Op-Ed: Denounce Guinea’s coup—and incumbent leaders’ abuses of power

On Sept. 5, Guinea’s controversial President Alpha Condé was deposed from power by an elite military group led by Col. Mamady Doumbouya that was established in 2018 to battle growing terrorist threats in the region. [...] Condé is the third president in the region to be removed from power in recent memory in connection with constitutionally questionable attempts at a third term—following the popular uprising that removed Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso in 2014 and the 2010 military coup that removed Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja. In all cases, as well as in Ivory Coast in 2020, when President Alassane Ouattara ran for a third term, the AU and ECOWAS were reluctant to publicly denounce the patently undemocratic constitutional manipulation that laid the groundwork for a third term. Nevertheless, they strongly rejected the coups that followed, despite the popular support the coups enjoyed. This contrasting reaction has fed a sense across the region that hypocrisy is rampant in organizations that tolerate and protect incumbents no matter how much they bend the rules. The hypocrisy has undermined regional legitimacy and effectiveness when the AU or ECOWAS seeks to stand up against patently abusive coups (such as the Mali coups in 2020 and 2021). The Guinea situation marks the most serious challenge to this hypocrisy, coming as it has against a president guilty of a third-term manipulation.
Read the full article here: Foreign Policy