By Paul Michaud.

What seemingly began on 23 December as a series of otherwise banal events - a protest march by the Ivorian military demanding payment of a bonus they had not received, and the alleged kidnapping of the wife of a respected army officer - resulted in the staging of a coup d'etat that nobody thought possible in a country considered as one of the most politically stable in Africa.

And already some Western commentators are calling it "Africa's good coup" - that, in fact, was the headline of the American weekly magazine, Time (17 January).

But is there a thing like a "good" and "bad" coup? - especially coming only three months after the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) appeared to have outlawed ALL coups by announcing at its last meeting in Libya that coup leaders would no longer be admitted into the Organisation?

The OAU, understandably, has condemned the coup in the strongest possible terms and has called for a "rapid return to constitutional order" in the country. The coup, according to the OAU, "is a serious and unacceptable step backwards as Africa moves towards greater democracy and wider respect for the rule of law."

Since independence in 1960, Cote d'Ivoire had become the cornerstone - and showpiece - of France's African Empire and one of the continent's more prosperous economies.

The 24 December coup "ostensibly" took everybody by surprise - not only the French military and diplomats charged with keeping watch over the country and forecasting such events - but also indeed the man who turned out to be the putsch's principal author and beneficiary, Brigadier-General Robert Guei.

The 58-year-old French-trained officer was quietly preparing to celebrate Christmas at his village of Gouessesso - in the eastern part of the country - when word came that his wife had supposedly become the target of an abduction attempt in Abidjan by disgruntled members of the Ivorian army, and that he had better rush to put matters under control.

Little did he know when he left his village, that he would be saving his wife from kidnappers but also toppling Henri Konan Bedie, the French-chosen successor to the Ivorian founding Father, Felix Houphouet-Boigny. This, in fact, is what Guei claims, but events before and after the coup show that he is being economical with the truth.

Bedie had sacked Guei as the chief of staff on 21 October 1995 for "refusing" to follow orders to send soldiers to quell civil disturbances during the 1995 presidential elections won by Bedie.

But when Guei arrived in Abidjan from his home village on 23 December, he was surprised at the popular support he commanded in the streets of the capital, and lost no time in taking control of the situation.

On 24 December, he announced the overthrow of Bedie and the formation of a military junta - the Comite National de Salut Public (CNSP). Bedie took refuge at the French garrison near the Abidjan airport, and eventually departed for Lome, and Paris where he arrived on 3 January.

Overnight, Guei had become known as Pere Noel - Santa Claus. And although he initially announced that he had simply taken over power at the request of the Ivorian military, he has little by little, began hinting that when elections are eventually held - in June this year perhaps but more likely in October when presidential elections had already been scheduled anyway by Bedie - he could very well be one of the candidates.

Not surprisingly, Guei has taken on a communications adviser, Georges Ouegnin, who had performed the same task for Bedie (and Houphouet-Boigny before them, as director of protocol).

And when, on 5 January he announced the composition of a transitional government, Guei gave himself a number of strategic positions - defence minister, head of the CNSP, and president de la Republique. Other important posts went to his long-time cronies such as Gen. Lasana Palenfo, who becomes minister of security, and Gen. Abdoulaye Coulibaly who was Houphouet-Boigny's personal pilot.

Although the coup is said to have come as a surprise - ostensibly a welcome one for the ordinary Ivorian - the reasons for its eventual occurrence had long been extant.

The country had become one of the most corrupt in Africa - a notable case in point was the discovery two years ago that $30m worth of European Union grants had been pocketed by officials of the health ministry - and missions sent to Abidjan by a number of donor organisations - among them the IMF and EU - had recommended to their respective headquarters that their assistance be frozen or cut back.

By the end of 1999, the country was reportedly receiving only 10% of the funds promised by donor organisations. Between the aid cutback and the precipitous drop on world markets of prices of the country's principal exports - cocoa and coffee - life had become most difficult for the country's military and bureaucrats, whose salaries had not been paid in several months.

In fact, one of Guei's first steps upon proclaiming himself head of state was to decide to suspend payment of the country's external debt (estimated in 1997 at $15.6bn, but reportedly much higher today). This was to allow him to find the 3.5 billion CFA francs ($60 million) to pay the salaries of the country's military and civil servants.

Guei also announced at the time that he was sending a letter to the French central bank in Paris, demanding that it provide him with a list of suspicious accounts belonging to the country or its government officials.

To be fair, Konan Bedie had become increasingly unpopular before the coup. He was said to be planning to construct in his home town of Daoukro - in the centre of the country - a number of grandiose structures - a basilica, a casino, and a four-lane highway - much like those built by Houphouet-Boigny at Yamossoukrou, although on a reduced scale.

Moreover, in recent months, Bedie had grown singularly unpopular with the French officials who had been his traditional source of support and who had frequently gone to bat for him at the IMF, European Union and the World Bank when the multinational organisations threatened to cut off aid.

He appeared also to have run into trouble with the French over his nationalist doctrine - Ivorite or Ivorianness.

But the most recent source of friction with the French was Bedie's campaign to stop his major political rival, Alassane Dramane Ouattara, from running in October's presidential elections. Ouattara, a former prime minister of the country (and until last July the number two man at the IMF in Washington), was, and is still, popular notably in Abidjan and in the north of the country.

In a campaign which took on xenophobic tones - slogans to this effect can still be read on the walls of Abidjan - Bedie obsessively pursued Ouattara with accusations that the former prime minister was not Ivorian, but in fact Burkinabe, and thus could not run for president in October.

When Bedie took his campaign to Paris - where he sent a number of high-level officials to explain to the press and government the reasons behind his decision to deny Ouattara his Ivorian nationality, French officials - especially the Africa advisers to Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, but also some Gaullists close to President Jacques Chirac - said "they had had enough" and that Bedie, whom they claimed had become an "embarrassment" to the French, might best be sacked.

This opinion was apparently shared by the US. According to sources close to Lionel Jospin, Africa specialists at the State Department and the White House had indicated to the French a desire to see Bedie gently removed from office. This was to pave the way for a return of the World Bank and other aid agencies to help the country - which has also become in recent years an important centre of the US economic presence in Africa.

Strangely enough, in an evident demonstration of an old adage which says "the true capital of Cote d'Ivoire is not Abidjan but Paris", the French capital had played host before the coup to three other celebrated Ivorians - none of them part of Bedie's official delegation and hardly supporters of Bedie or his government. Yet the three men had arrived almost simultaneously in Paris with Bedie's official spokesmen.

The first, Alassane Ouattara, in making his way to Paris, said he had decided to flee Cote d'Ivoire where, he claimed, his life was in danger. He went on to spend three months in Paris and returned to Abidjan days after the coup, and endorsed it wholeheartedly.

Another one to arrive in Paris before the coup was Laurent Gbagbo, head of the PSI (Parti Socialiste Ivoirien) and a favourite of the French Socialist Party's Africa advisers.

But, it was undoubtedly the identity of the third Ivorian "political figure" which has only recently - and retrospectively - elicited questions as to why he was in Paris in the first place, before the coup?

New African can reveal that General Robert Guei himself was observed in the French capital before the coup. He has a residence near Paris, at Santeny in the Val-de-Marne department. He was seen in Paris in late November and early December, and that he returned to Abidjan just two weeks before the coup of which he now claims to have had no prior knowledge of.

Although it is much too early to determine the real reasons behind Guei's presence in France only a few days to the coup, he himself has said repeatedly in recent days that "the story behind the coup is still to be written".

However his presence in Paris before the coup, poses a number of embarrassing questions. Might it explain France's apparent unwillingness to come to the aid of Konan Bedie - the man that the French, and notably the former ambassador in Abidjan, Michel Dupuch who is today President Jacques Chirac's principal Africa adviser, had hand-picked and groomed to replace Houphouet-Boigny?

Might also Guei's presence in Paris explain France's decision to allow Bedie to take refuge in France - where he arrived on 3 January from Lome, Togo, and where he has an apartment (at No.1 Rue Beethoven, in the luxurious 16th arrondissement of Paris) "but" on condition that he avoided all contact with the press, his former ministers or any other persons possibly interested in engineering his return to power?

Interestingly, while Bedie is being cut off from the world by the very French officials he thought were interested in his being maintained in power, Guei, on the other hand, is being surrounded by French advisers in Abidjan. And foreign journalists based in Europe and elsewhere are being flown in to interview him. Their stories have all been quite eulogistic. Which gives the game so badly away - media access (both foreign and local) to African coup leaders have traditionally been difficult in the first few weeks of the coup. Not Guei! Might not this be a deliberate PR attempt by his French mentors to make the coup acceptable abroad? Not surprisingly, all the interviews so far published say how terrible Bedie was as president. Plus ça change, or in popular French, c'est du pareil au meme. Nothing changes - in French politics!