International Crisis Group (Brussels)
24 June 2008
press release
Dakar — Unless all civil society actors, heads of political parties and religious leaders unite in their quest for real change, the Conté dictatorship will be restored in Guinea.
Guinea: Ensuring Democratic Reforms, the latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, finds that there is every chance the government will break its promise of credible legislative elections in December 2008, compromise economic revival and bury the independent commission of inquiry tasked with identifying and prosecuting authors of the bloody 2007 crackdown.
“The dismissal of the Prime Minister Lansana Kouyaté on 20 May 2008 and his replacement by Tidiane Souaré, a close ally of President Lansana Conté, puts the reform process at risk”, says Daniela Kroslak, Deputy Director of Crisis Group’s Africa Program. “The political and economic change Guineans demanded in 2007 at the cost of nearly 200 lives is in jeopardy”.
Political parties, civil society and ordinary citizens had great expectations from Kouyaté, a prime minister initially endowed with powerful popular support. But paralysed by the continual obstruction of Conté and his allies and cut off from Conakry’s political and intellectual elite, he was progressively neutralised and finally sufficiently weakened for the president to be able to dismiss him without fear of new demonstrations.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union (EU), the United Nations Office for West Africa, France, the U.S. and Guinea’s other external partners must send a common message to the new prime minister. Direct assistance to the government should be made conditional on the organisation of legislative elections in December 2008 and the provision of financial and logistic support and security measures necessary to launch the independent commission of inquiry into the events of June 2006 and January-February 2007.
“Unless robust pressure – internal and external – is applied, the prospect of a political shift will disappear”, says François Grignon, Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director. “The calming talk about inclusion and pursuit of ‘change’ from the new head of government should fool no one”.
Click here to read the briefing
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