International help needed, UN official urges

Guinea-Bissau would need sustained assistance from the international community to overcome immediate and longer-term hurdles, a senior UN official told the UN Security Council on Wednesday. In the immediate future, the international community needs to help finance legislative elections slated for 20 April, said David Stephen, the UN Secretary-General's Representative in Guinea-Bissau. Without international assistance, there would be no election, he added. UN assistance would fall into two categories: financing the election and helping to organise it, according to Stephen, who is also the head of the UN Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS). The West African country has very little income to sustain the national budget and did not have the funds to run transparent elections, he noted, adding that the overall organisation of the elections, including providing electoral observers, would have to come from the donor community. The present situation was not suitable for the holding of the polls, Stephen said, urging the international community to do all it could to ensure free and fair elections. According to media reports, over the past few weeks the security forces have arrested and detained several opposition activists without any clearly stated motive. However the opposition maintains that it will go to the polls, and some parties have formed a coalition against the ruling party. Last week, civil servants began what was to have been a five-day strike to press demands for the payment of overdue salaries, but the protest was reduced to one day after the government promised to start paying the arrears within two weeks. In the long term, Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony that became independent in 1975, needs assistance in alleviating widespread poverty and strengthening governance and the rule of law, Stephen said, adding that the economic and political situations of the West African nation were closely intertwined. Without economic progress, he said, there would be no advances on the political plane. The country experienced a civil war in 1998-1999 and since then it has recorded a growing deficit in terms of democracy and good governance. The political climate has been characterized by the intimidation and unlawful arrest of opposition and government critics; a string of reshuffled cabinets; attacks on the private press; and other moves that have weakened the country's already unstable democracy. At the moment there is no legislature as parliament was dissolved by President Kumba Iala in November 2002. It is with an eye to the country's troubled recent history, instability and uncertain future that UNOGBIS was established in 1999. The office has worked closely with the government to help it remedy some of the country's socio-economic problems. The international community should not abandon Guinea-Bissau, Stephen said. Nor should it overlook a county that has the potential to cause considerable instability in a region already plagued by fragile economies and equally fragile political systems, he told the Security Council.