Guinea-Bissau: Vieira's assassination
Published: 08 April, 2009
The assassination of President Joao Bernardo Vieira has prompted fears of a coup in the West African country.
Raimundo Pereira, the Guinea-Bissau parliamentary speaker, has been sworn in as his country’s interim president, with a mandate to hold elections within 60 days, following the death on March 2 of the country’s elected head of state, Joao Bernardo Vieira. Mr Vieira was shot dead, apparently by soldiers avenging the death of army chief of staff General Tagme Na Waie, in a bombing the previous day.
The deaths are the culmination of a series of tit-for-tat attacks that saw unsuccessful attacks on Mr Vieira’s residence and Mr Na Waie’s car in November 2008 and January 2009, respectively.
The military has insisted that the assassination does not represent a coup attempt, and says it will respect the constitution. The form guide would call into question this statement, however. Mr Vieira was brought to power in a coup in 1980, and his authoritarian regime survived several counter-coup attempts before, in 1994, he became the country’s first democratically elected president. A mutiny in the army that began in 1998 eventually saw him deposed in 1999. During Mr Vieira’s six-year exile, his replacement Kumba Yalá was removed in yet another coup, before Mr Vieira’s return and re-election in 2005.
Legislative elections in November 2008, which brought in a new prime minister, Carlos Gomes Junior, lent hope that the factional chaos that had prevented the government from pursuing economic and social reforms, or tackling the growing problem of drug trafficking would come to an end. A recent report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that the scale of the narcotics trade heading through Guinea-Bissau and its neighbours has brought a powerful new economic group to the country. The experiences of other ‘narco-economies’ in the Caribbean and Latin America are a warning.
Since their deaths, both Mr Vieira and Mr Na Waie have been implicated in the drugs trade, though it is unclear what role, if any, they had. Nor is it obvious that there were any actors involved in the killings beyond these two old rivals and their loyalists. OB Sisay, deputy head of the Africa division at risk consultancy Exclusive Analysis, says the role of narcotics cannot be underplayed. “It exerts a very significant influence on the political scene. Appointment and firing of ministers has been influenced by their posture towards the drugs trade. It’s significant,” he says.
“I think the army and the navy are involved. I think some elements in the government are involved,” he adds. “The justice ministry is the one that has been trying to create a bulwark against it, but the police is heavily underfunded, underequipped and is no match for the army.”
The army has challenged its accusers to produce evidence of its involvement, and has taken part in high-profile seizures of narcotics, Mr Sisay says. “But it’s almost taking over the ruling fabric of the country, so it’s going to be quite difficult to see action against it.”
