Africa, Headlines, Human Rights

GUINEA-BISSAU: Fragile Democracy Jeopardised by Military Revolt

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Oct 7 2004 (IPS) - A mutiny by army troops and the murders of Guinea-Bissau armed forces commander General Veríssimo Correia de Seabra and the director of military information Colonel Domingos Barros highlighted the fragility of the democratic institutions in that small West African nation.

Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio condemned the uprising that began Wednesday with soldiers demanding the payment of back wages, and described what was occurring as a "coup d’etat". He urged swift mediation by the international community.

If the military do not return quickly to the barracks, "this could become Guinea-Bissau’s last chance, in the eyes of the international community," warned Sampaio.

The United Nations Security Council held an urgent meeting Thursday to discuss the situation, at the request of Portuguese Foreign Minister Antonio Monteiro.

After the meeting, the president of the 15-member Security Council, Spanish Ambassador Juan Antonio Yáñez-Barnuevo, said the political leaders, public institutions and authorities of Guineau-Bissau "must persevere with the peace process beyond next year’s scheduled presidential polls if they want to reap all the benefits."

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) sent high level missions to the West African country Thursday.

Guinea-Bissau, a country of 1.2 million, is wedged between Senegal and Guinea on the Atlantic coast. A former Portuguese colony, it became independent in 1974. Its people are among the world’s poorest.

The mutinous soldiers were demanding the unpaid wages owed to troops who took part in a multinational peacekeeping mission in Liberia, according to the government in Bissau, the capital.

Authorities said the government has been unable to pay the arrears due to delays in U.N. transfers of funds.

The government said it had resumed negotiations with the mutinous troops, which had stalled Wednesday night.

On Thursday morning, 30 hours after armed troops began to drive along the main streets of the capital in pickup trucks, the mutineers issued their first statement, demanding the payment of back salaries and denying that they were staging a coup.

The communique, which was read on the government radio station, was signed by Major Baute Iamta Naman, one of the officers who served in the ECOWAS peacekeeping force sent by Guinea-Bissau to Liberia.

The statement, which did not mention the killings of Correia de Seabra and Barros, complained about the "inhuman conditions" and "widespread hunger" in military barracks throughout the country, as well as the "high level of corruption" among the military brass and the armed forces promotion system.

The CPLP mission to Guinea-Bissau is headed by foreign ministers José Ramos-Horta of East Timor and Ovideo Pequeno of Sao Tomé and Príncipe, who also represent their counterparts from Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique and Portugal, the rest of the members of the organisation.

In remarks to IPS before he headed to West Africa, Ramos-Horta said the situation in Guinea-Bissau was "worrisome" but was to some extent "foreseeable" for those who are familiar with political developments in the small country, which experienced a bloody independence war from 1961 to 1973 and several post-independence conflicts.

In the armed forces there is "dissatisfaction and resentment over the (poor) living conditions…which made it possible to predict more or less violent demands and grievances," said Ramos-Horta, a 1996 Nobel Peace Prize-winner.

In September 2003, Ramos-Horta headed another CPLP mission to Guinea-Bissau to mediate in a conflict that threatened to erupt into a new civil war, after Correia de Seabra toppled then president Kumba Yala.

The general accused Yala of incompetence, nepotism, corruption and favouring the interests of his own ethnic group.

Yala came to power in the January 2000 presidential elections. Basically unknown at the time, he defeated the candidate of the powerful African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the political group that led the armed struggle against the Portuguese colonial army.

Yala had founded the Social Renovation Party (PRS), whose main support base is the Balanta ethnic group, the country’s largest, in 1998.

In the 2000 elections, he broke PAIGC’s 26-year grasp on parliament, taking 72 percent of the vote.

But the new president governed in an authoritarian manner. In less than three years he changed ministers and deputy ministers 50 times, sacked five prime ministers, jailed Supreme Court judges, restricted freedom of information, expelled journalists, and shut down the Portuguese Radio Television station (RTP-Africa) for two months.

Yala even threatened to invade nearby Gambia and break off ties with Portugal, even though this southern European country is Guinea-Bissau’s leading foreign investor and donor.

For that reason, the CPLP lamented the 2003 coup that ousted Yala, but – better informed than ECOWAS, the European Union and the United Nations – it did not condemn the military action, and accepted Correia de Seabra’s promises that early elections would be held shortly.

The general lived up to his pledge, and wealthy businessman Henrique Pereira Rosa, the son of a Portuguese father and Guinean mother, won the March elections. Pereira Rosa was the candidate proposed by Catholic Bishop of Bissau José Camanate.

PAIGC regained its absolute majority in parliament and named its leader, Carlos Gomes Júnior, as prime minister.

Correia de Seabra, a quiet 53-year-old officer who graduated from the military academy in Kiev, Ukraine, returned to the barracks with a risky mission for a general from the smaller Papel ethnic group: gain control over armed forces dominated by Balanta officers and non-commissioned officers, while rumours that he was to be assassinated had been flying around for months.

"The pay arrears may have been the excuse for getting rid of one of the few African military officers who have risked their lives to consolidate democracy," said Flora Gomes, a former Guinea-Bissau guerrilla who fought the Portuguese colonial army and is now a filmmaker.

Teresa de Sousa, a Portuguese analyst of international affairs, interpreted the latest developments in Guinea-Bissau as "confirmation of the fragility of political power" in that country.

But the most important thing, she said, is to understand that "what is happening in Guinea-Bissau is a wakeup call for the international community: Africa must not simply be abandoned."

 
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