Information minister dismissed ahead of polls

Four weeks to Guinea-Bissau's parliamentary elections, President Kumba Yala on Monday dismissed the Minister of Information, Juliano Fernandes. No reason was given for the dismissal of the minister who had been in office for two months, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported. On Saturday, four journalists were also arrested after their radio station broadcast comments from an opposition party. They were later released. Fernandes, Lusa said, was trying to satisfy international calls for wider press freedom ahead of the 12 October legislative elections. A former Guinean attorney general and ex- aide to Yala, he was instrumental in reopening the Bissau bureau of RTP-Africa, a Portuguese state TV network whose correspondent was expelled in 2002. Joao Perreira da Silva, RTP's bureau chief, was expelled after the station ran a programme on Ansumané Mane, a political activist who was killed during an alleged coup attempt in November 2000, a few months after Yala came to power. Yala, who was elected President in 2000, has sacked many of ministers. His rule has been characterised by summary arrests, alleged coup plots, dramatic policy switches and government attacks on both the judiciary and the independent media. In November 2002, Yala dissolved parliament and called for fresh elections in February. However the polls were put off until April, before being postponed again until June and then October, extending the tenure of his caretaker administration to nine months instead of 90 days. Analysts say the future of Guinea-Bissau, a poor small and largely forgotten country on the coast of West Africa, depends on the government's ability to hold credible parliamentary elections. If the polls go ahead and are judged to be reasonably free and transparent, it could end a period of Bissau's international isolation. A country of 1.3 million people, Guinea-Bissau ranks 167th out of 173 in the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI). According to the World Bank, around 88 per cent of the population lives on less than $1 a day. United Nations official David Stephen, who heads the United Nations Peace-building Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS), recently told IRIN that the people in the country were afraid that the country could step back into conflict unless there are effective institutions to manage political tensions and conflicts. A former Foreign Minister Antonieta Rosa Gomes, who was sacked by Kumba Yala in November 2001, said the president had only himself to blame for Guinea-Bissau’s negative image abroad. “When I was in office we worked really hard to rebuild relations with the outside world, both bilateral and multilateral partners, and we did well," she told IRIN in August. “But all that has been thrown away now." Agnello Ragalla, head of the independent radio station Radio Bombolom, described Yala as “one of the most important enemies of the freedom of the press in the country.” The station was recently closed, but reopened under international pressure.