This man Alpha Conde: Guinea’s toppled leader

Conakry, Monday The overthrow of President Alpha Conde in Guinea capped a steady slide from grace for the veteran opposition leader and human rights professor who critics say failed to live up to pledges to deliver democratic restoration and ethnic reconciliation. A dishevelled Conde appeared in a video circulating on social media as he was being held in custody after the military seized power on Sunday, announcing that it had dissolved the constitution, shut down the country’s borders and imposed a nationwide curfew. Draped in a Guinean flag and surrounded by a group of six soldiers in full gear, special forces commander Lt-Col Mamady Doumbouya appeared on national television pledging to restore democracy. “The personalisation of political life is over. We will no longer entrust politics to one man, we will entrust it to the people,” Doumbouya said. The colonel, who has headed a special forces unit in the military, said he was acting in the best interests of the nation of more than 12.7 million people. Not enough economic progress has been made since independence from France in 1958, he said. Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque, reporting from Dakar in neighbouring Senegal, said Sunday’s coup came a week after the parliament voted an increase in budget for the presidency, but a “substantial decrease” for civil servants and members of the security services. The putsch came less than a year after Conde won a third presidential term in a violently disputed election last October following the adoption of a new constitution in March 2020 that allowed him to sidestep the country’s two-term limit, provoking mass protests. President Alpha Conde after he was captured by army putschists during a coup d’etat in Conakry. Photo/AFP Dozens of people were killed during demonstrations, often in clashes with security forces. Hundreds were arrested, including opposition leaders. Sanctions or no sanctions? The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) threatened to impose sanctions after what its chairman, Ghana’s President Nana Akuffo-Addo, called an attempted coup, while the African Union (AU) said it would meet urgently and take “appropriate measures”. Akwasi Osei, professor of history and political science at Delaware State University, warned, though, that regional players will have to open a dialogue with the colonel as citizens are backing the military. “Don’t forget that Doumbouya is a Conde man, he was placed in charge of the Special Forces and specially trained to protect Conde. This is important to understand perhaps why the country seems to stand behind him,” Osei told Al Jazeera. “All sources say that in spite of the AU, ECOWAS’ requests of them to go back to the barracks, it’s not working … is not being heard in Guinea,” he added. “There is no question that Doumbouya is in charge and he is the de facto head. So sanctions or not sanctions they will have to talk to him and more importantly they will have to take the measures of the country and it is clear that it is a popular uprising, at least as of the moment,” Osei said. For Conde’s critics, the third-term bid was the final nail in the coffin of his claims to be “Guinea’s Mandela” and risked chaos in the West African bauxite and iron ore producer. Alioune Tine, an independent human rights expert for the United Nations and founder of the AfrikaJom Center think-tank, said Conde’s refusal to cede power had made either a popular uprising or a coup inevitable. - BBC

This man Alpha Conde: Guinea’s toppled leader

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