poor what we have taken from the rich while leaving untouched the system that produces both.”
Debt and Merit, “What we are not”
“Merely to repair an unjust outcome is to leave untouched the mechanism that produced it. And redistribution through a captured State only feeds that capture.”
Debt and Merit, “What we are not”
What is the difference from liberalism?
Liberalism starts from the individual; Mériquité starts from what the individual received before being able to choose.
“Anyone who tells a poor child that they are free to succeed, without providing education, healthcare and the security afforded by law, gives that child nothing; they merely make the child responsible for their own failure.”
Debt and Merit, “What we are not”
“No one comes from nowhere. The human being is not an isolated individual who one day decides to enter society.”
Debt and Merit, ch. II
What is the difference from conservatism?
Both start from inheritance. But for Mériquité, to receive is not to obey; to receive is to judge.
“Yet nothing is improved by mere repetition. To receive is not to obey; to receive is to judge. To preserve what is just. To correct what is inadequate. To abolish what is unjust or wrong.”
Debt and Merit, ch. III
What is the difference from ubuntu?
The relational conception of the person is shared. The difference bears on the second term: protected merit, and the refusal to let forgiveness become a policy of State.
“No one comes from nowhere. The human being is not an isolated individual who one day decides to enter society.”
Debt and Merit, ch. II
“Moral forgiveness belongeth unto the victim—never unto the State.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VIII
Why “Mériquité”, and not an “-ism”?
The suffix -ism belongs to a lexical convention inherited from a European intellectual tradition. “Mériquité” makes merit heard and, by closeness of sound, equity — without deriving from it.
“The suffix -ism belongs to a precise lexical convention: it signals adherence to a system of thought, on the Greek model of the suffix -ismos transmitted through Latin.”
Mériquité as an authentic political doctrine
“The term makes merit heard, and its closeness in sound to equity places it from the outset within the vocabulary of justice, without, however, deriving from it etymologically.”
Mériquité as an authentic political doctrine
What is a person who claims it called?
A mériquitaire. The word is an epicene adjective and noun, adopted by presidential decision of 25 August 2026.
“A person who adheres to the principles of Mériquité and recognises themselves in this political school.”
Explanatory note on “mériquitaire”, 25 August 2026, § 2
“Our political school is Mériquité. A person who adheres to its principles is a mériquitaire. We are mériquitaires.”
Explanatory note on “mériquitaire”, § 5
How is “mériquitaire” written and inflected?
Epicene in gender, variable in number: un mériquitaire, une mériquitaire, des mériquitaires. Lower case for the common noun and the adjective, a capital for the name of the school alone.
“The name of the school is written with an initial capital: la Mériquité. The common noun and the adjective are written with a lower-case initial: un mériquitaire; une politique mériquitaire.”
Explanatory note on “mériquitaire”, § 4
“Accents are retained, including on capitals: MÉRIQUITÉ; MÉRIQUITAIRE. The word takes neither a hyphen nor a space.”
Explanatory note on “mériquitaire”, § 4
When may a policy be called “mériquitaire”?
Only if it contradicts neither the core of the theory nor the principles of compatibility. The origin of a proposal never qualifies it.
“The word constitutes neither an automatic label nor a proof of conformity. A proposal is not mériquitaire because it comes from GPS, from its President, from a member or from a person who calls themselves mériquitaire.”
Explanatory note on “mériquitaire”, § 7
“No policy may be described as mériquitaire if it would purport to extinguish the debt by a payment, subordinate dignity or solidarity to merit, convert an inherited advantage into personal merit, sacrifice the living below the threshold of dignity, hand down the inheritance without judging it, or confiscate the effort of the person who contributes.”
Explanatory note on “mériquitaire”, § 7
Who is the author of the doctrine?
Guillaume Kigbafori Soro, President of Générations et Peuples Solidaires, who personally signs and certifies the doctrinal text.
“Guillaume Kigbafori SORO, President”
Debt and Merit, title page
“As Locke for liberalism, as Marx for communism, as Burke for conservatism, the author does not efface his signature behind the text: he inscribes it there.”
Mériquité as an authentic political doctrine
When does the doctrine date from?
The reference edition is dated 19 August 2026. On 22 August 2026, the Statutes of the Movement enshrine it as a dated and enforceable definition.
“Article 3, 14° of the Statutes defines Mériquité as ‘the political school issuing from the theory of debt and merit’, and article 4 makes it the object of the Movement.”
GPS Statutes, 22 August 2026
“I did not, therefore, invent this doctrine for a congress. I rediscovered it. It had been there from the first day, written by those who founded this Movement.”
Debt and Merit, preamble
Is it an African or a universal doctrine?
Both, deliberately: rooted in African experience and values, it claims the status of a constituted doctrine on the same footing as liberalism or socialism.
“More than four thousand years ago, on this continent, people already linked truth, justice and balance to the conduct of each person and to the duty of the ruler. At the end of life, a man was not weighed by his power; his heart was weighed against a feather.”
Debt and Merit, ch. III
“Mériquité demonstrates that a political thought can be born of African experience and values and lay claim, with the same legitimacy as liberalism or socialism, to the status of a constituted doctrine.”
Mériquité as an authentic political doctrine
Why is it spoken of as a humanism?
Because it places the dignity of the person at the centre while refusing both the abstract individual and dissolution into the collective.
“Every human being possesses a dignity that depends neither upon birth, wealth, origin, religion nor social condition.”
Debt and Merit, ch. II
“It restores the human being as a subject at once free and indebted, able to choose and to judge what they receive, but never detached from that which made them able to choose.”
Mériquité as an authentic political doctrine
What concrete measures does it propose?
None. Mériquité is a doctrine, not a programme — and it says so from its very first page.
“This text is neither an electoral programme, nor a national project, nor a contract for a term of office. It sets out no measures and promises no figures. It states the enduring principles.”
Debt and Merit, preamble
What does it say about women?
The text affirms a dignity independent of any condition and names “the women and men” whom the Nation forms. It devotes no discussion of its own to the question.
“A Nation's foremost wealth lies in the women and men it forms.”
Debt and Merit, ch. II
“No reform will have a lasting effect unless it is preceded by the formation of women and men who are upright, disciplined, responsible and free.”
Debt and Merit, ch. V
What is GPS?
Générations et Peuples Solidaires, the Movement whose doctrine and statutory object is Mériquité.
“Article 3, 14° of the Statutes defines Mériquité as ‘the political school issuing from the theory of debt and merit’, and article 4 makes it the object of the Movement.”
GPS Statutes, 22 August 2026
“Générations et Peuples Solidaires. Our sentence is simply our name, unfolded.”
Debt and Merit, “The sentence”
What are the “ten guinea fowl”?
The scene, in 1992, from which the whole doctrine proceeds: a university scholarship obtained by a fellow student in exchange for ten guinea fowl given to the head of scholarships.
“A fellow student, who has worked less than I have, receives it. I ask him how. He tells me that he gave ten guinea fowl to the head of scholarships. I, the child of a poor family, had neither the idea nor the means.”
Debt and Merit, ch. I
“It tells us that merit exists. It tells us that merit can be stolen—not by chance, not by fate, but by a man at a counter, in exchange for ten guinea fowl. It tells us that poverty is not only a lack of money; it is also a lack of access to the unwritten codes. And it tells us that the scene of the crime is the school.”
Debt and Merit, ch. I
What is the difference between merit and meritocracy?
The reference text protects merit as a right; it institutes no meritocracy, that is, no system that would distribute power according to a measured merit.
“Merit is no favour to be bestowed; it is a right to be defended.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IV
“Access to every public good—scholarship, competitive examination, public contract, employment, office or title—shall rest upon a criterion that is written, public and verifiable.”
Debt and Merit, ch. IV
What place does religion hold?
Dignity does not depend upon religion, and hatred founded upon it is named as one of the forms of division. The text does not organise relations between the State and religious bodies.
“Every human being possesses a dignity that depends neither upon birth, wealth, origin, religion nor social condition.”
Debt and Merit, ch. II
“Côte d'Ivoire's wound has a name: division. Hatred founded upon origin, region or religion.”
Debt and Merit, ch. VI