GUINEA-BISSAU VOTES FOR NEW LEADER BISSAU (AFP) - Guinea-Bissau prepared to elect a new president on Sunday in a key test for a fragile state plagued by powerful cocaine cartels and upended in a military coup two years ago. Already mired in poverty, the west African nation has been stagnating since 2012 under the rule of a transitional government backed by its all-powerful military, with the economy anaemic and drug trafficking fuelling corruption. I would like every Bissau-Guinean to get up very early to go vote massively to show that Guinea-Bissau is capable of turning the page definitively on instability, election commission chairman Augusto Mendes said on the eve of the vote. Former finance minister Jose Mario Vaz won the first round on April 13 -- the first presidential vote since the army put a stop to the 2012 election -- but failed to get an outright majority and faces runner-up Nuno Gomes Nabiam in the run-off. We have very good conditions in terms of the organisation of the election. All equipment is in place in the regional election commissions, which are at work distributing it, Mendes added. An election commission source said 3,048 polling stations would open from 7:00 am (0700 GMT) until 6:00 pm. The big unknown is what the role of the army will be, taking into account that it intervened in 2012 to stop the process, said Bissau-based political analyst Bamba Kote. The military high command supports Nuno but will the army dare to intervene again in the current context, with a large number of observers and the international community closely following the process?
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 10:49:00 +0000
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