An ECOWAS delegation, led by Commission President Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, arrived at the Guinean capital, Conakry, on Thursday, for a three-day visit, reported Africa News. The visit comes almost two months after the West African regional bloc suspended Guinea’s membership following a coup in the country in early September.
“The transition has produced a charter, important appointments have been made, and the government is gradually being set up. So we are here to meet with the authorities and take stock of the situation, and to see to what extent ECOWAS can provide practical support to the process underway”, said the Chairman of the ECOWAS Commission.
“The atmosphere is calm, we are meeting again and we expect a lot from ECOWAS, its accompaniment, its support. And I am sure that we will have fruitful discussions, so he is at home here,” said Morissanda Kouyate, Guinean Minister of Foreign Affairs.
A military uprising overthrew President Alpha Conde last month. Conde was Guinea’s first democratically elected president who came to power in 2010 and was re-elected in 2015. He pushed through a controversial new constitution that let him run for the presidential post for the third term in October 2020.
The move resulted in mass demonstrations across the country in which dozens of protesters were killed. Conde won re-election but the opposition and critics declared the poll as a sham.
Last month, the coup leader, Mamady Doumbouya, dismissed the government and announced a transitional charter vowing to change the political landscape of Guinea.
Doumbouya got sworn in as the country’s transitional president earlier this month and pledged to respect the country’s national and international commitments. He will continue to serve as the transitional president until the country returns to civilian rule.
The new interim president confirmed that neither he nor any member of the military government would stand in any future elections that the military has promised to organize after the transition period.
