Day: September 6, 2021

A Guinean army unit seized control of the country Sunday and announced it had deposed President Alpha Conde. The soldiers expressed frustration over widespread poverty and corruption in Guinea.

After Conde’s first win in 2010, citizens hoped he would bring stability to Guinea, which had suffered decades of rampant corruption.

It was the country’s first democratic election since gaining independence from France in 1958.

But critics say Conde’s presidency has only increased poverty, despite the country’s immense supply of mineral riches.

Tensions peaked last year when the 83-year-old president changed the constitution to allow himself to seek a third term. After he won, violent demonstrations erupted across the country.

David Zoumenou is a senior research consultant with the Institute of Security Studies in Dakar and Pretoria.

“That really created heavy tension. You have civil society organizations, you have other political forces, contesting his decision, contesting his elections,” Zoumenou said. “But the military was on his side, able to quell the demands of the people. So the ground was almost leveled for political instability to lead to what we are observing now in Guinea.”

On Sunday, the dissenters within Conde’s military criticized his actions and said they were taking matters into their own hands. They said a curfew would be imposed and the borders would be shut.

While many civilians were seen celebrating the coup, international actors, including the U.S., France and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the seizure of power.

Political analysts worry the events are representative of a larger trend. In recent years countries throughout West Africa have witnessed a surge in unconstitutional third-term bids as well as a rise in coups.

Mali, for example, has been rattled by two coups in the last year, Zoumenou notes.

“All that is due to the lack of commitment of leaders to democratic principles,” Zoumenou said. “So if the governance is not adequately rooted in the express will of the people, unfortunately we have to continue to deal with military intrusion.”

Zoumenou said such interventions are hardly conducive to a healthy democracy.

Gilles Yabi is a political analyst and the founder of West Africa Citizen Think Tank.

He says it gives the impression of a worrying political trajectory with the possibility of a return of military coups.

But, Yabi said it’s important to note that Mali and Guinea were already in crisis mode – other West African countries, particularly those who have stable democracies, won’t necessarily follow the same path.

Source: Voice of America

A fresh political rift between Somalia’s president and prime minister appears to be opening a power struggle between the two top leaders of the country, which is struggling to hold elections and prevent frequent terrorist attacks.

On Monday, Somalia Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble suspended Fahad Yasin, chief of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), over failing to provide reliable evidence of investigations into the alleged killing of 24-year-old Ikran Tahlil Farah, who worked in NISA’s cybersecurity department.

NISA last week blamed the Islamist militant group al-Shabab for Ikran’s death, prompting angry and frustrated posts on social media from Ikran’s parents and opposition leaders, who say the agency itself had been involved.

In a statement published Friday on pro-al-Shabab websites, a spokesman for the group said al-Shabab knows nothing about Ikran’s alleged killing.

Roble’s move against the NISA chief has prompted a public rebuke from President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known as Farmajo, who in a counter move hours after the prime minister’s decision, issued a directive reinstating the intelligence chief. Both men were citing constitutional articles to support their cases.

Roble said he suspended Fahad “for failing to deliver a report on the murder of one of the agency’s agents.”

In April, after anger and armed violence in the capital, Mogadishu, that followed Parliament’s move to extend the president’s four-year term by another two years, the confrontation was resolved when the president put the prime minister in charge of security and organizing long-delayed indirect elections.

Mohamed issued his own statement calling the prime minister’s move unconstitutional. “(Yasin) should continue being the director of NISA,” the president said.

Analysts say this latest rift is highlighting a growing division at the heart of the country’s political elite and threatens to put the country into a new political crisis.

“The political exercises of the president and the minister is clear evidence that there has been a growing mistrust and a power struggle between the two leaders,” Shoki Ahmed Hayir, a Somalia political analyst and professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, told VOA Somali.

“We know the prime minister took this decision to address a sensitive issue over the disappearance of a female intelligence officer that could plunge the country into political and security risks,” said Hussein Moalim Mohamud, Somalia’s former national security adviser.

Opposition leaders have welcomed Roble’s move to suspend Fahad, a former Al-Jazeera journalist, whom they believe to be a close friend of the president.

The new dispute followed months of political wrangling that have threatened to further destabilize a country already riven by militant attacks and clan rivalries.

Hayir believes the new power struggle between the president and the prime minister is threatening the country’s long-delayed upcoming elections.

“This is not only a political threat, but also a threat to the country’s future, including the possibility of holding elections. It is also a threat to a justice for the family of Ikran,” Hayir said.

“The problem is that there are contradicting and unclear chapters in the country’s draft federal provisional constitution over the powers of the president and the prime minister,” said Abdirahman Dhubad, a political and legal analyst in Mogadishu.

Source: Voice of America

The military leaders who seized power and dissolved Guinea’s National Assembly said Monday they would set up a transitional government.

The details of the promised transition were not immediately clear, but they followed widespread condemnation of the coup from the international community.

In a speech the day after his men declared on national television that they had arrested the president and dissolved the country’s constitution, Army Colonel Mamady Doumbouya promised a “government of national union.”

He also stated that there would be no “witch hunt” of the government officials he dismissed during the takeover and replaced with regional military commanders.

Doumbouya hoped to calm concerns about economic upheaval, promising that Guinea would “uphold all its undertakings (and) mining agreements,” stressing “its commitment to give favorable treatment to foreign investment in the country.”

Mining accounts for roughly 35% of GDP in Guinea, whose citizens rarely reap the benefits of the country’s mineral wealth because of corruption and lack of infrastructure.

A video emerged hours into the apparent takeover that showed Guinean President Alpha Conde in a room surrounded by special forces soldiers. Members of the military who referred to themselves as the National Rally and Development Committee (CNRD) later issued a statement saying the 83-year-old Conde was not harmed and was in contact with his doctors.

In October, Conde won a third term in office after amending the constitution to allow him to run again. The controversial election sparked violent protests throughout the country.

Fighting was reported earlier Sunday in the capital, Conakry, but following the announcement of the takeover, many people celebrated in the streets for what they believed to be a successful coup.

A statement issued Sunday by the U.S. State Department condemned the coup, warning that the “extra-constitutional measures will only erode Guinea’s prospects for peace, stability, and prosperity” and limit the ability of the United States and Guinea’s other international partners “to support the country as it navigates a path toward national unity.”

The State Department urged all sides to forge “a process of national dialogue to address concerns sustainably and transparently to enable a peaceful and democratic way forward for Guinea to realize its full potential.”

The United Nations, France and the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, were quick to condemn the unrest in Guinea.

Mohamed Ibn Chambas, former special representative of the U.N. secretary general and former head of the U.N. Office for West Africa and the Sahel, told VOA that ECOWAS bears no responsibility for the unrest in Guinea because its leadership repeatedly warned Conde against amending the constitution and running for a third term.

Chambas says he expects ECOWAS to reiterate its “policy of zero tolerance for military coups d’état,” adding that there “is no way that the current situation can be accepted by the authority of heads of state and government.”

Source: Voice of America