A 12-member delegation from the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) has begun discussions with political parties and interest groups in Guinea-Bissau in an effort to help restore stability to the West African country after a series of internal crises.
The mission, led by Olivio Pires, Cape Verde’s Ambassador to Germany, met Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior and other senior government officials on Thursday and Friday. It is expected to meet representatives of political parties, the military and civil society over the next few days.
The CPLP team also visited parliament, where an emergency session opened on Tuesday, focusing on the political and security situation in Guinea-Bissau. MPs have been discussing a proposed amnesty for those involved in Guinea-Bissau’s recent upheavals and the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission.
The emergency session was called at the request of the main opposition Social Renovation Party (PRS), whose leader, former president Kumba Yala, was overthrown in a coup led by army chief of staff General Verissimo Seabra Correia.
Seabra himself was killed in October in an uprising staged by soldiers protesting at the non-payment of stipends owed to them from peacekeeping duties in Guinea-Bissau. The CPLP subsequently met in Lisbon to review the crisis and decided to send a delegation to Bissau.
The PRS has been highly critical of the CPLP’s intentions, accusing the government in Bissau of requesting military intervention from Lisbon, an allegation strongly denied by CPLP delegates.
“What the CPLP has come to do in Guinea-Bissau is to help the country find stability,” CPLP Executive Secretary Luis Fonseca told reporters. “I do not see how twelve or thirteen people can carry out a military invasion of Guinea-Bissau. I think there has been disinformation on this issue.”
The mission is made up of civilians and military officials from various member states of the Portuguese-speaking world. According to Luis Fonseca, it will spend at least two weeks in Guinea-Bissau.
There are strong differences between rival political parties on how best to cope with Guinea-Bissau’s past. The ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the dominant force in the first 20 years after independence and now again the leading party with 45 seats in parliament, proposes that any amnesty should cover political and military crimes dating back to 1980, when the country’s first president, Luis Cabral was overthrown by Joao Bernardo Vieira.
Vieira ruled Guinea-Bissau until 1999, when he was overthrown by a military junta and went into exile. The junta later teamed up with selected civilians and held presidential elections in late 1999 and early 2000, which were won by Kumba Yala.
The PRS, on the other hand, called for an immediate pardon for the soldiers who participated in October’s events, but did not want the amnesty to go as far back as 1980.
Analysts said the PRS was unlikely to be happy with an amnesty that covered Vieira because of executions that followed an unsuccessful coup attempt in October 1986. The bulk of the executed military officers were from Guinea-Bissau’s main ethnic group, the Balanta, from whom the PRS draws much of its support.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
