In an interview given to the French newspaper Le Monde and published on October 24, 2019, the Guinean President, Alpha Condé, praises his balance sheet to one year from the end of his second term and while thousands of his compatriots are marching against a constitutional amendment deemed suspicious for both its timing and its objectives.
“When I came to power, I said I had found a country, not a state,” says the one who called two years ago at the international conference on the emergence in Abidjan to cut the umbilical cord with Paris. “There were no institutions, no police, no army. The priority was to solve macroeconomic problems. The central bank did not have a month of reserve, inflation was 21%, no program had been completed with the World Bank, which called us the “pierced basket”.
And the teacher to invoke the case of major force came to cut the momentum of a country in rebirth. “The Ebola epidemic [2015-2016] has come to tire our economy. But after all, we have reached, just after, a double-digit growth that has not fallen since, below 6%. ” President Alpha Conde who is not afraid of contradiction is formal. “Today, we are transforming more and more agricultural products, we are exporting cement. We did not have energy, now we produce hundreds of megawatts. I said I would dedicate my second term to women and youth. I continue to keep my commitments.
A respect for the commitments that remain to be assessed on the ground by Guineans more than ever determined to block the road to a third term. At the mention of this hot topic, Alpha Condé loses his countenance and clings to the eternal specificity of Africa and, indirectly, Guinean: “Are there no other countries where there are new Constitutions? ? Where can presidents go for a third term? Why do not we say anything to others? Is Guinea the only one where a president in office makes a new constitution that can allow him to represent himself? Why is there a scandal for Guinea? We can not do double standards. Guineans will never accept that. It will be noted in passing that President Alpha Condé, like Dadis Camara before him, conjugates in the plural, taking himself as “Guineans”. Identity theft ? At 81 years old, the renter of the Sékhoutouréya palace knows it anyway better than anyone, in the tropics, the birthright prevails over the aspirations of youth.
