31 Jan 2007: ISS Today: Guinean Unions End General Strike

31 January 2007: Guinean Unions End General Strike
BBC News

Guinean unions have called off a general strike that has crippled the nation and led to deadly clashes, after a deal was reached with the government. Nearly 60 people have died in protests since the strike was called on 10 January to demand government reforms. President Lansana Conté agreed on Friday to cede some powers to a prime minister who would head the government. On Saturday the unions said the president`s concessions were sufficient for them to end the strike.

Commentary

Over the past few years civil unrest has become a regular feature of Guinean political life. Endemic economic and social decay have left the country in a condition that resembles that of a state emerging from conflict. The country’s currency, the Guinean franc (Sekou Touré’s independence government having rejected the option of joining the CFA franc zone in 1958) has lost more than half its value in the past two years, which has been disastrous for a country importing much of its food, and in the context of sudden increases in the oil price. The combined impact of these developments has been to push the cost of living beyond the means of most of those dependent upon the formal sector.

 

Macro-economic growth rates may still seem reasonable, but only because of the performance of the minerals sector, the benefits of which have yet to translate either into the creation of jobs or the improvement of popular welfare. Strikes in February, March and June 2006 yielded a few concessions from government, and the European Union acknowledged the passage of certain legislative reforms intended to facilitate parliamentary elections and resumed the flow of aid money.

But early this year the trades union movement announced that it would begin an open-ended national strike aimed “at restoring republican order”. The focus of this campaign was the President himself, whose precarious health had long made his control over affairs of state episodic and occasionally incoherent. Public attention was drawn to this when President Conté intervened personally in December 2006 to secure the release from custody of two close associates charged with fraud and embezzlement.

The issue of the presidential succession has long been a matter for debate, and though the constitution makes provision for the Speaker of the National Assembly to assume power should Conté be unable to complete his current term, which expires in 2010, there were few who believed that the army, or factions within it would not intervene to decide the subsequent intra-party struggle.

Now the union’s principal demand was now that President Conté be declared unfit to hold office and that a prime minister be appointed to lead a transitional government pending the holding of elections. Government brazened out the threat and the strike went ahead, culminating in several bloody clashes between strikers, protestors and the security forces across the country, and the eventual cessation of bauxite production and exports.

The UN, African Union and ECOWAS all expressed grave alarm at this turn of events, partly because of the increasing loss of life, but also because of Guinea’s geographical position in one of Africa’s politically more fragile regions.

Eventually, on 24 January, Conté made the key compromise by agreeing to the appointment of a consensus prime minister, but it took another two days to assure the President that he was to remain head of government, with the new prime minister acting as his delegate, in charge of day-to-day operations. Among the signatories to the agreement are the head of the Supreme Court and of the National Assembly, leaders of trades unions and of business. Other conditions include the reduction of fuel and rice prices. Articles dealing with the distribution of assets by the major international companies engaged in Guinea’s lucrative bauxite mining and processing sector. Details of this complex arrangement will have to await the appointment of the new prime minister, which the unions want to occur within days.

Much will depend now one the identification of a candidate acceptable to all parties, and on his ability effectively to guide a transition of some sort. There remains the problem, too, of whether the unions, who initiated and then led the strike action, can restrain a broader swell of public sentiment that now wants matters pushed to their logical conclusion: the removal of the President himself. As always, there are the interests of the security forces themselves to be considered. Their leaders are personally connected to the current regime, and may also fear judicial reprisals for their part in the more than 60 deaths that occurred in the unrest since 10 January.

Richard Cornwell, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)