Guinea president deposed in military coup
Print Edition
GUINEA’S new military leaders sought to tighten their grip on power after overthrowing President Alpha Conde, warning local officials that refusing to appear at a meeting convened later yesterday would be considered an act of rebellion against the junta.
After putting the West African nation back under military rule for the first time in over a decade, the junta said Guinea’s governors were to be replaced by regional commanders. A nightly curfew was put in place, and the country’s constitution and National Assembly were both dissolved.
The military junta also refused to issue a timeline for releasing Conde, saying the 83-year-old deposed leader still had access to medical care and his doctors.
Light traffic resumed yesterday, and some shops reopened around the main administrative district of Kaloum in Conakry, which witnessed heavy gunfire throughout Sunday as the special forces battled soldiers loyal to Conde. A military spokesman said that land air borders had also been reopened.
While the political opposition and the junta both sought Conde’s ouster, it remained unclear how united the two would be going forward. It also was unknown how much support the junta leader Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya had within the military. As the commander of the army’s special forces unit he directed elite soldiers but it was still possible that others who remained loyal to the ousted president could mount a countercoup in the coming hours or days.
In announcing the coup on state television, Doumbouya said on Sunday that “poverty and endemic corruption” had driven his forces to remove Conde from office. “We will no longer entrust politics to one man. We will entrust it to the people,” he said, draped in a Guinean flag with about a half dozen other soldiers flanked at his side. He promised to launch a “national consultation to open an inclusive and calm transition.”
The coup has been met by condemnation from some of Guinea’s strongest allies. The United Nations quickly denounced the takeover, and both the African Union and West Africa’s regional bloc have threatened sanctions.
Regional experts say however that unlike in landlocked Mali where neighbors and partners were able to pressure a junta there after a coup, leverage on the military in Guinea could be limited because it is not landlocked, also because it is not a member of the West African currency union.
The takeover in the West African nation that holds the world’s largest bauxite reserves, an ore used to produce aluminium, sent prices of the metal skyrocketing to a 10-year high yesterday over fears of further supply disruption in the downstream market.
China opposed coup attempts to seize power in Guinea and called for the immediate release of the country’s president Conde. “We hope relevant parties can exercise calm and restraint, bear in mind the fundamental interests of the nation and people, resolve the relevant issue through dialogue and consultation and safeguard peace and stability in Guinea,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
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