Guinea-Bissau Waiting for the Wretched ECOWAS
I will try to be brief in this exercise. The idea for this text emerged from a conversation with an old friend of Guinea-Bissau, someone with a deeply knowledge about the country and the internal dynamics of ECOWAS. Like myself, he is profoundly concerned about the situation in the country, as are all those who care about its political and social progress. We agreed on two points. First, ECOWAS is not free of responsibility for the current political situation in Guinea-Bissau. Second, a realistic assessment of the context forces us to acknowledge that this organisation, heavily influenced by Françafrique, will largely determine, at its summit, the outcome of the coup d’état staged by Umaro Sissoco Embaló. At this very moment, the declared winner of the presidential elections, Fernando Dias da Costa, along with part of his campaign leadership, is in Abuja, Nigeria. They are, perhaps naïvely, placing their hopes in ECOWAS, while an outraged population is mobilising in the streets of Guin...
