Coup in Guinea, new leader says govt is dissolved

CONAKRY: A unit of Guinea’s military seized power and suspended the constitution, destabilising the West African nation that’s a key source of the raw material used to make aluminium. The head of Guinea’s special forces, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, announced the takeover on state television on Sunday and urged the armed forces to back him.

The action was taken to address financial mismanagement and corruption in Guinea under President Alpha Conde, he said. “If you see the condition of our roads, of our hospitals, you realise that it is time for us to wake up,” Doumbouya said. “We are going to initiate a national consultation to open an inclusive and peaceful transition.”

Guinea vies with Australia as China’s largest supplier of bauxite, the raw material used to make alumina and eventually aluminium. The country shipped 82.4 million tons of the mineral globally last year, according to government data. Much of that went to China, which is the world’s biggest aluminium-consuming country.

After seizing the airwaves, the mutinous soldiers vowed to restore democracy and gave themselves a name: The National Committee of Gathering and Development. Doumbouya sat draped in a Guinean flag with a half dozen other soldiers in uniform alongside him as he read the statement, “The duty of a soldier is to save the country.”

He made no mention of Conde’s whereabouts and it was not immediately known where the 83-year-old leader was after Sunday’s developments.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres condemned the coup in Guinea and urged putschists who said they had seized power to release the country’s detained president. “I strongly condemn any takeover of the government by force of the gun,” Guterres tweeted.