UNITED NATIONS, New York
In his address at the U.N.
General Assembly, the head of the junta in Guinea has defended the recent coups
in Africa. Col. Mamadi Doumbouya says they're an attempt by him and other
soldiers to save their countries from leaders whose “broken promises” and
prolonged stays in power are stifling development.Guinea's President Mamadi Doumbouya addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on September 21, 2023.
The recent coups in Africa are
attempts by militaries to save their countries from presidents' “broken
promises," the head of Guinea’s junta said Thursday as he rebuffed the
West for boxing in the continent of more than 1 billion people.
Col. Mamadi Doumbouya, who was
sworn in as Guinea's interim president following the coup in 2021, told the
U.N. General Assembly that beyond condemning the coups, global leaders must
also “look to and address the deep-rooted causes."
“The putschist is not only the
person who takes up arms to overthrow a regime,” he told the gathering of world
leaders in New York. “I want us all to be well aware of the fact that the real
putschists, the most numerous, are those who avoid any condemnation — they are
those … who cheat to manipulate the text of the constitution in order to stay
in power eternally.”
Guinea is one of several
nations in West and Central Africa that have experienced eight coups since
2020, including two – Niger and Gabon – in recent months. The military
takeovers, sometimes celebrated by citizens in those countries and condemned by
international organizations and foreign countries, have raised concern about
the stability of the continent, whose young population of at least 1.3 billion
is set to double by 2050 and make up a quarter of the planet’s people.
Doumbouya accused some leaders
in Africa of clinging to power by any means — often including amending the
constitution — to the detriment of their people.
In Guinea, he said he led
soldiers to depose then-President Alpha Conde in the September 2021 coup to
prevent the country from “slipping into complete chaos." He said the
situation was similar in other countries hit by coups and was a result of “broken
promises, the lethargy of the people and leaders tampering with constitutions
with the sole concern of remaining in power to the detriment of collective
well-being.”
Doumbouya also rebuffed
attempts by the West and other developed countries to intervene in Africa’s
political challenges, saying that Africans are “exhausted by the
categorizations with which everyone wants to box us in.”
“We Africans are insulted by
the boxes, the categories which sometimes place us under the influence of the
Americans, sometimes under that of the British, the French, the Chinese and the
Turks,” the Guinean leader said.
“Today, the African people are
more awake than ever and more than ever determined to take their destiny into
their own hands."
While the Guinean leader
defended the coups in his country and elsewhere, concerns remain about the
effectiveness of such military takeovers in addressing the challenges they said
made them “intervene.”
In Mali, where soldiers have
been in power since 2020, the Islamic State group almost doubled the territory
it controls in less than a year, according to U.N. experts. And in Burkina
Faso, which recorded two coups in 2020, economic growth slowed to 2.5% in 2022
after a robust 6.9% the year before.
“Military coups are wrong, as
is any tilted civilian political arrangement that perpetuates injustice,” said
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. As the leader of West Africa’s regional bloc of
ECOWAS, he is leading efforts of neighbors to reverse the coup in the region.
“The wave crossing parts of
Africa does not demonstrate favor towards coups," He said. “It is a demand
for solutions to perennial problems.”
No comments:
Post a Comment