A situation similar to what happened in Sierra Leone in 1996 is developing in neighbouring Guinea as preparations are being made for a second round of voting to determine a clear winner to run the country since none of the contestants could garner the required number of votes to clinch victory in the first round.
Contrary to speculations that polling would be done on July 18, pundits and the two remaining candidates, Cellou Diallo and Alpha Conde, are calling for more time to face the people again; a plausible reason for this call being they want more time to do some horse trading and fix deals.
In Sierra Leone, in 1996, Thaimu Bangura of the PDP-Sorbeh largely determined the winner among the two front runners (Dr. John Karefa-Smart and Ahmed Tejan Kabbah) when he pitched tent with Kabbah and asked his supporters to vote for Kabbah in the run-off election. Kabbah won and Thaimu was later appointed Finance Minister.
A very similar scenario is unfolding in Guinea where Sidya Toure, leader of the Union of Republican Forces (UFR), the man who came third in the first round, is being courted and wooed by Cellou Diallo, leader of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG) and Alpha Conde, leader of the Rally of the Guinean People(RPG).
At a recent press conference in Conakry, the capital,, Sidya (top photo), a technocrat and former Prime Minister (1996-1999), said he has not given his word to anybody yet although he is talking to the two camps that are preparing for the run-off. He said he will only give his support to the party whose ideological stance and program is similar to his. He also called for calm and stressed that Guinea was still a very fragile country and admonished the two remaining contestants and their supporters to avoid any ethnocentric sentiments and outbursts.
Some of Toure’s supporters, writing in the Guinean media, are urging him to get a firm promise that he will remain Prime Minister for at least three years without being sacked by whoever gets his support and wins. Former president Lansana Conte had invited Toure from exile in Abidjan to appoint him Prime Minister in 1996 because of local and international calls for democratic reforms. He sacked him a few years later. Just as he sacked Cellou, another technocrat, who later became Prime Minister after Sidya. Cellou, an economist and banker, was Prime Minister from 2004 to 2006.
Cellou Diallo
Some of Toure’s supporters also warned him not to support "a communist", a sly reference to professor Alpha Conde who is believed to have socialist leanings. Others are asking him to support Alpha because they say Cellou is weak and corrupt. Both Alpha and Cellou have dismissed these perceptions as nonsense.
The fact that both Toure and Diallo are technocrats with strong international connections that had served as Prime Ministers under Lansana Conte might come into play in Sidya’s final decision. Also, Cellou currently has an edge over Alpha. He got 44 percent of the vote in the first round; Alpha got 20 percent.
Alpha Conde had never served under Lansana Conte and was almost always either in jail or in exile in France where he lived and worked for many years as an academic.. He contested two presidential elections during the late dictator Lansana Conte’s reign and, not surprisigly, lost both times..
Alpha Conde
Guineans are still struggling to fix a date for the final round of this election, the first democratic election in over 50 years. Some people are suggesting the month of August while others prefer September, after the Ramadan fasting period; but this has been condemned by legal experts who say it would be too far away and unconstitutional.
Foreign observers in the country, who should have left by now, are currently biting their nails and twiddling their thumbs with boredom in Conakry hotels. They have scheduled a meeting with Cellou Diallo and Alpha Conde this week, to apparently hammer out a new date for the run-off that will satisy the major stakeholders.
Comments