A military coup in Guinea appears to have succeeded, yet the Ministry of Defence maintains that the 'threat' was put down
THE FIRST sign was gunfire in the streets of Conakry, the capital of Guinea, on the morning of September 5th. Soon after unauthenticated videos spread on social media showing a dishevelled, stunned, President Alpha Condé surrounded by masked soldiers: “Have we touched a single hair on your head?” demands one soldier of the 83-year-old. Before the day was out soldiers draped in Guinean flags appeared on national television. “The personalisation of political life is over.
When he took office in December 2010, Mr Condé, once a prominent opposition figure, became the country’s first democratically elected president. Yet his commitment to democracy has since waned. In March last year, after two terms in office, he pushed through a new constitution that permitted him to run for another two six-year terms. Angry Guineans took to the streets in protest but were met with brutality by security forces, who killed dozens of them.
Yet things could easily get worse. The soldiers have promised talks and an “inclusive and peaceful transition” but there is no clear indication of how long they plan to stay in power. Making vague promises of transitions to fob off regional and Western powers, while doing nothing of the sort, would fit closely the model established in Mali, where soldiers have recently staged two coups, and in Chad. The meek international reaction to those putsches may have emboldened Guinea’s special forces.
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