Jados,
 
La Guinea is different from Gambia in this respect:
 
Gambia was governed by a democratically-elected, albeit corrupt civilian government, what our JDAM calls a civilian despotic government. It was hijacked by its own ineptitude and replaced by a score of idle and clueless infantrymen.
 
La Guinea was hijacked in 1984 by a score of idle infantrymen upon the death of Seku Toure', a trades unionist, who steered La Guinea out of the clutches of colonialism, assisted other African nations toward independence, and warded off incessant efforts to re-colonise La Guinea. Seku Toure is guilty of taking extreme measures in his 'paranoia', justified or not, but the coup d'etat that brought Lansana was a STEALTH coup by the military, occurring only after Seku's death. It could not have occured during Seku's lifetime because the people of La Guinea would not have allowed it and a good segment of the army was sympathetic to the onslaught on La Guinea from colonial and despotic African mercenaries. Lansana's government was a military despotism who did not have the gravitasse or diasporan goodwill that Seku Toure' garnered. And colonialism was on its last throes in Africa. Lansana and the military had aimed to ride the coat-tails of such Toure' goodwill and comraderie but it was unsustainable for lack of a clarion call to end colonisation and neo-colonisation. You will remember that when Lansana and his faction of the Sousous in the military came to power, they had executed his prime minister along with dozens of Seku Toure's ministers on trumped-up charges of a counter-coup. He invited back scores of disgruntled Toure' exilees, and attempted to repair relations with France and those nations which sought to alienate Seku and his government. It was not to be long before Lansana recognised that Seku was not hallucinating afterall and that there was a vrai mercenary threat to La Guinea's survival on account of aid in comfort La Guinea afforded other African nations toward their independence from the clutches of exploitation. So Lansana and his faction of the military committed their own crimes to include the massacres at camp Boiro among others. Indeed, this new captain carburant Moussa Camara has always been part of Lansana's military cabal that is why they never attempted the coup while Lansana was alive, even though he was in a vegetative state to grow La Guinea.
 
In effect Jados, the advent of the internet and e-propaganda is only happenstance to be manipulated by all; civilian and military despots. The people of La Guinea DO KNOW that it is the same military for whom Lansana was acting as proxy that wishes to maintain its juggernaut on them, only this time Captain Moussa Carburant Camara is the proxy. The initial euphoria from the people of La Guinea who are inside the country, was only a result of fatigued despair. And therefore it was transient. They are beginning to come to after laying Lansana to rest. They will now begin to demand accountability of captain Camara for the crimes he committed as part of Lansana's cabal. In time I will share the impression of a growing number of Guineans from the guineeonline.info forum indicating that they get it. And they will help their resident compatriots get it.
 
Thanx again Jados for staying on top of the La Guinea Comprehensive STEALTH COUP to unravel soon.
 
Haruna.

Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:15:44 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: JDAM, Jados, IT IS A STEALTH COUP BY LA GUINEA's MILITARY.
To: [log in to unmask]

Haruna,

I totally agree to your suggestion of putting pressure over the military in La Guinée. However, as I stated earlier, Guineans are awakening to a new era of a kind of coup where soldiers use the media to castigate the old regime and put all the blame on their shoulders.
Remember the AFPRC? Remember how they used the media to paint them as saviours and to consider all those against their cause as the devils and the enemies of The Gambia?
Tell me Haruna, you may have not been in The Gambia but I was. I lived in TobaccoRoad then and felt the euphoria of a new change. I remember how we discussed how much we hated coups but how we loved the soldiers for being different. We axpressed our displeasure to the US of A, Britain and all those agencies that were against the coup. It took us time to realise we were wrong indeed.

Will continue this later.

Jados.


2008/12/27 Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]>
Jados,
 
It is the garden variety criminal and despondent idiot. I mean the military cannot even be clever anymore to carry the people along with their incessant coups. Now they're backpedalling that they meant to hold elections before 2010? Do these shady tree mechanics think we're all idiots like them????
 
I think we should all keep the pressure on them, Guinean or no Guinean. Write to as many news outlets as you can and call on the people of La Guinea inside Guinea, in Ivory Coast, Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, or Senegal, to move and join hands in a civil march toward state house to demand that the speaker of the House be re-instated as the interim caretaker. That the government of Lansana remain in their capacities to shepard the country toward a combined legislative and presidential elections within 60 days of the death of Lansana Conte'. That the re-instatement of the speaker be retro-active to such date as when it was announced that Lansana had expired.
 
We should in the same breath commend the military of La Guinea for their past heroisms and gallantries and forgive them for that which they asked forgiveness for two weeks ago. We must honour the military to demonstrate that we are not ungrateful to our brothers and sisters and so that tensions between the police, trades unions, students, and the general citizenry and the military does not cloud the military's unavoidable decision to go back to barracks.
 
Guineenews.com, BBC, Agence France Presse, L'ESSOR, SUD Quotidien, Afribone, Jeune Afrique, CNN, Bloomberg, Forbes, Canadian news agencies come to mind. Let us do it so the people of La Guinea sense the support of the African diaspora. Guineans are too fatigued to see clearly now. If they don't reclaim their government now, many lives will be lost if they try to do it after the idiots have become comfortable once again.
 
Haruna. 



Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:01:23 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: JDAM, Jados, IT IS A STEALTH COUP BY LA GUINEA's MILITARY.
To: [log in to unmask]

Haruna,

I reecho the following:

  1. "We are soldiers who will not cling to power."
  2. "We will stay for only two years and then organise free and fair elections"
  3. "This government has disappointed us"
Haruna, does this not sound like a déjà vu? I seem to have lived through the same era in July 22, 1994.
The words sound the same, the attitude sound the same, the principle sound the same: soldiers with a difference!!!

African governments are only replicas of bad governance, disappointments, dictatorships and what not. The darkness is too thick for the frail candles of hope to pierce and show the way for a better change.

Haruna my heart bleeds so much. It hurts when I see the abject poverty people have to live in; It bleeds when I notice the corrupt states' efforts to suppress any form of enlightenment and sensitisation to the poor folks so they will never understand their rights; it bleeds when I watch helplessly when the leaders we can only look up to to help develop our poor countries, provide economic boost and increase the people's income and way of living decide to shamefully and arrogantly use government funds to build empires, organise exorbitant and less useful activities and stock the rest in their butts they call banks.

My heart bleeds so much!

Can you imagine that Wade is the first African leader to congratulate the Guinean Coup leaders?

A shame!!!!

I am lost for words.

Jados

2008/12/26 Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]>
JDAM wrote:
 
"A fifty year history of political lawlessness cannot avoid a vacuum when the only operator of the state machine suddenly collapsed at the controls."
 
JDAM,
I am comforted now that you have calmed my anxieties if ever so temporarily. This quote of yours above brought back to me the element of fatigue in the people of La Guinea as opposed to a sudden nervous breakdown in the sails. You will realize that in the late nineties, the military itself revolted and placed their leader Lansana Conte' under house arrest. This after it thought the prognosis of his diabetes was fatal. They had wanted to engineer an internal coup because amid popular uprising and strained relations between the police and army, they cannot afford dishonour to the military and accord La Guinea's mercenary enemies a coup de gras. The military then had exclusive opportunity to exact a coup but poetic justice would not allow it then. BECAUSE, the military was in power and they would have effected a coup against themselves. That, in reverse psychological parlance would have done for the enemy what inured the enmity in the first place. The fear that the military would have disintegrated into its tribal niches and lay La Guinea bare to total dissolution.
 
Now. I could not go to sleep in Georgia because the conflicts of on the one hand wishing to accord the young captain and 3-dozen governors the benefit of the doubt and fearing for the ware of La Guinea on the other, kept gnawing at me. It was incredible. Let me share with you some of what was killing me inside:
 
At the announcement of the death of Lansana, the announcement of the coup came almost simultaneously. And who was leading the putsch? an army mechanic - Carburant Moussa Dadie Camara, as the Malian press described him. Meanwhile, the vrai chief of defense staff, General Diarra Camara announced the junta was in the minority and they did not reflect the position of the military. However, the General did not give any orders to stop the movement or activities of the junta as they proceeded to disable the vehicles of government officials to disallow their movements.
 
They did not announce who their leader was at first because I think last minute negotiations were going on to corale the military once again.
 
Now it struck me as odd to hear the General Camara apologise on national radio for the crimes of the military once Ahmed Tidiane Soare' was boxed in a corner to announce an about face for legislative elections. This was to bring a modicum of sobriety to the military which once again was engineering a STEALTH COUP.
 
I think the people of La Guinea are best advised to gather en masse and move on state house to dislodge the military from its perpetual juggernaut on Guinean life. There is no reason for the coup except to re-postpone the legislative and constitutionally mandated presidential elections.
 
Haruna. Thank you for your indulgence. There must not be any delay in dislodging the military.

Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2008 07:34:57 +0000
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Captain Moussa Dadis Camara seems to be receiving the goodwill of Guineans
To: [log in to unmask]


Haruna
 
No need to talk you down as your instincts on this whole saga are pertinent and accurate. Because of its political culture, the military in La Guinea are generally incompetent in the rudiments of the rule of law, and the pronouncements on that front are legitimately regarded as "clueless". 
 
Our fundamental difference may lie in the related issues of whether what occurred in La Guinea was necessary, or avoidable. May be unnecessary, but the analysis on that point is neither here nor there.
 
A fifty year history of political lawlessness cannot avoid a vacuum when the only operator of the state machine suddenly collapsed at the controls. As Conte embodied the institutions of La Guinea, Guineans are cheering because they are missing nothing in the demise of a kleptomaniac brute.
 
What you must now research is why an individual can so easily exercise such stranglehold on a whole nation.
 
And what is it about the presidency that affords a common criminal the ability to garner and maintain a veneer of respectability?
 
In the interim, you must go to bed as it is quite late in the State of Georgia.
 
 
 
 
 
 
LJDarbo
 
 

--- On Fri, 26/12/08, Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Haruna Darbo <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Captain Moussa Dadis Camara seems to be receiving the goodwill of Guineans
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Friday, 26 December, 2008, 6:35 AM

 
Perhaps still in shock and awe.
 
JDAM and Jados, it appears the coup leader is sincere in his pronouncements. He has also since appointed the army chief of staff General Diarra Camara to the governance council whose number has now swelled to 32 from the initial 26. Even though no bloodshed or hardship is good for La Guinea, and the young captain seems to receive the support of Guineans, I am not convinced it is necessary for him to seize power and appoint army commanders to replace governors of the communes. It seems to me this arrangement will represent a severe waste of time for La Guinea. He is silent on legislative elections and he promises presidential elections in 2010 which he promises not to take part in. It doesn't sound good. Any interim government the military might put together cannot replace a duly elected legislature. Meanwhile the judiciary will continue to languish in the doldrums.
 
The following caught my attention: "We must hold an election, free and transparent, in a dignified way to honour Guinea, to honour the Guinean army. The future of our country is peace, freedom, reconciliation," said the army officer, little known before the coup.
 
I wonder if the captain means what he said in that the idea of the elections (in 2010?) is to honour "the Guinean army" or if he misspoke? The captain also says that after the elections, then they will fight injustice, nepotism, and corruption. He seems clueless to me and I wonder how the military is going to fight these things when the military ostensibly has been the culprit in most of these malfeasances for the past decade or two? And why begin these fights after the presidential elections of 2010?
 
JDAM, I almost yielded to your urging until I read what this man is saying. Can you make any sense out of this? Do you suppose the captain indemnifies his military in the crimes of Lansana? God knows I want to join the people of La Guinea in the euphoria but I think they are in temporary trans. When they finally come to, they will begin to demand legislative elections all over again. And why keep the presidency scheduled at 2010? I am torn between giving this guy the benefit of doubt and bearing on sobriety. Just from his own pronouncements. I don't think he put much thought into this coup. It seems to be a hazard and opportunistic coup. And there was no need for a coup from the military.
 
As Rachel Maddow would say, I'm gonna need to be talked down Jados and JDAM.
Jesus friggin Christ. I thought La Guinea's problems were ending.
 
Guinea junta leader says will not cling to power
26 Dec 2008 03:24:24 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Guinea's new military ruler said on Friday he had no intention of clinging to power and that it was vital to stamp out nepotism in the West African country.
Captain Moussa Dadis Camara's junta was endorsed by deposed Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare on Thursday, but Washington condemned the coup in the world's biggest exporter of aluminium ore bauxite and demanded an immediate return to civilian rule.
"We are patriots ... We have no intention of clinging on to power," Camara, whose junta has promised to hold an election in two years' time, said in comments broadcast by France 24 TV.
"We must hold an election, free and transparent, in a dignified way to honour Guinea, to honour the Guinean army. The future of our country is peace, freedom, reconciliation," said the army officer, little known before the coup.
"After that, the most important thing is to fight injustice, nepotism, in order to take up the challenge of relaunching the economy of our country."
The coup went ahead in the political vacuum caused by the death on Monday of President Lansana Conte, the diabetic chain-smoking general who had ruled the former French colony with an iron fist since seizing power in 1984.
Camara, chosen on Wednesday to lead the 32-member National Council for Democracy and Development junta, has vowed to fight the corruption that he said had become endemic under Conte's rule. He says he will not stand in the planned election.
U.S. CONDEMNATION
The United States said the military in Guinea must work with civilian leaders to swiftly restore civilian rule.
"The United States condemns the military coup ... We reject the announcement by elements of the Guinean military that elections will not be held for two years and we call for an immediate return to civilian rule," said a U.S. statement.
"The human rights of all citizens must be respected, particularly those of Prime Minister Souare and the members of his government," it said.
On Thursday, Souare and several of his ministers reported to the Alpha Yaya Diallo military base in the capital Conakry, as instructed by the junta, which on Wednesday replaced regional chiefs appointed by Conte with military commanders.
"Mr President, members of the National Council for Democracy and Development, we thank you and we put ourselves at your disposal," Souare told Camara in comments carried by Radio France International.
The soldiers who mounted the coup appeared unopposed in their control of Conakry.
Many businesses were closed in the capital on Thursday and soldiers patrolled the streets, though roadside vendors were working as normal and people and cars moved freely.
Mining operations have not been affected by the coup.
International companies including Rio Tinto <RIO.L>, Alcoa <AA.N> and United Company Rusal mine in Guinea for bauxite, the raw material for aluminium.
The United Nations, African Union and European Union have also condemned the junta's takeover -- the most recent failure of democracy in Africa after a coup in Mauritania in August and post-election violence in Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria.
France, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU until next month, called for an election to be held soon.
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