The Guinea Coup meme – it continues to live on.

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Posted at 2009/03/03/1423 by farkinga
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WAT? I told you! Didn’t I tell you? As recently as two months ago, we were discussing Guinea Coups on RTFA. Now, the (former) president has been assassinated, and the region is in unrest.

Sure, this isn’t a coup… sure, the military promises to respect democracy…

But all the same, the president is dead at the hands of a group of soldiers, and the meme lives on.

[UPDATE 2009-03-03]
Erm, whoops. Wrong Guinea. The post from two months ago was Equatorial Guinea, but the current article is Guinea-Bissau (neither of which should be confused with the Republic of Guinea).
[/UPDATE]

RTFA: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/03/02/guinea-bi…

Renegade soldiers killed the president of Guinea-Bissau just hours after a bomb blast led to the death of his rival, according to senior government officials.

President Joao Bernardo Vieira died early Monday morning, Luis Sanca, security adviser to Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr., confirmed for the Associated Press. Sanca declined to provide further details on the death.

Gunfire had been heard around the presidential palace in the capital of Bissau for several hours overnight in the fragile West African nation, according to witnesses. But the capital was calm on Monday, officials said.

Vieira had ruled Guinea-Bissau for 23 of the past 29 years. He came to power in a 1980 coup, but was forced out 19 years later at the onset of the country’s civil war. He later returned from exile in Portugal to run in the country’s 2005 election and won the vote.

Under the constitution, parliament chief Raimundo Pereira succeeds the president in the event of his death.

The Portuguese news agency LUSA reported that troops attacked Vieira’s residence with rockets and rifles on Sunday night.

Troops closed roads around the armed forces building in Bissau on Sunday and a blast apparently destroyed part of the building, according to the BBC.

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  • fumf
    a related story on BBC - first hand experience from author Frederick Forsyth: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7921847.stm

    "The writer was at pains to point out: "I can assure you I had nothing to do with the coup d'etat."

    Forsyth has previously admitted helping to finance a 1973 coup attempt in another West African state, Equatorial Guinea.

    Those events were the inspiration for his 1974 book The Dogs of War, which chronicles a failed plan by a group of European mercenaries to topple the government of a fictional African country.

    Forsyth added that this week's turmoil in Guinea-Bissau was more a battle between two bitter political enemies than a coup.

    The best-selling author arrived in Guinea-Bissau from the Portuguese capital Lisbon just after the army chief-of-staff, General Tagme Na Waie, was assassinated on Sunday.

    He was trying to sleep in his hotel room in the early hours of Monday morning when he heard an explosion.

    It was the roof of the presidential villa collapsing as soldiers launched an apparent tit-for-tat attack on veteran ruler Joao Bernardo Vieira.

    "They went to his villa, threw a bomb through the window which hurt him, but didn't kill him," Forsyth told the BBC's World Today programme.

    "The roof came down, that hurt him but didn't kill him either. He struggled out of the rubble and was promptly shot. This, however, still didn't kill him.

    "They then took him to his mother-in-law's house and chopped him to bits with machetes."
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