The African Union (AU) and the international community highly think about the welfare of the Republic of Guinea, my country. In the African Union’s 165th meeting of December 29, 2008 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Peace and Security Council of the African Union condemned and suspended the participation of Guinea in the activities of the organization until the return to constitutional order in pursuant of the provisions of the AU Constitutive Act and the Lome Declaration of July 2000 on unconstitutional changes of Government. According to this resolution, the AU reiterated “its firm condemnation of the coup d’Etat in that country, which is a flagrant violation of the Constitution of Guinea.” Flagrant violation of the Constitution of Guinea? Which Constitution?
As a citizen of the Republic of Guinea, I have the moral obligation and the intellectual judgment to proclaim constructive and patriotic comments on the democratic process. I 100% condemn any coup d’Etat because people voting in the secret ballot boxes, not arms, should determine the leaders of a democratic nation. I know the consequences of coup d’etat after post-colonial era.
According to Major Jimmi Wangome (1985):
With the advent of independence in the late 50's and early 60's euphoria and new hopes swept through Africa as nation after nation attained self-govern-ment. There were new dreams and expectations as the colonial masters packed their bags and handed over the instruments of power to the indigenous peoples. To most Africans this was the end of a long freedom struggle in which so many had suffered. It was the end of slavery, human degradation and exploitation. However, these dreams were soon shattered as government after government fell victim to the coup d'etat across the continent. The new military rulers accused the civilian government of everything from corruption and incompetence to mismanagement of the national economy. However, experience in Africa has shown that the military are no better than civilians when it comes to running governments. Rather than solve African contemporary political and socio-economic problems, military coups d'etat in Africa have tended to drive the continent into even further suffering and turmoil. This has been the case in Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Congo and several other African states.
Whenever war takes place in African, the AU, ECOWAS and the international community and their media give us the most appropriate help on time, right?.
When we have AIDS orphans due to war, the AU, ECOWAS, and the international community and their media give us the most appropriate help on time, right?
When African children are kidnapped by human traffickers, or when they are sent on the street for prostitution because corruption practices prevent parents to feed their children, the AU, ECOWAS, and the international community and the media give us the most appropriate help on time, right?
Before children are traumatized as child-soldiers, the AU, ECOWAS, and the international community almost always remove the dictator from power, right?
We know about the genocide in Ruanda, in Dafur, and the AU, ECOWAS, and the international community were there to prevent it, right?
Well, critics suggest that the best opportunities those organizations offer is to wait till the damage is done, and the media and the international community use the disaster to promote their personal agenda. For example,
Linda Melvern’s new book, the result of a decade of investigative work, is a damning indictment of almost all the key figures and the institutions involved. It reveals how the French military trained the killers, how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence that the genocide was about to begin, how the John Major government ignored vital warnings that the genocide was planned, how much Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the French government knew prior to the genocide and how the Security Council’s shameful decision to evacuate the peacekeepers came about.
Critics suggest that hey wait until the calamities breed the humiliation of poverty, famine, and diseases. According to Human Watch Report:
The Rwandans who organized and executed the genocide must bear full responsibility for it. But genocide anywhere implicates everyone. To the extent that governments and peoples elsewhere failed to prevent and halt this killing campaign, they all share in the shame of the crime. In addition, the U.N. staff as well as the three foreign governments principally involved in Rwanda bear added responsibility: the U.N. staff for having failed to provide adequate information and guidance to members of the Security Council; Belgium, for having withdrawn its troops precipitately and for having championed total withdrawal of the U.N. force; the U.S. for having put saving money ahead of saving lives and for slowing the sending of a relief force; and France, for having continued its support of a government engaged in genocide. In contrast to the inaction of the major actors, some non-permanent members of the Security Council with no traditional ties with Rwanda undertook to push for a U.N. force to protect Tutsi from extermination. But all members of the Security Council brought discredit on the U.N. by permitting the representative of a genocidal government to continue sitting in the Security Council, a council supposedly committed to peace.
What happens when the crime is completed? What will the media stretch? “Our sponsors and donors help children whose parents are not there for them. They may be AIDS orphans, street children, child soldiers or children orphaned by war, poverty or natural disasters. We give these children a mother and a family in a home within an SOS Children's Village. Donations pay to build the Villages and run them until child sponsors cover the running costs. ”
According to The African Orphaned and Abandoned Children's Fund LLC (AOAACF), “There are over 15 Million orphaned and abandoned children in Africa as a result of HIV/AIDS with an estimated 1 million (WHO;UN) in Kenya alone. There are an estimated 40+ million children as a result of war, famine, and poverty abandoned and living in the streets and slums of sub-Saharan Africa. ”
Surely Guinea needs to be condemned now, and Guineans need to listen to the international community because that community has the best strategies to help Guinea better than God’s answer. Let us closely look at what was happening in Guinea, and what the AU, ECOWAS and the international community did about it.
According to www.crisisgroup.org, “the military and those who have benefited from Conté's transformation of the state into little more than a machine for pillage and self-enrichment. Of particular concern are members of his political party, the Parti de l'Unité et du Progrès (PUP), which is likely to begin disintegrating once he is no longer there.”
Not only did Lansana Conte and his swindling machines enrich themselves, they had a different agenda. According to John Mark Ministries there were chilling and uncertain futures that awaited the Christian minority in the Republic of Guinea; uncertain futures promoted by Lansana Conte. Lansana Conte wanted to use our Muslim brothers and sisters to eliminate the Christian minority. Christian communities were victims of worshiping God and their lands were being taken away by refugee Muslim supported by Lansana Conte and his associate, including the President of the National Assembly of Guinea. Christian baptism ceremonies were attacked by Muslims who were complaining that music from the church was disturbing their prayers in the mosques in N’Zerekore. These same Muslims were, as considerable documentary evidence proved, supported by the government of President Conte in Guinea trained, armed, funded and gave refuge to Liberian rebels fighting against the government of Liberian President Charles Taylor during the Liberian War. ICG maintains "LURD fighters trained at the Kankan and Macenta military bases and were armed by the government from 1999 if not 1998." (ICG report, p 21). Moreover, these same Muslims, which that the peaceful Christians welcomed as refugees from Liberia, according to this report, used the enormous support from the Muslim population and Lansana Conte, a Muslim, to cause Muslim intolerance and anger as they flamed disproportionate Muslim feelings of both superiority and victimhood as they tried to overpower Christians. The report also proved that there was threats to peace because Islamists were stirring up feelings of Muslim supremacy and inciting conflict and provocation. Those Islamist fighters, recollecting the warriors’ dominance of the 20th century and also the great Mali (or Mande) Empire of the 14th to 17th centuries, they used to talk about longer-term mission being the restitution of a glorious Mandingo empire. Using their guns, they think "war is more lucrative than peace" and the military "has entrenched interests in pillage" .
The death of the West African dictator Lansana Conté - and the suffering he inflicted on Guinea during his quarter century in power - can't help but bring to mind President Robert Mugabe's southern African sit-in. Conté's death comforts the depressing view that only nature can remove a president who decides that he is the incarnation of his nation, no matter the potential wealth of the country or the extent of organised, internal opposition.
As the international community has condemn the coup d’état of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara (a Christian minority) after the death of Lansana Conte last year, what should be done to support the Guineans so as to carry out a genius democratic process?. After the coup was staged, the international community, including the Guinean intellectuals at home and abroad, condemned the leaders because a possible civil war was predicted. In addition, the coup prevented a possible constitutional heir to the presidency of the Republic of Guinea. However, looking through the windows of democratic institutions, were there any policies that promoted democracy in Guinea during and after the death of the Guinean President, Lansana Conté? According to The Economist (US) (2005), “Guinea's looming power vacuum endangers West Africa's recovery.” The article concluded, “Many Guineans now fear the reverse. As Sierra Leone and Liberia grope towards a semblance of order and democracy, Guinea is wobbling. The International Crisis Group, a think-tank, says that it "risks becoming West Africa's next failed state". That would be disastrous for Guinea--and may stymie”.
Considering these facts, could we say that there was a constitutional violation in Guinea? Was there any form of democracy in Guinea?
In most African countries dictatorial governments used radio propaganda to camouflage unjust ordeals against illiterate people. “Radio is the most effective medium in Africa, since poverty and illiteracy make television and newspapers inaccessible to most people (Chalk 1999a:93). Consequently, radio is the premier means of reaching the public with information” (Hege Løvdal Gulseth, (2004). Was there any propaganda in the media in Guinea to discredit the opponents of Lansana Conte?
According to RAS MUBARAK at Glasgow in Scotland, Lansana Conte, Paul Biya and other African leaders used propaganda to be the only leaders qualified to be president. “The NPP and their friends in the media have been so naive they have made incessant propaganda attacks on Prof. Mills to the effect that Professor Mills would be controlled by Jerry Rawlings from the sidelines, forgetting that Jerry Rawlings, unlike many of his compatriots on the African continent willing gave up power after his tenure. They have forgotten that John Kufuor would never have been president if Jerry Rawlings was that power hungry. We have seen it all over the place where leaders have tinkered with their constitution and held on to power as if they were the only repository of wisdom and leadership qualities - Paul Biya, Hosni Mubarak, Obasanjo, Mugabe, Eyadema, Lansana Conte etc.”
In Africa, as elsewhere, we have learned from painful experience that authoritarian and highly personalized forms of governance, ethnic discrimination, and violations of human rights have been the root causes of conflict. Conversely, Africans, like others, have also learned that only democratic governance -- by protecting minorities, encouraging political pluralism, and upholding the rule of law -- can channel internal dissent peacefully, and thus help break the cycle of conflict and poverty.
Was there a provisional plan by AU, ECOWAS, and the international community to protect the Christian minority had there being any civil war in Guinea? Did the international community know that Lansana Conte was going to use any means to allow either his son or someone in his inner circle to be President of Guinea, and Aboubacar Sompare surely was of Lansana Conte’s inner circle because he is of Lansana Conte’s ethnic group.
What form of democratic process do the AU, ECOWAS and the international community want? Let’s see what is happening in Guinea. According to Laurence Boutreix (2008), The Junta leader has promised election in 2010, and he has associated the representatives of political parties, trade unions, religious faiths and civil associations in the process. Besides, Aboubacar Sompare, who was claimed to be the head of state, according to a constitution that was never respected, the prime minister Tidiane Souare has given his government loyalty to Camara. Camara pledged to root out corruption in the mineral-rich country, warning that "anyone who has misappropriated state assets for his benefit, if caught, will be judged and punished before the people. The coup leader said that under Conte's 1984-2008 rule, Guinea had suffered a "great embezzlement" of public funds. However, he absolved Conte personally of corruption, describing him as "honest" and called for a minute's silence in memory of the late dictator. But he said "there are ministers who surrounded the head of state who looted the country, who constructed buildings, and had bank accounts everywhere. "At a time when the president was tired, all the people who surrounded him filled their pockets," he added. Announcing an action plan to clean up the government, Camara lambasted "the irresponsibility and notorious incapacity" of the parliament and the corruption of the government he toppled this week. Trade union leader Rabiatou Serah Diallo, a fierce opponent of Conte's regime, welcomed the speech, particularly Camara's promise to punish those guilty of corruption. "The fight against impunity must become a reality in Guinea," she said.
How should democracy begin in Africa?
Professor Chirot shares his thought with the world:
The accepted wisdom has it that democracy and a robust civil society emerge together. Again, this does not square well with history. For instance, the development of civil society in England took nearly seven centuries, and can be attributed to power struggles between local elites and the central monarchy, not the activity of the masses. Democracy came later. Most importantly, civil society was achieved in a way that did not destroy a sense of national unity. This, Chirot suggested, is what must occur in Africa if it is to escape some of the devastating conflicts of the past decades. What we hope, however, is that the development of civil society in Africa will not take as long as it did in England. In many places in Africa, the power of local elites was seriously undermined during the colonial era, and it has remained so. This means that local elites, including those within larger cities, are not strong enough to fight against the power of the central government, which is often rife with corruption. He noted that it is possible to use international aid to involve and empower local elites in the distribution of resources, and thus begin to balance the power of the central government and create what he calls a “parallel society.”
Joseph Haba, English Teacher
MEd/ADM/SUP and
Doctoral Students of Business Administration
University of Phoenix
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| Last updated 2011/12/12 11:14:45 PST | Hits 491 |
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