Constitutional revision in Benin: Célestine Zanou breaks her silence and calls on former leaders
The former chief of staff to President Kérékou, Célestine Zanou, has broken her silence about the constitutional revision project currently under consideration by the National Assembly.
SUMMARY
In a solemn statement released on Saturday, November 1, 2025, she expressed deep concern about what she describes as an “undertaking to unravel Beninese democracy.”
Célestine Zanou says she is speaking “out of duty,” invoking both her commitment to the national cause and the rights granted to her by the Constitution. She believes that silence would amount to complicity in a process she considers dangerous for national sovereignty.
According to the former minister, the pretext put forward to justify the revision would be the creation of a Senate, composed notably of former presidents of the Republic, of the National Assembly, of the Constitutional Court and of former chiefs of staff. She denounces a maneuver aimed at turning this institution into an instrument for consolidating power and a “refined autocracy.”
“It is not at the end of one’s life, in one’s sixties or eighties, that one invents a life as a dictator or as a henchman of dictatorship,” she said, before calling on the personalities concerned to break their silence. For her, their current muteness could be interpreted as a sign of consent and compromise.
Célestine Zanou also warns against what she calls a “methodically manipulative political technique,” arguing that the creation of the Senate could be merely a pretext to pave the way for a new Republic, with “seismic” political consequences.
In a grave tone, she urged former leaders and historical figures not to give in “to corruption by prestige and vanity distilled by the Pisistrate.” She urged them to remain faithful to the democratic ideal they defended “sometimes at the risk of their lives.”
“The people want to hear from you,” she concluded, in a direct appeal addressed to those she considers the moral guardians of the Republic.
Statement by Célestine Zanou
“My dear compatriots, out of duty I speak and the Constitution in its articles 15 and 23 gives me the right.
Out of duty I speak because my background and my commitment to the national cause give me the right.
I speak to avoid becoming, by my silence, complicit in what is being plotted against Benin and its people.
What is this about?
The main pretext underpinning the new project to revise the Beninese constitution would be the creation within the Republic’s institutional framework of a Senate.
The draft of this revision states that this new institution, suddenly deemed necessary and indispensable and for which urgent action must be taken after ten years of state power exercised by the so‑called “rupture” regime, will be composed of former presidents of the Republic, of the National Assembly, of the Constitutional Court and of former chiefs of staff.
There is not the slightest doubt that the personalities thus targeted, and for whose benefit the project to complete the unraveling of Beninese democracy will be carried out, are neither requesting it nor complicit, at least to my knowledge.
They have all had exemplary academic, professional, intellectual, political and military careers founded on solid patriotic and republican values, and they sometimes risked their lives in the struggles to root political and civil liberties in our country. They share a lifelong, resolute, firm and constant commitment against arbitrariness and tyranny—a commitment that constitutes an intellectual, moral and political legacy that can and should be passed on between generations. This heritage cannot and must not be scuttled, liquidated and consumed with their own consent and complicity, precisely by the autocratic corruption against which they stood as an armor and a bulwark.
It is not at the end of one’s life, in one’s sixties, eighties or nineties, that one invents a life as a dictator, a henchman of dictatorship or a “collaborator.” In such circumstances, silence amounts to consent, acceptance, complicity, endorsement, submission, compromise, voluntary servitude and association harmful to national sovereignty and against the public interest. And this current heavy, oppressive silence will be guilty. That is why the People want to hear from you…. Say a word…. Your voice is missing…. Your voice is late….
No force can or should compel you to destroy by your own hand, while still alive, the work of your hands that once all of Benin so admired. What a tragedy! What absurdity! What inversion! What an anathema! What is happening to us?
This corruption is not accidental but a methodically manipulative and fundamentally harmful political technique. It does not escape the people that the regime’s true aim is to create a new Republic with seismic political consequences by taking the detour of creating the Senate, instrumentalizing and exploiting the vulnerability of our elders to whom it throws this post as an expedient, a bait, a ruse and an assault on the soul of this people.
Dear elders, do not become the mirror of voluntary servitude; you still embody the soul of this people. Do not yield to corruption by the prestige and vanity distilled by the Pisistrate. Against Zeus, remain Prometheus, a symbol of knowledge and freedom. I want to count on you to avoid this trap harmful to our democracy, the fruit of your struggles and efforts.
The people want to hear from you!”
Célestine ZANOU
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