For Coups from the bottom of the army to succeed, several levels of evidence have to be made.
Coup plotters have to persuade their colleagues that someone higher up has approved their coup and that they are part of a much larger plot. They need other officers to bandwagon in their favor, even those in the higher ranks.
In order to project their coup, coup plotters will need to seize the broadcasting facilities as a victory, it’s already over and the rest of the army can now only support the overthrow of the army leadership.
In order to demonstrate their power, they will need to capture symbolic sites such as the parliament, the house of the monarch.
Basically, coups from the bottom need to exploit expectations, the assumption that my higher-ranking officers are driven by the coup. The hope is that by the time Army officers find out what’s really going on the coup is over. In 1969, Muammar Ghaddafi did exactly this. For more than two weeks, he kept it a secret after the
Coup achievement that he was the one behind it in the event that he was not helped by higher-ranking officers.
The Free Officers in the Mali coup of 2012 and Ghana of 1979 are popular coups from the bottom of the military. In Ghana, flight lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings became famous for his 1979 coup from the bottom of the Army.
On fifteen May 1979, Rawlings attempted a coup d’etat, leading a gaggle of military personnel in Associate to put a Coup against General Fred Akuffo, resulting in him being arrested, unfree, and facing a death sentence. In the hearts of individuals and other military personnel who rose up in his defense, however, a speech he gave during his trial resonated.
On May 28, 1979, after a failed coup attempt, JJ Rawlings was taken to court with exactly 6 troops.
He justified the coup as an idea that, as his only justification for the coup, he cited corruption and leadership.
In the middle of the court trials, Rawlings was brought to court, and he told the judge that only he should be held guilty and his colleagues released because he was the man behind the attempted coup.
By firing squad, the judge sentenced Rawlings to death on June 7, 1979.
But a group of low-ranking soldiers helped J.J. Rawlings make a jailbreak, in which the ruling regime was successfully dethroned.
Not long after he staged a successful coup against the Akuffo Government of the Supreme Military Council (SMC), he established the Revolutionary Armed Forces Council (AFRC) that took over the government.
Rawlings ordered the killings of 8 soldiers by firing squads during the 112 days of the AFRC administration.
He turned over power to Dr. Hilla Limann’s civilian government.
The military Revolutionary Council (AFRC) was fashioned by Rawlings and the troops around him and carried out what it called a housecleaning exercise” whose purpose was to rid Ghanaian society of all the corruption and social injustices that they gave the appearance of being at the muse of their coup d’état.
