ECOWAS to structure roadmap for Guinea to return to constitutional rule - UPfront ( 16-9-21)

tonight west african head staff states have given the guinea junta exactly one year to set up and transition into a democratic state we'll find out what else they've been saying at the extraordinary meeting and discuss this matter with the very best of brains in this country as we get to understand how to deal with the guinea crisis in a more comprehensive manner but the details after this break [Music] you're welcome back this is affront my name is raymond darko now equos is demanding the political regime in guinea set up a transition period to return the country to civilian rule this is supposed to happen within exactly a year from now also the asking the military grouping there to immediately undertake unconditional release of the president who was removed from office alpha conde these are the demands we understand are containing the communique which will soon be communicated to the rest of the world at the extraordinary summit held here in accra now be getting details of that particular summit and much more the reasoning that's gone into this but tonight my guests are the very best you'll find in this country and on the subreddit on this particular matter joining already here in studio is a man who perhaps knows it when it comes to guinea um dr keough menin has been a former jew and resident coordinator let's start from chat you've also been to liberia and then you spend some time in guinea too so you understand that he knows what guinea is and where it's supposed to be and what's been happening in that country now joining us on zoom is dr emanuel bombande he's a senior mediation advisor at the united nations and i spent a lot of work and a lot of action in the sub-region doing a lot of mediation work and fighting for peace here in ghana i'm sure you would have heard of him when it comes to the west africa network for peace and how he's actually done so much we're connected to that institution much more so we'll be joined in the course of the conversation by professor vladimir danso who is the dean of the ghana armed forces commander and staff college i'm sure you'll find no better set of wonderful people for this conversation as we get to discuss the gaining crisis and the best way forward as the second extraordinary meeting to discuss that particular scenario is playing out and coming to an end with a press conference soon and shadowed to be here live on this network as we get that particular detail also for you but first let me get to put this in perspective the first statement from did hint of similar directives to the military leadership in guinea exactly how different beyond the timeline specifically given is this particular indication that will not tolerate your ascension to power true means which are not free and fair and transparent elections let me start with you doc you're welcome sir thank you i hope you are doing well very well thank you we'll be getting to know more about guinea and how far we come with this particular crisis but immediately the dictation from equals is pretty simple release the man unconditionally and secondly make sure that you wind up and get them back onto a democratic path in l.a what do you think about it i think the conditions are quite customary the type of conditions one would expect that the echoes will put before the janta they've done that in several areas and i think normally discussions are going to be held around that over the years but whatever discussions that are going to be held they would be held within the context of three concerns the first concern is that the yokohamas would want to be sure that this period within which the military has power is going to be a period which will not deteriorate into wrestling or power by various groups because when there is a coup it means that people who were also in power had lost power and there's a likelihood that they would also want to cut back to power by placing this period within the context of a transition hopefully would make everybody understand that it's a temporary period okay and therefore there's no need to you know descend to think about you know using force to come to part to take it away from them or whatever the second is also the fact that um you don't want to make cool details attractive okay so it should be clear to them that by season power they will not be allowed to enjoy power they have to place it within a certain context and it's a very short contest within which power should be to go back to those that will have to pass through the normal processes to be able to get it the third element is that by putting the transition i think discussions will be held with all the stakeholders in this period of transition and then they would be able to look at how they would transition into constitutional government once more and that what were the factors that really caused this cool to emerge and therefore they should avoid the second time and therefore be able to much of that conversation i'll be having with you but let me get to that zoom link and bring in um dr emmanuel bombande doc the directive is pretty clear it is almost like what ekwa said after his first meeting make sure you hand over power within the shortest possible time in this case six two months to a year and also make sure that conde is freed unconditionally a step in the right direction good evening everyone and good evening to all your viewers uh it is a step in the right direction for the reason that equals is following its own blueprint and i have in my hand here the equals protocol that is related to the mechanism for conflict prevention management resolution and peacekeeping and security basically this mechanism and the article two sub-section c is clear the echoes seeks to promote and consolidate democratic governance as well as democratic institutions in each member state so when a member state falls out of this it is the responsibility of the collective aqueous leadership at the highest level of the authority of health of state and governments to bring that state back into the fold and that fold means respecting our own political convergence criteria and so the one year transition is if you would call it the period that the authority of health state estimate to be the time in which all the necessary arrangements which probably would include and would include constitution making can allow for that return but i would want to come back to you and talk more about whether this initiative is adequate and whether it is not time for us to update these precisely because we should not just be looking at the call for a return to constitutional order but we should be looking also at what is it that will not make an environment in guinea suitable again for a coup d'etat just as we have talked about in money well that's interesting i'm sure we are gearing up for a very wonderful conversation tonight and if you just join us this is upfront our conversation is the latest coming from the extraordinary summit this summit is supposed to decide the way forward for the west african body echoers on what to do with the guinness situation we know not long ago a military grouping had actually taken over the country imprisoned or detained the president of akunde ecuador's building up and running on this matter they come under a massive flood of attack for not being proactive enough for not acting when they needed to do in the first place and for not doing the things recommended by other institutions right before all of this became a big crisis on our hands that is the conversation we are having tonight on our front and joining me here in studio is a man who has done a lot of work especially when it comes to un coordination in guinea in chat and also in other west africa and other african countries and has a lot of competence dr manin is in the studio with me and also joining us you just heard there is a dr emanuel bombande he's a senior mediation advisor and also will be soon joined on the phone by professor vladimir and chidansu who is also going to help us appreciate where we have come from when it comes to this crisis and how well we are managing it more importantly some are fearing this is that just beginning of a return today that days where there are rampant coups on the continent how do we prevent and avoid these it's also part of the conversation we're having on upfront until we tie the nice remains of the show later on but for now i'll be going to the phone lines in a jiffy but let me come in to you that's how many announcements to take us to what really guinea represents in this case and where we have come from when it comes to this crisis so was this bound to happen after conde was believed to return the country into constitutional rule was this supposed to be the path that the country will travel why are we where we are today it would be unfair to say it was bound to happen okay i probably it was likely it was likely because it may appear that when president conte died and were going through a transition period that would have allowed the country to move from where it used to be a semi-autocratic state having from 1958 been quite under periphery or for democratic liberal democracy is one would have thought that would have given ourselves some time to be able to put institutions and also the political culture that is necessary to be able to operate a liberal democracy unfortunately that did not happen that should have happened there was a suspicion that um [Music] the two groups that were vying for power the the locally bred political class and those that were coming from exile could not understand what process to be put in place and could not trust each other so that we can move forward towards liberal democracy and therefore the military intervened and when the military intervened it was clear the gentleman the military leader wanted to stay and therefore the two groups got together and with international support to make sure that the transition period was very short and therefore alpha can take him to power he came to power without really the full political culture that should accompany the political process that was being put in place and therefore would one would have expected some disarticulations oh okay so so that's the conversation but give me a second let me go to the phone line professor vladimir joins us now prof you will come to our front thank you for having me um we're getting up front with this matter because it's perhaps the fear that we are returning to the ductus in the sub-region once more guinea has been giving especially the military junta there a period to make sure they get back the state into a proper state run in a democratic way that civilian rule and also they've asked for an unconditional release of demand alpha conde in the interim are these what you expected and is this something that would take us in the right path when it comes to resolving the crisis in guinea well uh this is something not unexpected the point is that i knew equals had no choice but to rely on the protocol of 2001 and if they were seeing not to have invoked the spirit of that protocol uh they wouldn't have done their work so obviously they were repeating what they they said uh the inception of the of the coup so that was to be expected so nothing is there's nothing new my only worry is that these are things that have been tried tested and have failed all the time uh if you want democracy it's not an event as if running a 100 meter race so if they start it and get it done in 10 minutes like 10 seconds sorry oh under 10 seconds democracy is not like that if you want democracy to really have the prospect of being consolidated then you look at the history of democracy itself because you look at the specificity of the of the place the history of where we are now today in kenya it's not a good mystery uh the chanter has come where do we go from here if you compete then they may stay but if you want democracy there is a fine way of going about dumboya would just take off his stability club and the run elections tomorrow and he is the president and then he will accept it but is that what you want i strongly suspect that one first thing happen we must help them in the transition period if it takes a long time one year fine five years fine but the transition must ensure democracy in the sense that there must be a reliable institution special a workable constitution the participation of the large mass of the people for them to understand the democratic culture if these things are not there then the divisions are so there and they will go back to it through ethnicity through whatever is but democracy does not no ethnicity or advice is either a good institution in which way are we helping them to do this rather than asking them do this and do that yes after conde yes release i don't have a problem about it but you know again i thought there should have been a big diplomatic language there that i would have said a course should have asked them to ensure the safety and security of the president at all times and releasing as they have to but to say unconditional relief well if you know a little bit about security the place is not it's not it's not smooth if the janta feels that conde is a threat they will never release it they will never do it if they feel that somebody also will kill that he's all in his own interest some people may be after him uh outside the junta the agenda doesn't do anything you could it's a big security problem for the junction so i thought there should have been a better security language a diplomatory diplomatic language today we are expecting of you to ensure the safety and security of our country if it's broad enough to show that don't touch him make sure he's released good time and that kind of thing so very well the they've done what they have to do according to their protocol and i'm not surprised but i doubt if this is the way we should go oh well it's interesting the protocol of good governance and democracy states in one sea specifically that the equals as a guiding principle has zero tolerance for power obtained or maintained by unconstitutional means is that not the basis for the kind of quest to get them to go back to what was supposed to be the case and the earlier indication of a suspension in the first place is this not the direction that everybody would have expected of them right from the beginning as i said already i i really expect them to go beyond the protocol and i'm saying we've done this before we've done this several times none none have succeeded in bringing back that democracy we want that's something if you compete with them this way your protocol is all right go by the protocol but don't use the language that's big stimulus let me give you a scenario and i've given it already go back to constitutional rule as soon as possible because we don't recognize unconstitutional overthrow of government right yeah that is the protocol yeah so if today as we have received this message he says fine next week we are going to elect i'm running what will happen nothing iran he wins we are about democrats isn't it i'm saying that we have the protocol which is a very good protocol that we don't have to be changing our our governments through for an unconstitutional need i agree but when they happen is that a way to resolve it i've given you one resolution becomes the president next week that's only next week he's a popular guy he may win them or he may even twist whatever it is when they let's read the elections and win actually that will accept it isn't it i'm saying we are getting something wrong that's all i'm saying we're getting something with that competing without necessarily helping them to prepare that they've done it already and they have reasons for which they say they did it they have been accepted by part of a portion of the society do you exacerbate the situation or you help them to come back to normal is it's a dancing mata isn't it uh doug the yes prof if you give me a second i'll come back to you oh okay yes it's a dicey matter on one hand you should be seen being tough on those because your principles are saying every assertion to power must be true free fair and transparent elections or means this is not to be condoned in any way sure what when you have a military takeover but on the other hand we all know that our facundi was headed in the wrong direction was abusing this same protocol and if our foreign affairs ministers commented to go by we try to even speak to him and he will not batch so how do we deal with this situation now in a way that yields the results professor was talking about and also makes the statement that echoes will not tolerate any form of assertion to power which is not true the legitimate means in my view where there is the understanding and there is the will there will always be the way okay the first point that we need to understand is that we do not recognize power ceased by force if we do so there will be a cascade of course everywhere and we've gone through this before mid 60s all the way to 70s and the 80s and the 90s were lost the years for us so we don't want to go there and i'm sure even um canada would understand that this is not the way to go however while we all agree that course would not be accepted we should also agree that they do happen because certain mistakes sometimes fundamental mistakes have made that make schools possible okay and therefore it is the duty of all of us to see how we can work together to repair the damage that has been done and we brought in the coup and also see which way forward by getting all the stakeholders together and then getting ourselves to understand where the country stands why it stands where it is and where it should go and how do we go making it also putting in place democratic mechanisms by which these consultations will be held and also that would allow them to draw up the constitution the shortest possible time and allow them to get back into the to the democratic world but i think one point should be made very clear we will not get an averagely good democratic system in guinea in one year or two or three really it's not you don't have the right so that you have the timeline has been given now so you can have a translation period in which all the stakeholders work together establish maybe a system by which over time it will be constitutional but over time we would then develop the political culture that the country needs to be able to operate a proper liberal democratic systems so there should be a transition the transition should allow us to have a process by which democracy is not fully installed but allows us to be able to work together in the democratic party afterwards there's a path towards democracy and the long period by which we we grew the culture of democracy doctor valverde also had a problem with that language being used yes he felt that we should change our old ways when it comes to some of this succulents and how we respond to situations like this do you agree with him um this is the beginning of a negotiation okay and therefore you make your position clear and hard oh i see and then you send a delegation to go and negotiate and when they are negotiating they look at all the other parameters of action and all the other facts that would bring you to soften or to harden some of your positions and points so this is the beginning of a negotiation there are those who have already said a course has shown clearly that it has no moral authority to make some of these demands because it knew what happened with alfa candy right from the beginning and they didn't stick to the people of this republic or any other republic or the subregion that we are working with avacandy to make changes but comes back only later on to enforce a part of its protocol what do you say to those um in a sense there may be a case to be made for that okay and i would rather go with the latter part of your statement that is the the ecowas did not come out openly okay to say we're putting pressure on alpha we're talking to alpha and we would want effort to change but he's not budging okay that is right but there is also a point which is lacking and i think this is where um what is important to note i believe that what has happened to our country is going to help echo us to think deeper it's probably going to help us to bring back an exercise data that they began but was not able to conclude that is which is that we would decide collectively that changing constitutions and extending mandates and others would not be acceptable now if we're able to put that clearly and hopefully what has happened may allow um some leaders to merge within the full fold and be able to push that if we're able to push that would have answered the question why didn't we do it earlier because why they didn't do it earlier was that they didn't have the legal mechanisms to be able to do go beyond just discussing with him i'll come back to you but let me get to um dr bombande doc you are hinting of a difficulty you have with this particular inclination that and the directive that equaus is giving to the military junta in guinea today exactly what is your problem with what appears to be a very usual communication to a situation like this it is simply for the reason that the template in itself no longer responds to the challenges that we have the challenges that we have are pervasive across the region uh my colleague in the studio just mentioned the legal instruments that are required he was referring to 2015 when ghana at that time a president mama was chair of equals submitted for discussion after quite a lot of consultation that included civil society and the committee of ambassadors of ecowas the legal framework that basically says one it should not be the threshold of six months before an election that echoes should hold accountable his peers when constitutional changes begin to happen and secondly that no country's president or for that matter head of government should rule for more than two times but two countries stood in the way and said no they were not going to accept it and since we go by consensus building to reach collective decisions we could not go further than that now i give this uh example to now suggest that the one-year transition period is not just about the transition okay but it's about what goes into that transition okay i want to give you a question yeah so let's let i want to give you a quick example from all the conversation we've had with entry dance and my friend in the studio what is a challenge is that our political principles our value systems as a collective echoes are beginning to erode now if you look in the summit there are heads of state today who were making decisions but who themselves have disrespected the term limit and so the moral authority to be able to make decisions on the basis of this political principles becomes challenging so we need to go back as my colleague in the studio state and i agree that we want to re-enforce our political principles with strict respect and observance of those principles which requires that the protocol of good governance needs to be updated needs to be upgraded i say this because it is true that echoes was engaging but i also know that already in 2015 the united nations officer for west africa supporting ecowas was engaging in preventive diplomacy it did not work okay i want to add this other element and and try to run off my point here my friend talked about what must go into the type of arrangements now let's be very honest with ourselves and here i make a disclaimer i don't speak for the u.n i'm an advisor and advisors do not have decision making so my opinion never equates what the u.n is thinking i need to make that disclaimer very well in order to yeah to make my point what i am suggesting is that the guinean political configuration in terms of political taxes was opposition-led party that was dominated predominantly by fulani and so you are talking about political competition but in reality you are talking about an ethnic political competition to the extent that at one point in the local balance of truth if you were going to step in a throttle you needed to check whether the driver emit where your ethnic configuration or not before you go in that's how bad it got oh that's entirely yes so that if you are talking about a one-year transition are you going to simply return to constitutional rule on the same configuration of political parties and here if you look at our own context in ghana we had a tradition and it was affirmed by the famous of our 1992 constitution that you cannot form a political party if the founding members are not from each of the ten regions at that time and it will apply to the system regions today and what was the reason behind it to make sure that nobody can form a party and make it regional or ethnocentric so the constitution making in guinea must understand the political context and the dynamics and support to come up with a constitution-making process that promotes security and that promotes stability and not just constitution we must see the same thing in money and we must as i said to conclude on this point upgrade our good governance protocol so that we don't have a situation in which people try to find an excuse to escape the zero tolerance and what was that excuse that if the constitution is new then i can stand again and so you go into new constitution making and we are not frank and honest with ourselves so i empathize that our own president is chairing a meeting in which as equals chair this is the elephant in the room the elephant in the room is that he's looking at the faces of leaders who themselves are not respecting good governance principles and decisions therefore are made to try to bring back to the fold a country that is a second to have gone out of our convergence principles and if we don't go deeper and hate ourselves with the inconvenient truth in order to come out of it this is going to spread and it is going to spread in an already very fragile environment of rising terrorism radicalization violent extremism that would compound with a post-pandemic period in which economists are struggling and to that extent therefore our countries will be struggling to maintain stability and security which then directly would impact on economic growth and development it isn't a very straightforward system you paint there it looks more like even the people seeking to resolve the problem have problems of their own some of them have no moral way to engage in the kind of conversation you are having that person that mentioned also how then can we fix a problem with people whose hands are themselves not clean how can we get the people of guinea believing that democratic rule is the way forward for them and making sure that that state is back to the path we want them to go you raise concerns about the path of democracy making it look like they are going to be allowed to go through the process on their own how do we deal with their ethnic problems and still make sure that at least there is peace and tranquility in guinea today thank you very much i think dr bombandi my good friend has laid bare most of the things that i said earlier democracy does not hinge on mathematics as i said go get the constitution get the ballot ballot and then back to the democrats and say that mechanical understanding of democracy is what is killing us everyone should take a step back and look at what has happened since 1989 when they have the protocol on defense collective defense and that kind of they should know that as soon as they wanted to have an economic community uh they also needed a kind of nursing community security to go with it and it's now unfolding especially from the 90s onwards we are now seeing a whole range of things telling us that we need to be very meticulous in our application of those protocols that we have enacted on ourselves now the protocol we are referring to is clear and i'm saying the mechanic application of it will not allow the specificities of guinea for example to lend themselves to democratic rule somebody has said it all and i said it earlier i didn't give the details the ethnic composition of political party the underlying bickering before conde came to power and after conde so these are specificities that you need not sleep under the carpet and say we have a democracy tomorrow and as i gave you a scenario in a scenario where the himself steps in to become the next president aren't you sure by our protocol and the interpretations of it then guinea has a democracy i got to be weird that he's going to go another two times with all the problems that we're talking about so we need to help them by helping and paying all kinds of assistance don't impede them if we said we went there and continued and listened can we be going and helping them with technical men and women with all the guinean understanding that we need a constitution that has preparing for the future let's help them for me they need help let us not mechanically speed them to action tomorrow then we see the the ingredients of democracy a constitution a ballot and death and that and that and that then guinea has gone back to democracy it's ridiculous would they require more time would the kind of nuanced situation will find a you see the democracy has nice patience look ghana we have been started xyz look we had the patient at that time also we didn't have all these protocols and what but we had the patient when we were demanding because of the third wave of democratic cause throughout the world in 19 late 1889 everybody was demanding everything we had the patient we allowed our constitution to be drafted we allowed jerry rollins to run elections again we had the patience all we needed was a constitution credible institution that would override personal kind of rules so that jerry became president but he was ruled by the institutions of state who put there he was ruled by a constitution uh well the kind of bravado and all those kind of backings were still there but they were they were mitigated by the very fact that we had something to to mitigate them and now we are where we are today can you imagine that we have a parliament with 137 each and we are still running this can't happen in most of the countries around that so democracy is patience itself it's not a question of time that that you don't you give me timelines but don't give you that i i believe gradually if we help them within the period that we agree i've been talking about this about 18 months or one year we gave molly they must still need assistance in drawing the constitution they must need the the public civil society to be active and in ghana that's what we had so please let's help jimmy to come back that's not stampede then because the reality on the ground is that anything can happen in any of the west african country around bombay said listen the act of instability in africa is centered in that area the sahara region okay the act of instability and everybody is paranoid everybody is crazy so the democratic effort is lost within the population from mauritania all the way to you know nigeria the thinking of democracy is lost echoes needs that security calmness to be able to run west africa if they are unable to do this i tell the whole of the pacific ground routine is going to go on fire now that's a situation we'll be looking at quietly but before that dr manny you wanted to intervene when he was talking about one not stampeding i'm getting into a false democratic dispensation which will not have the fundamentals being dealt with properly you you disagree no okay i don't disagree i just want to make this point clear we don't know yet haven't seen the full community okay we don't know yet okay what is meant by one year transition yeah okay whether it is one year transition or one year within which a plan of transition which is agreed by all bully match oh okay and subscribed to by everybody it does right yeah i think this is something we need to find we need to clarify the second is that um we have gone through this before in guinea when we stampeded a bit and that was not the international community of stampede in us or the akuas that was stampeding us it was in a way the politicians themselves who were in a hurry okay to to come to power and therefore they were not ready before the president conte died they were not ready and willing to work together to put in place a system by which a long period of transition could have been agreed to even before the old man died it could have been agreed to then they all opted for coup d'etat as a solution generally yes they all agreed that that was the only outcome that was going to happen and the you and more or less endorsed it everybody endorsed it that is going to be a coup because there was no possibility of coming up with a period of transition so this is what we need now we need a framework of transition that has been prepared by all and that takes a certain period and step by step we implement and the international community will support guineans to do that if we're able to bring something like that to fruition i'm sure we'll be on our way clearly to building block by block the democracy that guinea made the guineans now and the good news is that the old people who were in a hurry to come to power have nearly all died actually um the only one remaining now is alpha yeah right and because celu belongs to the younger generation which for conti president conte prepared into politics uh civil servants that he put into politics um him fall and all the others um you know they are the younger ones uh and therefore we believe that a certain stage that they were capable of sitting down around uh a plan and be able to work out a transition it did not really happen because they were they were pushed by the older folk who wanted power quickly so now it is possible that the civil society can get together on the basis of all the errors that have been committed in the last 10 years that they will come together and be able to plan out something there is one thing one can be sure of in spite of all this uh at no centrism yeah that we have in guinea gideons are deeply patriotic really incredibly patriotic even to the extent that sometimes they are anti-external infiltration but the afghan have done this but they have a very wonderful connection with the french no no they have a very problematic connection with french i thought but that history is there that that history the history of not liking the french is there the history of suspecting that the french have evil intentions towards them is dead and is grown even with the young coming up so french intervention intervention friends will not even they intervene they can only do it but you know behind but even that won't work like the first thing they are going through dumbo no we don't know yet because you see dumboya would never have come into guinean politics if afa county had not paved the way for him alpha literally created what has happened but we can't discount his french connection we don't know yet we don't know him well enough nobody knows this gentleman well enough is that problematic or any form of intervention that that we don't know him well enough we don't know his ideologies we don't know what he thinks of a state's running system we don't know whether he wishes to transition into a president or a civilian one this is a problematic that is the problem we have at the moment that's why we said come up with a plan let us agree that we don't want military regime okay we come up with a plan in which the civil society plays a major role like they did in the last transition within a short period of six months they were able to put constitution parliament and everything tempering the empire and elect it may not be necessary enough to do elections quickly but it may be necessary to come up with a framework within which there is a collective agreement and which bars their route to military dictatorship or military rule but does not alienate the military you should not the military has grown to occupy such an important position in guinean politics unfortunately so because the country was founded on a period when the country needed to protect his territorial integrity and his independence and they felt that military was necessary even even when the protocol of record says it should be a political armed forces it must be under the command of a legally constituted political authority but you still can still you can still have a civil regime but have the military associated with it in one from the other they are not exercising power okay but they are protecting and guarding the civil society that will exercise the temporary the the transitional period of power and ensure that the politicians therefore will play the game according to rules that have been set is there hope that the current structures will work the current uh system that they want to put in place is therefore that way it is we still don't know what he wants to put in place you know let's say it's only a week but we think that what he's saying this day yes that he wants to put um a whole comprehensive group yeah where everybody has been consulted and they all work together that is quite realistic we don't know how it's going to turn out yesterday he met with all the the religious leaders that's right uh he's been meeting with people in groups but he hasn't come up with with a plan yet okay and that's what i'm saying i'm sure there was heads of states know that there are things going on and that's why this is you come up with a plan so let's see what plan he comes up with let's see how we can help him come out come up with a plan that does not give an undue importance to the military in the exercise of governance forgive me but i need to wrap up with this comment and that particular question is important because there are those who already saying and i've heard you hint that dr bombande that if we do not deal with the current situation properly there is more destabilization quest on the horizon in the sub-region countries are likely going to be on the brink just like we find guinea just like we found mali and the other countries in the sub-region how serious is this condition what can we do to our vet it there are you've hinted that the pro call for example ought to be reviewed uh is that the best way out i think you asked a very important and fundamental question um our voice has echoes and our strength collectively has been able to take west africa from the dark days of the civil wars that began with liberia dance ceremony and then conte war it almost went into guinea we were able to do so much good work that stabilized the entire region but as we speak with you today if you look at our political arena internationally things do not look good in the sense that the there is friction between the united states and china and china and russia are beginning to revolve around their own access versus a western alliance now we know that the last time this was intensified the consequence was what was called the cold war and during the cold war period we were divided as africans and at political leadership you only needed legitimacy from one of the superpowers of the cold war and then you could do ever you could do whatever you wanted and get away with it if we see the drug politics going back i'm not suggesting that there is a cold war yet but the signs are not good what then begins to happen and let me give you a quick another another quick example as we speak it is not confirmed that there are stories about the malian military engaging in a bilateral conversation with whatnot with the russians now whatnot is a param is is is is what you would call a non-state actor but a military non-state doctor that is hired to fight wars and we know what they have been a central african republic we know that if they're coming to mali we should be able to predict what's likely going to happen can they do that without an equals of state health of authority and government's approval so you are already beginning to see the signs in which the the job politics is eaten into how to exploit a divide we know that uh mama mahmadi again i'm not reading too much into it one of the first people he met was the russian ambassador to guinea i'm not reading too much into it but all i'm saying is it's our collective will and collective response to our crisis that will save west africa and to that extent we must commend our aqueous leaders for not hesitating but getting engaged and seized by these challenges because if we allow the job politics to sit into what is already there then our voice will split and people then begin to go along with their patrons and their patronage and that will make the situation even worse now yeah yeah personally also do you agree well to a very large extent let me explain one of two things that the two gentlemen have said uh geopolitics is on the right and uh one of them said there's no cold war yet there is what is called the colder war the colder war because it's more devastating sure politics is being used everywhere it's true tomboya has met with the russian uh he said it's not confirmed it's confirmed he met with the russian ambassador wagner is a kind of a replica of the american black water which were used strongly in devastating iraq okay and that is politics so the russians have replicated it one way the other it's not government which is doing it they've been able to get central african republic they've been to their mozambique now they are in mali in essence they do not want the west to have a stronghold on the whole and the whole world so what the somebody is very true if everyone is unable to get the region united stable then you expect your politics to play a role and that is what is happening i can imagine looking for his own security too in the sense that if we personally distant him too much he knows the kenyan mentality is that it is against france and the french will be wearing french might want to exploit him if if he allows him but he knows that he's not going to guess if he would support me that way i wouldn't be surprised if wagner is able to get him and assure him of physically wow these are some of the um permutations that you can analyze when you are a watcher the street water or the national of water you know that these things are all possible and that is why in our backyard everyone study the situation have the patience know where all these things can lead to and help them come back in the normal way that you want rather than some people my colleagues in the studio told you about how we did it before we made a wishy-washy system once we are back and i guess with the same scenario we can do this within one week and call it democracy we can do it one week can announce that next friday will have an election and that's where everyone will spend observing three and three they will bring a report and he's in the in the in the sea would that be democratic enough and that is what why i think all three of us are in one accord saying that look there's not this competing we need to study the history of it we need to study our own actions how it has gone they have gone did we succeed if we didn't do we have to tweak the the protocol and add on to it to ensure that these things don't happen again that is very important well i am grateful to you and dr i'm grateful to you too very briefly with do you can you wrap up for me dr mann um just three quick points the first point is this that there is a collective understanding in guinea that they want a period of transition okay and i believe the lead cool leader has also made it clear that he wants a transition okay the second is that the civil society and the politicians don't want a military man taking over power and remaining long time yes sir so that was that is what also we all want and the third is that we want a move towards a more democratic system collectively haven't planned and haven't worked towards it and therefore i think we are we need to delve into the problem in the subreddit more deeper in the future but thank you so much dr manny thank you folks for joining us on today's edition of our front [Music] you

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Keywords: ECOWAS to structure roadmap for Guinea to return to constitutional rule - UPfront ( 16-9-21), Ghana Political Issues, Ghana Politics, Matters Arising in Ghana, NPP, CPP, PPP, National Budget, Chieftaincy, Ghanaian lawyers, Economy, Constitution, Election, campaign, YouTube, joy News, Latest News, The Pulse, guinea

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Length: 54min 23sec (3263 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021