Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents,

have you heard the news? The Minority leader, the garrulous Mr. Binbag, is running away from his own shadows. As I write this letter, he is penned away in a village in his constituency, his cell phone switched off. He?s locked himself up in self-imposed house-arrest. Why? Because, he?s committed a crime against himself, offended two heads of states and his heart is overflowing with regret. It all happened when he declared on a radio station that other Excellent Ones in Africa have lost confidence in my diplomatic skills and my efforts at bringing peace to Cote d?Ivoire. He claims that Gbagbo, my Excellent neighbour to the west, and Campoare, my Excellent neighbour to the north, gave him the ?filla?. He claims that he was told by these two Excellent ones that the factions in the Ivorian conflict do not take me serious and that, ostensibly, the more I plead for a ceasefire, the more intense the fighting gets.