It was a repeat performance: a military takeover in a power vacuum. President Lansana Conté, who died last Monday, seized power in 1984 under identical circumstances. Then, it was the death of Ahmed Sékou Touré that caused a huge political void that the military proceeded to fill. It is no different now.

The new man in charge is Moussa Dadis Camara, a captain in the army supply corps. He is only the third president Guinea has had since independence in 1958. The first, Sékou Touré, held his people in an asphyxiating grip for 26 years. The state was all-pervasive; repression permeated every sphere of life - political, social, economic. The only real challenge to Sékou Touré’s power came from Guinea’s market women who were fed up with the robber baron antics of the Economic Police. They nearly brought him down in 1977 and the date of their revolt was became a national holiday after his death.

In the first few years of his reign, Lansana Conté swung the other way in every sense. He allowed free enterprise and opened up the political fields. He emptied the political concentration camps his predecessor had created all over the country, the most notorious of which was Camp Boiro in Conakry.

It did not last: a failed coup attempt in 1985 and a near-successful soldiers’  revolt 11 years later closed off virtually all available political space. But Conté’s regime did allow business without rules to flourish. The result was the kind of capitalism that characterised the Yeltsin years in Russia. And in the case of Guinea it produced one oligarch: Mamadou Sylla, a close friend of Mr Conté, who went from street vendor to multi-millionnaire in a matter of years, thanks to heavy political patronage from the presidency.

Conté’s final years
The last decade of Conté in power saw the wholesale disintegration of the Guinean state. It was immaterial which minister signed a deal with which interested party, foreign or domestic. The only deals that stuck were made with the various cliques of family clans, politicians, military and business friends around the president’s wives, who, like Sékou Touré’s spouses before them, were busy dividing Guinea’s assets among themselves.

The military top brass and the high level politicians all belong to the huge patronage networks around the former presidency. For any functioning state to appear, these need to be dismantled first. And this, more than anything else, explains the popularity that Captain Camara and his comrades enjoy.

Elections?
Since the young soldiers took power on December 22, there has been the ritual clamouring for elections by the European Union, the US, the UN and even the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). They are wrong. Those who know Guinea know better. An election is the last thing on the Guineans’ mind. They want their basic services restored: the provision of water, hygiene and electricity are non-existent; education and health-care of some quality are only available for those who can pay. They want enough money to earn a decent living; at present that is fiction for 9 out of 10 people in Guinea. One way of bringing this about is to ensure that the vast amounts of foreign exchange the country earns through bauxite mining gets properly distributed. They want crime reduced: Conakry at night is one of the most dangerous places in Africa. Sadly and predictably, the Guinean capital is fast becoming West Africa’s next cocaine hub, after neighbouring Guinea Bissau. Where there is no law enforcement, drug dealers, traffickers, smugglers and arms merchants step in. They want discipline in the army restored – it has been slipping alarmingly in the last three years. That is what thousands of people took to the streets for early 2007, even when scores of them were mowed down by the security forces. In a twist of cruel irony, the national holiday in memory of the market women’s uprising had been suppressed in 2006…

Army rule
To be realistic, there is only one institution that has its national infrastructure more or less in tact – and that is the army. Certainly, the army is divided, mostly along generational lines. It is no coincidence that Captain Camara and his comrades are mostly young. Sections of the security apparatus (most notably the infamous Red Berets, basically Conté’s praetorian guard) may despise the ordinary rank-and-file that have taken power. But it is significant that Guinea’s top politicians (the prime minister and the Speaker of parliament, constitutionally the man in charge after Conté’s death) have both acknowledged that Mr Camara is in charge.

On its face, having young soldiers in charge for a period of transition has, at least, three advantages. First, they do not belong to the top brass and are, therefore, far less tainted by what the president of neighbouring Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf once famously called “the debilitating cancer of corruption”. Second, they are relatively well-educated and trained, having been to one of Guinea’s few functioning institutes of education (the military academy) and having been exposed to ideas about discipline and democracy from elsewhere. That helps. Thirdly, they appear united and that is no small achievement in a country that is so polarised along social and political lines.

Elections now will bring back the discredited politicians that so many Guineans are so glad to see the back of. Let us have a transition first, where the old patronage networks can be axed, something resembling a state structure can be built up. These are, of course, basic requirements that need to be met before delivery of security, water, health and other basic services can begin. They do not, at present, exist.

Certainly, civilian rule will have to be brought back within a limited time frame.
De facto president Camara says his team needs two years to organise elections. If the international community wants to do something useful, it needs to apply pressure on Camara and his comrades to use that transition time to start addressing that laundry list of necessary changes. Clamouring for elections makes “the international community” feel good about itself but represents a manifest refusal to tackle what is really the problem with Guinea.

Photo by martapiq on flickr.com