Legislative elections set for March 28

A key decision-making body comprising representatives of Guinea-Bissau's main political parties and the armed forces has set March 28 as the date for legislative elections to return the country to constitutional rule following a coup in September. The National Transitional Council agreed the date on Thursday. Presidential elections are due to follow 12 months later. The transitional government of President Henrique Rosa is meanwhile working on a 15 million euro (US $18 million) budget for 2004 which it will present to a donors' conference in January. Experts from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spent two weeks in this virtually bankrupt West African country helping the government to draft the spending plan, which will depend largely on foreign aid. Paulo Gomes, a Guinea-Bissau economist who is now a senior director of the World Bank, held talks with Rosa on Friday. He told journalists afterwards that civil servants, who are owed more than a year of pay arrears, would probably have to wait until after the parliamentary elections in March before they receive any back-pay. He warned that neither the IMF nor the World Bank would provide the necessary money. Rosa's administration has at least managed to resume the payment of current salaries and reopen schools after two years of almost constant strikes by unpaid teachers. Rosa, a respected businessman and former head of Guinea-Bissau's electoral commission, was appointed as transitional president after the army deposed the chaotic government of former president Kumba Yala on 14 September. Yala was elected on a ticket of national reconciliation in 2000 after a brief but devasting civil war in this former Portuguese colony of 1.3 million people. But his rule became increasingly erratic and by the time of his overthrow he had alienated most of his former supporters. The bloodless coup was greeted with quiet relief by most of Guinea-Bissau's population. It gained international approval after the army agreed to rapidly hand over power to broad-based civilian administration charged with returning the country to democracy within 18 months. Last week, General Verissimo Correia Seabra, the head of the armed forces, presided over a meeting of serving and former soldiers designed to heal a split in the army caused by the 1998/9 civil war. He subsequently agreed that several hundred former soldiers loyal to ex-president Joao Bernardino Vieira who was forced out of power by the civil war, and the late general Ansumane Mane, who launched the coup against Vieira, should be reintegrated into the armed forces. No dates were given for when this would happen.