Guinea-Bissau: Another go at stability - 28 June election

BISSAU, 26 June 2009 (IRIN) - Guinea-Bissauans hope a presidential election process that opened with a political killing will end with a peacefully elected leader who will help move the country toward long-elusive civilian rule and stability.

Voters from the West African nation go to the polls on 28 June in a special election to replace former president, João Bernardo Vieira, who was assassinated in March hours after the army chief of staff, Batista Tagme Na Wai, was killed in a bomb blast.

On 5 June state security agents killed independent presidential candidate, Baciro Dabo, and a former minister allegedly for resisting arrest for their part in a coup plot.

"The feeling at the international and national level is one of powerlessness and reluctance to believe that Guinea-Bissau can have a different situation in the future," said Franco Nulli, head of the European Union delegation in the country.

But there are positive signs, he said. "After the March assassinations, the army stayed in [its] place and did not - as is the case in other countries - take power." He also pointed to successful legislative elections in November 2008.

Since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has been hit repeatedly by coups and attempted coups, political assassinations and military uprisings. In the last 15 years, no president has completed the five-year term and in the last nine years, three chiefs of staff have been assassinated, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Instability has favoured drug traffickers, who have used the country as a transit point for cocaine shipments to Europe.

In a recent report ICG said: "The election has the potential to help move the country beyond the present impasse, but it could also provoke further instability."

ICG wrote that a lack of transparency and a failure by one segment of the society to accept results would be dangerous. Losing "politico-military factions" are likely to pose the greatest threat, the think-tank concluded: "Even if the immediate aftermath of the election is calm, continuing factional infighting in the military may threaten stability for years."

Of the 11 presidential candidates, Malam Bacai Sanha of the ruling African Party for Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and Kumba Yala of the opposition Party for Social Renewal (PRS) are favoured by some analysts to make it to a run-off.

Sanha served as interim president from 1999 to 2000, but was defeated in subsequent elections by Yala, who comes from the majority Balanta ethnic group, dominant in the armed forces. 

Analysts say the historical ties between politicians and the military constitute a significant obstacle to the reforms needed to build solid civilian rule.

An election alone is not enough to end Guinea-Bissau's militarization of politics, ICG said; the country needs to reduce the armed forces and keep them out of politics, security sector reform must be better coordinated between the UN and the EU and there must be accountability for political violence, the group said in its report.

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