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Compaore Proposal Legitimizes the Usurper and Betrays the People

November 20, 2009

In the face of extensive video footage accompanied by vivid accounts from witnesses and victims of the September 28 massacre and mass rape, along with the knowledge that the junta's attack was ethnic-based, Burkina Faso's president Blaise Compaore's proposal for the Guinean crisis puts the military junta and the people of Guinea back in the same stadium, still dripping with September's blood, to work things out amongst themselves. Compaore might as well re-load the guns for the junta.

Blaise Compaore and Moussa Dadis Camara

Yesterday, in Ouagadougou, Compaore announced his proposal for the crisis in Guinea. It provides for a transitional government headed by military junta leader Dadis Camara and a Prime Minister chosen from the opposition. Camara will lead a National Transition Council which will hold presidential elections within ten months. Camara, as well as any other political actor, will have the right to run for president.

The transition government will begin in December and, until then, a “unity government” will be formed consisting of ten junta members, ten opposition members, and ten “others” (likely to be from smaller political parties supportive of the junta).

Compaore's “mediation” calls several things into question. His proposal legitimizes Camara's military junta, ignores the September 28 junta attack currently being reviewed by the International Criminal Court, refuses to address the ethnic nature of Camara's long-term strategy including the indefensible use of mercenaries to regularize ethnic attacks, and presents an unthinkable scenario in which the people who, after losing their right to self-determination when Camara seized power, will now face an extended period of vicious, state-sponsored repression.

So, congratulations Mr. Compaore, you have managed to make a horrible situation worse. You have set it up so that Camara, a usurper of the throne and mastermind of a massacre becomes a legitimate actor in a transitional government where he will have a built-in majority and total control over an election in which he will be running for president. You have crafted a plan which ensures that Guinea will be more dangerous, if one can imagine such a thing. Yet, only you know what motivated you to betray the people of Guinea so thoroughly.