Like a series with different episodes, the crisis between the Guinean junta and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has taken a new turn. Both parties have agreed on a transition period of 24 months. This is the announcement made by the head of the Guinean junta, Mamadi Doumbouya on Friday. A statement that ECOWAS confirmed at the end of a technical mission dispatched to Conakry last week.
Threatened with harsher sanctions, the Guinean junta relented and reduced the duration of the transition to 24 months, instead of 36, “as of 1 January 2023”. Indeed, a technical mission of ECOWAS led by Dr. Abdel Fatau Musah, Commissioner of Political Affairs, Peace and Security of the organisation, stayed in Conakry from 16 to 21 October to discuss with the Guinean side and agree on an acceptable timetable for the transition. This mission was supported by the ECOWAS mediator for Guinea, former Beninese president Boni Yayi.
“At the end of the work, in a dynamic compromise, ECOWAS and Guinean experts jointly developed a consolidated chronogram of the transition spread over 24 months,” said the report of the technical commission of the sub-regional organisation published Friday.
Thus, at the negotiating table, the Guinean side was there to defend its 36 months of transition whose sequence of events can be broken down into 10 major stages.
Furthermore, according to the Guinean authorities, the implementation of the timetable established with ECOWAS will come into force on 1 January 2023. A deadline that the sub-regional organisation could refute. Moreover, a recommendation was made to the ECOWAS mediator for Guinea, Boni Yayi, to submit the new timetable of the Guinean transition to the next session of the Conference of Heads of State and Government “for its approval in order to trigger its implementation”.
If this transition period is validated by ECOWAS, the Guinean military would have remained in power for more than three years. Since Mamadi Doumbouya and his team overthrew Alpha Conde, the elected civilian president, on 5 September 2021.
