The captain likes to sleep late. Most days he rises well into the afternoon. Sometimes it is not until after sunset. He governs in darkness, his aides whisper, because that is when coups happen, like the one he staged early one December morning.
Guinea hasn't exactly been blessed with good governance. The article goes on:
Guinea has suffered through years of tyranny. The country chose to be independent from a reluctant France in 1958, but a nation that seemed like a beacon of hope for Africa quickly slipped under the shroud of socialist dictatorship, ruled by the charismatic but brutal Sékou Touré. Isolated and impoverished, Guinea became a redoubt of misery.
After Mr. Touré died, in 1984, a young military officer, Lansana Conté, seized power and promised reform. Hope and optimism greeted him. But he governed as a military dictator. Mr. Conté eventually made a show of multiparty democracy, but his rule was in practice virtually unchallenged.
In the past few years, as Mr. Conté’s health declined, Guinea drifted toward chaos. Corruption rotted the country’s already fragile courts and the police. Workers went unpaid, and strikes became common and violent. Mr. Conté unleashed his presidential guard to quell dissent, and hundreds died, according to human rights investigators.
South American drug traffickers, who ship cocaine to Europe via West Africa, infiltrated the government at the highest levels. Mr. Conté’s son Ousmane confessed on television last month to aiding the cocaine traffickers who had turned Guinea into a virtual narco-state. Senior police officials and some of the country’s top drug enforcers were involved, according to investigators.
Why do you think Guinea may be prone to coups and dictatorships? Why have its dictators been so long-lived, and what do you think of Captain Camara's prospects? What would Bueno de Mesquita et. al say?
And then there are the heartbreaking hopes of many Guineans that this time yes, the country will be cleaned up (though previous dictators promised the same):
Captain Camara, sensing the public outrage at corruption and the drug trade, vowed to clean up the country. In a bizarre but riveting set of televised interrogations, the compact, square-jawed captain extracted confessions from some of the most feared and powerful figures of the ancien régime.
These broadcasts, which came to be called “The Dadis Show,” proved a powerful catharsis.
“It is cleansing,” said Sidya Touré, who was prime minister in the 1990s and is a prominent opposition figure. “The former government pillaged and criminalized the state. People want justice for that.”
Garbage piles shoulder high on the potholed streets of Conakry, where drug kingpins prowl in Hummers and Cadillac Escalades. But Captain Camara is hailed as a hero by many.
“He is cleaning up the country like only a soldier can,” said Ousmane Sow, an out-of-work carpenter who sells cigarettes and chewing gum on a downtown street corner. “I support him. He should stay in power as long as it takes to finish the job.”
[...]
“We have seen democracy under Conté, and it was a sham,” said Alpha Barry, 20, a student who sat hunched over a photocopied organic chemistry textbook. “I don’t want the military to stay long. But if we have elections now we will only have another coup.”
Do we have any reason to expect that captain Camara will be different this time around? How does drug trafficking money affect the incentives of leaders in a very poor and small country like Guinea?
Read the rest for reactions from the US and the EU: one condemning the coup and cutting off some aid, the other saying that they have to work with the captain. Which of the two different reactions is most likely to be constructive?
(cross-posted)
Given the state of Guina's democracy prior to the coup, I doubt that had Camara not seized control the results would have been very positive. I did some searching on the coup and came across this blog post which asks "how good of a document can a "constitution" drafted and ratified during the reign of a dictator really be?". He also emphasises the fact that Camara comes from the lower ranks of the military which "signifies a rebellion against the military leadership as well as against the civilian leadership. Which implies a break of some type with the immediate past".
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, even if Camara's intentions are honest, that doesn't mean that things won't turn out badly. One of the commenters on that blog passes the point that "the very culture [in Western Africa] sets up even the very best intentioned leader for failure because they nearly deify any leader." Also, the fear that another coup could occur encourages not just strange work habits (detailed further here), but authoritarian practices as described in this artice, which describes how after seizing power Camara "suspended the nation’s constitution and curtailed political and trade union activity, as well as press freedom."
Talia, thanks for the links.
ReplyDeleteWhy would culture play a role here? I'm not sure that there is evidence that Guineans (as opposed to people in general) deify their leaders, but leaders in a state like Guinea may have incentives (regardless of culture) to do things that are bad for the country.
I didn't mean to imply that Guinea was a democracy before Camara - quite clearly it wasn't.