The half-dead man who’s ruling Guinea

By Rashid Suleiman

Guinea-Conakry President General Lansana Conte is undoubtedly a sick man. For the last three years, he has spent more time in hospital than he has governing the West African country.

So serious is his ailment that in March 2006, he addressed his nation from a hospital in Switzerland just to let Guineans know he was alive.

Some critics in West Africa prefer to call him a half-dead president.

Reports say he is incapacitated mentally and physically and has diabetes.

In April 2006, he was flown to Morocco for treatment days after coming from hospital in Switzerland and many Guineans doubted he would come back alive. Four months later, he was again flown to Switzerland for medical attention.

Because of health problems and age, the 74-year-old Conte has been largely a figurehead president in recent years. He prefers to spend most of his time in his home village of Wawa to the capital Conakry. His ruling Party for Unity and Progress (PUP) and cabinet ministers have been rendered irrelevant.

In 2003, he told a PUP congress he had chosen to rule without consulting the party because of divisions in its ranks. At the same congress, he told delegates he would not campaign in the 2004 presidential elections because he did not want to hurt his feet. "You have chosen me, so get on with the business (campaigning) yourselves," he said.

Before the polls, the Republican Front for Democratic Change, a coalition of opposition parties threatened to go to court to challenge Conte’s eligibility to stand for elections because he was ‘sick and disabled’. The opposition said it was going to invoke a clause in the constitution that bars those disabled by illness from seeking public office.

However, the threat was never fulfilled and Conte won a third term.

Conte’s health problems have led to a power vacuum in Guinea.

Proxy leaders

The biggest beneficiaries of the state of affairs have been Conte’s first wife, Henriette, and the president’s close associates who abuse power.

The man who pulls the strings in the vacuum is the powerful secretary general at the presidency, Fode Bangoura. Whenever Conte is abroad in hospital, Bangoura has been running the country and not the constitutional heir, Aboubacar Sompare, the president of parliament.

In 2006, Bangoura took advantage of Conte’s hospitalisation to sack then Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo. Bangoura works closely with Guinea’s richest man and leader of Conte’s Susu tribe, Mr Mamadou Sylla.

The tycoon has been accused of using his closeness to the centre of power to single-handedly dictate what passes as economic and financial policy in the country.

Despite his advanced age and failing health, Conte does not want to leave power. Through a controversial 2001 referendum, the presidential term was increased from five to seven years. It also removed the constitutional limit on presidential terms, making Conte a virtual ‘Life President’ of Guinea. His current seven-year-term ends in 2011.

In 2006, he reiterated one of the most common albeit lame excuses given by African strongmen who do not want to leave power: That he was still looking for a successor who loves Guinea and will protect it from its enemies.

Coming to power

Conte rose to prominence in November 1970 while in the army when a group of exiles from Guinea-Bissau invaded his country to topple founding president Ahmed Sekou Toure. He played an outstanding role in repulsing the attack and was rewarded with promotion to captain in February 1971. He became a regional operational commander in 1973 and was put in charge of assisting freedom fighters in the struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.

Conte was deputy commander of the army in 1975 and five years later, he was roped into politics and was elected MP. He seized his opportunity in April

1984 within days of Sekou Toure’s burial when he led a military takeover that kicked out interim president Lansana Louis Beavogui. Before his brief presidency, Beavogui was Sekou Toure’s Prime Minister.

After the coup, Conte moved quickly to concentrate power in his hands and emerge as a strongman. He banned political activity and suspended the constitution. He formed a 25-man CMRN—French acronym for Military Committee for National Recovery—to rule the country with himself as president.

He slammed Sekou Toure’s murderous regime and released political prisoners. He encouraged an estimated 200,000 Guineans who had fled to exile because of Sekou Toure’s terror to return home.

In 1985, Conte’s Prime Minister and co-coup plotter, Colonel Diarra Traore, tried to seize power while the strongman was attending a regional summit in Togo. Loyal troops quickly suppressed the coup and Traore and about 100 soldiers were later executed for fomenting the revolt. Conte ruled in relative peace thereafter and led economic reforms that earned him plaudits from the International Monetary Fund. He ended Sekou Toure’s hardline foreign policy, seeking and benefiting from closer ties with the West.

But as his health deteriorated, he lost control of the country and let his cronies to run the show with disastrous effects. Inflation reached a record 250 percent in 2005 and there are dim prospects in a country that has been ravaged by poverty right from independence. In the World Cup of graft, Guinea beats only Haiti.

He started political reforms in 1990 when a new constitution was approved. He dissolved the military junta and formed the Transitional Committee for National Recovery – a body of civilians and soldiers – to help him run the country before multiparty elections in 1993.

Conte and his party, PUP won the elections with 51.7 percent of the vote as the opposition cried foul that the poll was rigged. He won the second elections in 1998 with 56 percent. The 2003 polls were boycotted by the opposition who said Conte would never allow a free and fair vote. Only one opposition candidate took part in elections the strongman won with 95 percent.

Through repression and political subterfuge, Conte has neutralised the opposition in the former French colony. He has faced major challenges that he only survived because of the undying loyalty he commands from the military. In 1996, an army mutiny over pay nearly led to a successful coup with the presidential palace suffering major damage. The rebellious soldiers captured Conte and held him hostage for several hours. The soldiers later released him saying they only wanted a pay hike that he granted.

Agitation for change

Last year, a countrywide strike to put pressure on Conte to quit nearly ousted the dictator. As thousands marched in the streets, the presidential guards unleashed terror killing 20 protesters. The barbaric reaction from the security forces failed to cower Guineans even though the death toll rose to 90 by the time the strike ended.

Peace returned after Conte stuck a deal with labour leaders under which a Prime Minister was to be appointed to head the government and prices of fuel and rice were reduced. When Presidential Affairs Minister Eugene Camara became the new Prime Minister, the opposition rejected the appointment leading to more violence.

Conte reacted by declaring martial law but the strikes resumed, forcing him to sack Camara and appoint Lansana Kouyate as Prime Minister from a list forwarded by union leaders and the civil society.

However, the cabal around the strongman has managed to turn tables on the opposition and regain its pole position in politics. This succeeded partly because of Kouyate’s incompetence as Prime Minister.

It started with a decree restructuring the cabinet and elevating the already powerful secretary of the presidency above the Prime Minister. This was followed a few weeks later in January this year with the sacking of Justin Morel Junior as Minister of Communication without the knowledge of Kouyate. The Prime Minister demanded the sacking must be reversed in vain. To make things worse, union leaders backed down from going ahead with a strike they called to press for the full implementation of the agreement they signed with Conte. That was early this year. Four months later, Conte dismissed Kouyate. The sacking went unlamented because of his unsatisfactory performance and unpopularity. A Conte loyalist, Ahmed Tidiane Souare, took the position.

Conte still clings to power through support from the military and cronies. Analysts say Guinea might be plunged into violence after Conte leaves because of ethnic and personal rivalries.