From Agence France Presse.
BISSAU,Jan 24 (AFP)-guinea-Bissau's new ruling party, the Party of Social
Renewal (PRS), has named 38-year-old Caetano N'Tchama as prime minister,
officials at party headquarters said Monday.
N'Tchama, the party's number three, is a jurist by training and is
internal administration minister in the outgoing government of Francisco
Fadul.
The sources said N'Tchama was elected prime minister, 46 to six, at a
closed-door meeting of the party, which won parliamentary elections in
December.
N'Tchama, who served previously as head of the government anyi-corruption
unit, is to set up a national unity government in which the PRS will have
the defense, finance, foreign affairs and "eventually" n
atural resources
portfolios, a sorce close to the PRS said.
PRS leader Kumba Yala, who won the presidential run-off vote on January
16, has vowed to form a unity government and place top priority on fighting
corruption and impunity.
Other ministerial posts are expected to be awarded to other opposition
parties that backed Yala for president. Members may also be drawn from the
Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which
ruled the small west African country for 26 years.
The composition of the new government was expected to be announced later
Monday, and the new national assembly is set to begin sitting on Friday.
The 102 new deputies are to elect a speaker, expected to be Elder Vaz, the
head of the Guinea-Bissau Resistance (RGB), the second largest party in
parliament.
Yala's PRS took 37 seats while the RGB won 27 seats, beating the PAIGC,
which garnered only 25
seats in the parliamentary elections, with the rest
going to smaller parties.
The elections brought an end to an 11-month political and military crisis
that led to the May 1999 ouster of PAIGC leader Joao Bernardo Vieira, then
president, by a military junta led by General Ansumane Mane, whom Vieira
had sacked as armed forces chief.
END
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