GUINEA-BISSAU:
Just Another Chapter in a History of Instability
Analysis by Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Sep 27 (IPS) - When the last soldiers of the Portuguese colonial
army headed home 30 years ago, there were few indications that the newly
independent Republic of Guinea-Bissau would remain steeped in instability
and violence over the next three decades.
But when he stormed into the presidential palace on Sep. 14 to depose
President Kumba Yala in a bloodless coup, General Verissimo Correia Seabra
was merely playing a starring role in yet another chapter of a lengthy
history of political chaos.
This small West African nation of just 1.3 million, wedged between the
former French colonies of Senegal and Guinea, gained independence from
Portugal 30 years ago this week.
It remains one of the world's poorest countries, heavily dependent on
foreign aid, and the economy is still reeling from a 1998-1999 civil war.
Cashews are the main foreign exchange-earner.
Although the coup d'etat upset the international community, which is
always ready to condemn any military rising, it came as no surprise for
those familiar with the situation in Guinea-Bissau.
The Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP), which links
Angola, Cape Verde, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, Mozambique
and East Timor, had already designated East Timor's Foreign Minister José
Ramos-Horta as a mediator in August, in an attempt to ward off renewed civil
strife in Guinea-Bissau.
In the view of many observers, the coup was an inevitable development in
the small West African nation plagued by incompetence and corruption.
In January 2000, Yala, a political unknown, won the presidential
elections, beating the candidate of the all-powerful African Party for the
Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which had led the armed
struggle against Portugal's colonial army from 1961 to 1973.
A year earlier, the Social Renovation Party (PRS), which Yala founded in
1998, had broken the majority that the PAIGC enjoyed in parliament for 26
years.
The Balanta, the largest ethnic group in Guinea-Bissau, form the support
base of the PRS.
But after a landslide victory in which he took 72 percent of the vote,
Yala went the authoritarian route, going through four prime ministers in
less than three years, reshuffling the cabinet again and again, sacking
Supreme Court justices, and clamping down on freedom of the press.
High-level posts were filled with ethnic Balanta, with the exception of
Gen. Correia Seabra, who belongs to the Papel ethnic group.
Yala also threatened to invade nearby Gambia, and to break off ties with
Portugal, even though the former colonial power is the country's leading
foreign investor and donor. In addition, he deported journalists and shut
down the Radiotelevisao Portuguesa (RTP) Africa bureau in Bissau, the
capital, for two months.
A disappointed Ramos-Horta returned from Guinea-Bissau in early August.
His report to CPLP Executive Secretary Joao Augusto de Médicis was
pessimistic, and acknowledged that a democratic regime did not exist in the
West African nation.
More closely familiar with the situation in Guinea-Bissau than the rest
of the world, the CPLP said it ''regretted'' the Sep. 14 coup, unlike the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union, and
the United Nations, which condemned it outright.
Angolan historian Carlos Pacheco did not mince words in his criticism of
the position taken by the international community.
''The global powers often defend false democracies,'' even when they
behave ''like a band of mafiosos,'' Pacheco wrote in a Sep. 20 column in the
Lisbon newspaper Publico.
''The international community responded to Yala's abuses with silence or
frivolous criticisms,'' which helped ''the autocrat in Bissau feel stronger
and stronger, and gave him the confidence to violate the constitution'' and
dissolve parliament.
Diplomats from several countries and United Nations ambassadors condemned
the fact that ''the constitutional order was disrupted, and argued that it
must be urgently restored,'' added Pacheco. But, he asked, ''what order was
disrupted? The democratic parody of Guinea-Bissau which had little or
nothing to do with the reality there?''
He upbraided the United Nations and the world's industrialised powers for
''imposing a model of democracy and form of bureaucracy that must be applied
no matter what, in utter disregard of the concrete political situation and
reality'' of each country.
On several occasions, former Portuguese president Mario Soares
(1986-1996) warned fellow European political leaders that western democratic
models should not merely be copied in Africa.
''Power in Africa should not only be seen as how to win control of the
government,'' Soares told IPS.
The opposition ''should also have a portion of what we understand as
power,'' added Soares, who on several occasions shared prison cells with
African independence leaders from former Portuguese colonies during the
dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1926-1974) in Portugal.
According to Ana Días Cordeiro, an analyst on African affairs, in
Guinea-Bissau a coup was staged where ''there was nothing to lose, news of
it did not come as a surprise, and it was seen as the only solution for
pulling the country out of crisis'' and warding off a civil war.
Días Cordeiro was referring to statements to RTP-Africa last month by
former Guinea-Bissau prime minister Mario Pires, who warned that an
opposition victory in the elections scheduled for October ''could trigger
another civil war.''
The fact is that violence has overshadowed Guinea-Bissau for the past 40
years - 30 years of independence and 10 years of struggle against the
Portuguese yoke.
In January 1973, ''fuzileiros'' (Portuguese marines) led by commander
Alpoim Galvao - an extreme right-wing officer - assassinated the leader
and founder of the PAIGC, Amilcar Cabral, in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.
In September of that year, the PAIGC responded by declaring
Guinea-Bissau's independence from Portugal, which was recognised by Lisbon
one year later, after the Apr. 25, 1974 leftist military coup that overthrew
the dictatorship of Marcello Caetano, who had succeeded Oliveira Salazar
after his death in 1969.
Amilcar's brother Luis Cabral became president that year, and held onto
that post until 1980, when he was toppled by one of his closest associates,
Gen. Joao Bernardo ''Nino'' Vieira, a legendary commander of the guerrilla
forces that fought the Portuguese.
According to representatives of the Guinea-Bissau diaspora, who met in
Lisbon Sep. 23-25, the period during which the country was led by Cabral was
the only relatively peaceful era, although the country was ruled by a
dictatorship of the PAIGC, the only party allowed.
The Nino Vieira era was marked by nepotism, pervasive corruption, and a
number of summary executions by firing squad of leaders charged with
treason.
Despite political backing from France and military support from Senegal,
which sent troops, including armoured divisions, to Guinea-Bissau, Vieira
was ousted after he was defeated in the civil war by Brigadier-General
Ansumane Mané, commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Vieira went into exile with a massive fortune that made him one of the
richest men in Portugal, which granted him asylum.
After taking power in January 2000, Yala ordered the assassination of
Mané, and promoted Gen. Correia Seabra - the strongman who overthrew him
this month - as chief of staff of the armed forces,
Guineans interviewed by IPS in Portugal said the tragedy in their country
began when Galvao's ''fuzileiros'' pulled the trigger in Conakry.
Acting head of state Correia Seabra's decision to name the vice-president
of the PRS, Artur Sanha, as prime minister has drawn an outcry in Bissau and
among the leaders of the diaspora living in Portugal, as well as those who
travelled to Lisbon from Brazil, Spain and France for this week's meeting.
By contrast, there is a general consensus that respected businessman
Henrique Pereira Rosa - the son of a Portuguese father and a Guinean
mother - should become interim president, as proposed by the Roman Catholic
bishop of Bissau, José Camnate.
Playwright Ricardo Goudinho, geologist Orlando Cristiano da Silva,
engineer Adriano de Almeida and architect Joao Carlos Barros told IPS that
they would support the designation of Pereira Rosa.
But, they said, naming Sanha prime minister ''would be a farse,'' because
it would represent a continuation of the ''Balantisation (for the Balanta
ethnic group) of public posts.''
Journalist Humberto Monteiro added that ''we should not continue talking
about the Balanta, Mandinka, Papel or Fulani ethnic groups, but instead
should think of the country as a whole,'' because otherwise ''this will
become a new time-bomb that will explode again in the near future.''
Filmmaker and former anti-colonial guerrilla fighter Flora Gomes added a
disturbing note, saying that in today's Guinea-Bissau, ''the faces of people
reflect more fear than they did 30 years ago, when we confronted the
Portuguese in the jungle, weapons in hand.'' (END/2003)
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