Thierno Saïdou Diallo aka Tierno Monénembo
Guinean novelist
November 2008
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The acclaimed Guinean novelist Thierno Saïdou Diallo aka Tierno Monénembo, the 2008 laureate of the French prestigious Renaudot prize for his novel Le Roi de Kahel, translated into English as The King of Kahel (AmazonCrossing, 2010), wrote an op-ed for the Paris-based daily Libération titled “Guinée : la démocratisation en trompe-l’œil d’Alpha Condé” that was published on July 5. Below is my translation of the op-ed.
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Guinea: Alpha Condé’s democratization as window-dressing
By TIERNO MONENEMBO, Guinean Writer, 2008 laureate of Renaudot Prize
Translated from the French by Alex Engwete
Last November presidential election aimed at a double relief: the relief of for the Guineans scalded by fifty-two years of dictatorships (amongst Africa’s longest and most murderous) but also the relief of for the international community highly concerned by a West Africa undermined by civil wars, drug trafficking, and terrorism. Even an imperfect election in such a country could only be welcome news in the face of old psychoses that might come to represent the Rwandan syndrome, the Ivorian nightmare, the Islamist legions, or the ghost of Dadis Camara.
A false start is better than a sudden move backward. Guinea, in turn, had to attempt a democratic plunge before being overtaken by its old demons. Any new leader would be welcome should he be willing to turn the page. So much the better: President-elect Alpha Condé had been promising change in a country that needed it so badly. That was enough to make people forget, if only for a moment, his contested election and his tribalistic remarks that caused a veritable pogrom against the Peuls in his electoral stronghold of Haute-Guinée. He’d have all the time needed to better himself after his investiture since, of course, henceforth democracy would take on cleansing virtues, even in the mild climes of Africa.
What’s the situation six months later? Has Guinea entered into democracy? Has President Condé brought about the promised changed? While it’s too early to draw up a balance sheet (at the economic level, notably), the institutional life and the actions taken on the issue of human rights constitute sufficiently telling indicators as regards the nature of the new regime. Nothing, alas, shows a willingness to break up with the past. On the contrary, in his speeches as well as in his actions, Alpha Condé is hopelessly reminiscent of his predecessors as if, in the end, the latter had permanently imprinted their curse upon the country’s political destiny. In the stead of the expected change, it’s an all-too-familiar soup that is served to Guineans: the soup of Sékou Touré heated by Lansana Conté, hastily spiced anew by Dadis Camara. Signs of renewal, no matter how hard one may try to seek them out, they are nowhere to be found in the house Guinea. The new regime didn’t even bother to change the curtains or to reface the façade. The same dishtowels, the same old casseroles, the same lugubrious personnel!
Pivi Zoumanigui and Tiegboro Camara are still ministers. And yet, these two henchmen of Dadis Camara were indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in the aftermath of the massacres perpetrated by the army at a Conakry stadium in 2009. But these two aces of nightsticks and muzzles are aware that the indignations of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or International Crisis Group would be at most useless squawks: election or not, on this side of the world, crime pays and will continue to pay for quite a longtime. For the archaic state left by Sékou Touré is having a hard time dying. The germs of personal power and their terrible corollaries (repression, improvisation, nepotism, ethnic segregation, total ignorance of rules and procedures) remain impervious to any democratic vaccine.
The constitution, or at least what passes as constitution, is trampled underfoot without scruples. Just as in the past, the moods and temper flares of the chief organize and control the slightest space of the national life. In the din of democracy, it’s the machine of despotism that continues to be deployed and at such speed that it has ended up crushing the hard-won gains registered under the transitional regime.
They beat and they jail whenever they want to. They appoint and fire whomever they want to. And in a flurry of decrees and counter-decrees that could have amounted to a pleasant folklore had it not engage the whole destiny of a country.
Thus, the president of National Communication Council was propelled at the helm of that institution by decree, whereas, according to procedure, it’s her colleagues who should have designated her by a majority of votes. Ditto for the Ombudsman of the Republic whose seven-year tenure was brutally interrupted for the benefit of… General Facinet Touré, erstwhile Foreign Minister of the late dictator Lansana Conté. To crown this sidesplitting restoration of the old order, Tidiane Souaré, last Prime Minister of the very same Lansana Conté, and Fodé Soumah, his Minister of Sport, are promoted as special advisors to the president. By irony of fate, President Alpha rehabilitates those whom Candidate Alpha Condé had exposed to public contempt… The myth of the “historic opposition leader” shrewdly made up out of whole cloth by the Paris-based PR fauna seems quite incongruous in the face of this sinister picture in which the former political prisoner sacrifices the lamb of democracy in order to please his erstwhile jailers.
But the Guineans, who have seen it all, would by no means be surprised by all this. They know that they live in the homeland of Sékou Touré and Dadis Camara where, if ridiculousness isn’t lethal, sowers of death often look like jesters. On April 11, the governor of Conakry and his henchmen happily joined the jubilant crowd that went to welcome the opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo (returning from a long stint abroad) before opening fire. The toll: 1 dead, 27 injured, 70 arrests! And a serious warning whispered in the ear of the unfortunate Diallo: “There’s but one president in Guinea and it’s Alpha Condé!” Translation: demonstrations of this kind that were rife in Conté’s time and even in Dadis Camara’s (Alpha Condé himself to a large extent took advantage of them) are no longer appropriate.
Professor Alpha Condé
Guinea-Conakry President
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