Bissau soldiers attack home of poll front-runner

By Alberto Dabo

BISSAU (Reuters) – Soldiers in Guinea-Bissau attacked the residence of

former Prime Minister and presidential election front-runner Carlos Gomes Junior on Thursday in what regional ministers

condemned as an attempted coup in the small West African state.

Confusion and fear reined in the crumbling riverside capital, Bissau, after automatic weapons fire

and several explosions sent residents scurrying for the shelter of their homes.

State television and radio went off

the air and armed soldiers were on the streets and controlling major roads in and out of the capital, witnesses and diplomats

said.

They said the target of the evening attack by unidentified members of the military was the residence of Gomes

Junior, candidate for the ruling PAIGC party, and they added the action appeared aimed at derailing the unfinished

election.

Gomes Junior won close to an outright majority in last month’s first round of voting in the poor former

Portuguese colony, which has a history of coups and barracks revolts.

A second-round run-off had been set for April

29.

The whereabouts of Gomes Junior, who was known to be unpopular with some members of the military because of his

support for downsizing and reforming the bloated army, was not immediately known.

Rumours circulating among some

Bissau residents that he had been killed in the attack, which set at least one house on fire, could not be

confirmed.

 

In Bissau, one political source, who asked not be named, said soldiers had arrested the

country’s interim president, Raimundo Pereira, a former parliament speaker who is also a PAIGC member.

On one radio

station that was broadcasting, RDP Africa, the son of Guinea-Bissau national election commission chief Desejado Lima da Costa

said soldiers had invaded and looted his father’s house. “They didn’t find my father or mother, they are in a safe place,”

Camilo Lima da Costa told the radio.

“ATTEMPTED COUP D’ETAT”

Late on Thursday, foreign ministers of the West

African regional grouping ECOWAS, who were meeting in the Ivory Coast to discuss the situation in another regional state,

Mali, that suffered a coup last month, condemned the events in Guinea-Bissau.

“As in the case of Mali, ECOWAS formally

and rigorously condemns such an attempted coup d’etat,” Ivorian Foreign Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan said. “It’s

unacceptable and it’s not accepted by ECOWAS.”

Guinea-Bissau Foreign Minister Mamadu Djalo Pires, who was at the

meeting, called for an “energetic reaction” from the international community against what he called “a coup

d’etat”.

Guinea-Bissau, whose weak governance has made it a haven for Latin American drug cartels transshipping

cocaine to Europe, is electing a president to replace Malam Bacai Sanha, who died in a Paris hospital in January after a long

illness.

Gomes Junior’s rival in the run-off, Kumba Yala, had said he would boycott the vote over alleged first-round

rigging.

Only hours before the attack, Yala, a former president who claims ethnic ties with the mostly Balanta

military, had warned of “consequences” if campaigning for the second round went ahead.

Guinea-Bissau, a former

Portoguese colony which won independence in 1974, is one of the world’s most fragile and volatile states. Its main official

export is cashew nuts and an ordinary Bissau Guinean lives on less than $2 a day.

Political assassinations, health

problems and meddling by an oversized military have prevented any president from serving a full term since multi-party

politics began in 1994. Gomes Junior had supported downsizing the military

Top military officials in Bissau have been

accused by the United States of being drugs runners. Gomes Junior’s critics say even he is complicit in the trade, a charge

he denies.

But it was not clear what faction or factions of the military had carried out Thursday’s

attack.

The shooting came just days after news that Angola, also a former Portuguese colony, was ending its

two-year-old military mission to help modernise the army in Guinea Bissau. The mission was designed to help end military

coups in the country.