Guinea’s new government needs to show an impatient population that it is on their side. It also needs to learn to communicate more effectively, especially now that the political climate is getting more, not less toxic.

The small conference room at the Maison de la Presse in the Guinean capital Conakry was packed to the rafters. Cellou Dalein Diallo, who lost the presidential election to Alpha Condé in November 2010, gave a press conference. The subject: a recent violent confrontation between his party activists and the security forces.

Grandiose homecomings
Normally, when Guinean politicians return home, the capital’s tiny international airport reverberates with drums and singing, the streets outside are lined with people and a nice cavalcade brings the just-landed politician to his or her residence.

It was like that for professor Alpha Condé when he returned to become the first democratically elected president in Guinea’s history. Cellou Dalein Diallo was expecting a similar reception when he flew in from Dakar on Sunday, April 4.

But it all went seriously wrong.

Violent clashes
Conakry’s airport was sealed off by security forces. They arrested and beat up members of Mr Diallo’s welcoming party. Shortly afterwards, violent clashes erupted in Conakry’s volatile Bambeto suburb. One young man died, scores were injured. A bruising homecoming indeed.

At his press conference, Mr Diallo was looking for maximum political capital and he got it. His main point? This: ‘I accepted the election results, even though there was widespread fraud. I want to remain within the law. However, I find this level of loathing for the leader of the biggest party in the country very hard to accept.’

The opposition as the aggrieved party: it makes them look good. It is also greatly helped in all this by a government that does not know how to communicate effectively. President Alpha Condé has a few preferred media outlets, most of them French.

Guinean media are hardly engaged, with the exception of the tried and tested method of the televised address. These past few weeks, local newspapers were running interviews the president gave to Le Figaro and Radio France International, when on his state visit to France.

‘A certain ethnic background’
After the clashes, the government did not give its side of the story. This is fuelling speculation of a dangerous kind. Mr Diallo’s following is most heavy among Guinea’s largest “ethnic” group called the Peul. He and some partisan newspapers are increasingly referring to president Condé’s perceived “hatred” against the Peul, about 40 per cent of Guinea’s population. This is mainly to do with measures the government has taken against money-changers and traders, many of whom are Peul.

Playing the victim is a political trump card and it is to Mr Diallo’s credit that he has not gone all the way. Yet. But the danger that someone could come along and “do a Milosevich” on the country is real. Seen in that light, the April clashes are a public relations disaster that could lead to much worse.

Danger
Civil society leader Aziz Diop says that all this must stop. ‘This whole debate about ethnicity is a nonsense. It detracts from the real issues: how to establish a functioning state, how to regard the relationship between money and politics. In short: how to tackle corruption.’

Just after his inauguration, president Condé famously told a Senegalese newspaper that he had inherited a country – but not s State. Aziz Diop concurs. ‘You cannot undo 52 years of bad governance in a mere four months,’ says Diop. ‘This government must do everything at once: fight corruption, build infrastructure, bring in basic services. Democracy is still very fragile here. And, never forget the other danger: if things really go wrong, the army will step in again.’

Communal violence fomented by toxic rhetoric is the perfect pretext for such a move. It is Aziz Diop’s greatest fear: ‘We have done everything to make the soldiers leave, we should be careful not to invite them back in...’

Which is precisely why effective communication on the part of the government is so important, says Aziz Diop. ‘President Condé must start a national dialogue on the communal issue, so that we Guineans finally understand that we must live together in this country.’