Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
To get the chiefs to produce the Fulani votes which made élus of the educated Fulani, the latter paid a high ideological price. Then AGV policy was best summed up by a chief attending the 1953 AGV congress — ‘Let us move carefully. No motions, no violence. Let us concentrate on corridor interventions. The administration frequently pays no attention to motions.’ 1
The other regional associations were less organized and also concerned themselves with privileges rather than principles. Some French officials referred to the regiona1 associations not as parties but as syndicate de nantis (unions of those who feather their nests). 2 Success or failure in elections depended in large measure upon official chiefs whom French officials had little difficulty in influencing. Until 1954 the administration could and did rule largely in the pre-war manner.
Until 1954 each successful parlementaire was usually a rival of the others, backed by most of the voters from his own region and by an unstable combination from one or several of the other regions. Each election led to an 'agonizing reappraisal' 3 of the electoral alliances. For example, deputy Yacine Diallo had only sporadic support from the Foyer de la Basse Guinée. The Foyer was composed of the younger dissidents from lower Guinea, who in 1946 signed a pact with the chiefs of the Fouta known as 'the milk and the salt' or khigne'nou fokhe. The young men in the Foyer opposed the dominant group in lower Guinea, Union de la Basse Guinée. It in turn supported Amarah Soumah, usually entered into alliances with Mamba Sano of the forest region, and also combined with the Union du Mandé. It had been founded by several Malinke, including
The group was also known as the Union Mandingue.
On other occasions, however, as in 1953, the Union du Mandé supported Yacine Diallo. The AGV, for its part, supported Yacine Diallo in 1945 and 1946, opposed him and his chiefly backers until 1951, when it supported his rival from the forest region, Mamba Sano. In the election of 10 November 1946, Mamba Sano and the AGV president Barry Diawadou were on the single list 5 of the Parti
Socialiste de Guinée. Only Sano won. The 1951 elections saw several other shifts in alliances and in the names of the regional groups. Thus Yacine Diallo created with Fode Toure a Union
Franco-Guinéenne, which was a co-ordinating committee in Conakry of his various ethnic backers.
1. Mimeographed records, AGV 1953 Congress, op. cit., p. 21.
2. From interviews, February 1956, Conakry.
3. La Liberté, 14 June 1955, editorial citing Foster Dulles' phrase.
4. La Liberté, 27 June 1955.
5. J.O.A.N., Débats, 25 February 1947, p. 471.
