Guinea: the junta agrees to return power to civilians in two years

Published on: 23/10/2022 – 12:16 Threatened with sanctions by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Guinean military junta, in charge of the country, has agreed to bring forward the return civilians in power for two years. She thus renounced to lead the country for three years. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Guinea finally reached a compromise. Guinea’s ruling junta has agreed to return power to civilians after two years, giving up under the threat of imminent sanctions to rule the country for three years. “In a dynamic compromise, experts from ECOWAS and Guinea have jointly developed a consolidated chronogram (calendar) of the transition spread over 24 months”, says an ECOWAS document sent to an AFP correspondent on Friday and published on social networks by the junta. The leader of the junta, Mamady Doumbouya then clarified that this schedule takes effect from January 1, 2023, during the closing ceremony of the ECOWAS technical mission dispatched to Conakry this week, broadcast on national television RTG.>> To read also: ” Burkina, Guinea, Chad, Mali… Progress report on the democratic transitions in progress “The calendar should be presented to the next ECOWAS summit “for its approval in order to trigger its implementation”, says the document of the regional organization. An ordinary ECOWAS summit is scheduled before the end of the year. Colonel Mamady Doumbouya took power by force on September 5, 2021 by overthrowing civilian President Alpha Condé with his men. He has since been sworn in as president. He has pledged to hand over to civilians after the elections. The junta had so far affirmed its intention to govern for three years, the time for it to organize credible elections and carry out important reforms necessary for what it calls a “refoundation” of the Guinean state. .>> Read also: “New sanctions against Guinea heighten tensions between the junta and ECOWAS” ECOWAS said such an unacceptable delay. On September 22, the leaders of the member states meeting at a summit in New York without Guinea had given the authorities one month to present a “reasonable and acceptable” timetable, failing which “more severe sanctions” than those already imposed would be applied. However, the bridges have never been broken and the Guinean authorities have repeated that they are ready to cooperate with ECOWAS, which this week sent a mission to Conakry to work out a compromise schedule. Guinean Prime Minister Bernard Goumou said Thursday that the authorities were “not fixed” on the three years. Civilian victims Various West African officials had indicated that a period of two years would be acceptable. It was over a similar period that ECOWAS and the ruling junta in a neighboring country, Mali, had come to an agreement after months of arm wrestling and severe regional retaliatory measures. Under the terms of an agreement concluded in July, the Malian soldiers are supposed to leave in March 2024. They would then have remained in fact more than three and a half years since they overthrew the elected civilian president in August 2020. For more than two years, ECOWAS has seen succeed military coups in West Africa, twice in 2020 and 2021 in Mali, in 2021 in Guinea and twice in 2022 in Burkina Faso. It multiplies the summits, the missions and the pressures to shorten the so-called transition periods and stem the contagion, but it is confronted with authorities who do not intend to let go of the controls anytime soon. ECOWAS has suspended Guinea from its authorities. On September 22, it suspended all assistance and financial transactions with Guinea and announced against a certain number of personalities the freezing of their financial assets and a ban on traveling in the ECOWAS area. The compromise reached in Conakry was in a climate of confrontation between the junta and the opposition. At least four civilians were killed Thursday and Friday during demonstrations against the junta at the call of a citizens’ collective which demands a rapid return of civilians to power and the release of all prisoners detained for political reasons. he opposition accuses the junta of confiscating power and silencing all dissenting voices through arrests of political and civil society leaders, and judicial inquiries. The major parties refuse dialogue with the junta on the content of the so-called transition period under the conditions set by the authorities. They ask that the dialogue take place under the arbitration of ECOWAS. The report of the ECOWAS mission affirms the will of the latter to associate all the parties for an “inclusive implementation of the transition timetable”. With AFP