Guinean Prime Minister Jean Marie Dore said on Monday that maintaining public order was more important than holding on time a planned presidential election on Sunday, but stopped short of announcing a delay in the poll.
Dore’s comments, the strongest sign yet of a possible poll delay in the top bauxite exporter, follow a weekend of violence between backers of presidential hopefuls Cellou Dalein Diallo and Alpha Conde.
“We are due to hold an election on the 19th [but] the conditions must be right. The most important of these conditions is security,” Dore said on state television.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“The priority must be given to public order as an election is not possible if there is chaos,” he added. Police deployed extra forces around Guinea’s capital Conakry on Monday after street fighting between supporters of rivals in the run-off left one dead and 50 injured over the weekend.
The violence prompted authorities to suspend all campaigning and rallies before the decisive second-round vote on Sunday, but, until now, there had been no word on the possibility of delaying the poll, which is aimed at restoring civilian rule.
The EU and the US, which have both been involved in months of diplomacy aimed at stabilizing the fragile West African state, earlier called on rival political factions to refrain from violence.
A police official said security forces were watching the large Conakry market of Madina where witnesses said stallholders had shut their shops and some had gathered stones for possible use if more fighting broke out.
Madina market is seen as a potential flashpoint as it houses large groups of Guinea’s two main ethnicities — Peuls who largely backed former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo in the first round, and Malinke who mainly back his rival Alpha Conde.
No major incidents were reported as both candidates met the prime minister over a possible decision to restart campaigning.
After the meetings, Diallo, who is favorite in the poll, vowed to ensure his campaign remained peaceful while Conde called for greater transparency in the election body, CENI.
Violence flared after a court last week jailed the head of the national election commission and his planning director for meddling with the results of the first round in June.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS