Guinea strike poses toughest challenge yet to Conte
19 Jan 2007 14:27:09 GMT Source: Reuters
By Nick Tattersall CONAKRY, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A general strike crippling Guinea poses the toughest challenge yet to the 23-year rule of President Lansana Conte and threatens to throw the West African state into political turmoil, analysts and diplomats say. Union leaders called the action, now in its 10th day, because they say Conte -- a reclusive diabetic in his 70s -- is unfit to rule and should step aside. At least three people have died as security forces clashed with protesters in towns across the bauxite-producing country. "The people will accept neither negotiation nor compromise with Conte, nor a revolution in the palace by generals," said a pamphlet being handed out on the backstreets of the largely deserted oceanside capital Conakry. "The Guinean population want only a total victory: the end of the regime and a transitional government of national unity," said the newsletter, entitled "Eye of the People". Riot police brandishing tear gas grenade launchers and soldiers in unmarked cars patrolled the dilapidated capital, enforcing a ban on public demonstrations during the third strike of its kind in a year. Witnesses in at least one Conakry suburb said police had opened fire on Thursday to break up groups of unarmed youths before bursting into family homes to hunt down suspected troublemakers. Unrest had been reported in around a dozen towns, a diplomat in the capital said. He said a demonstrator was shot and killed in Mamou, around 200 km (125 miles) east of Conakry, on Thursday, bringing the death toll to at least three. "The strike could definitely lead toward a power shift in the immediate future, and seems to be headed toward a popular revolt already in Labe, Pita (some 250 km northeast of Conakry), and possibly the eastern suburbs of Conakry," said Mike McGovern, a West Africa specialist at Yale University in the United States. "If other towns in the interior like Kankan, Guekedou and N'Zerekore follow suit, the balance of power will have begun to tip quite dramatically," he told Reuters. POLITICAL IMPASSE With no obvious successor and a fractious military, Conte's ailing health long has caused fears of a violent struggle for power in the former French colony. Strike leaders say Conte is too sick and erratic to rule, citing a spate of confused cabinet reshuffles and his intervention to free from jail two former allies accused of graft. With repeated predictions of his imminent demise proving premature, even factions within the ruling elite vying to succeed him appear to be growing impatient, analysts say. "Some of the current problems are because Conte has been in relatively good health in the past few months and interfering," said the diplomat in Conakry. "Before people thought ... Conte would go on as long as he could and would be pushed by his family to go on ... Now it's almost conceivable that somehow he will be pushed to the side and that we won't have to wait until his death," he said. Whether an eventual transition turned violent would depend largely on the army, whose most senior officers are loyalists of Conte's generation, but which also contains many younger officers eager for change, he said. "Although the army has remained very loyal to the president until now, they will be most interested in assuring their own survival," said Yale's McGovern. "Whatever promises they may have made to stand by the president, there is theoretically a point beyond which they will have much more to lose by remaining loyal than by abandoning him."
