Government finally agrees to open up airwaves

The government of Guinea has finally agreed to open up the airwaves to privately owned radio and television, but not to political parties or religious groups, according to a government statement read out on television. Although the government allows private newspapers to operate, Guinea is the only country in the region to ban private radio and TV, and the issue has long been at the centre of demands for more democracy by the opposition and the international community. At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday chaired by the country’s long-serving ruler, President Lansana Conte, ministers approved a draft decree enabling the creation, ownership or management of private radio and television stations by Guinean individuals or companies, but not by political parties and religious groups, according to the statement. International donors, including the European Union (EU) that currently has a delegation in Conakry meeting decision-makers, have withheld big aid packages to Guinea pending a move towards greater democracy, better governance and liberalisation of the media. “This is the result of relentless pressure from both we in the opposition and the EU,” Mamadou Ba, a member of the opposition coalition, Republic Front for Democrats (FRAD), told IRIN. A first step towards liberalisation of the media took place last January when Prime Minister Cellou Dalien Diallo promised to authorise private radio during a bid to re-launch dialogue with FRAD, which boycotted the 2003 presidential elections. Analysts and diplomats said in January that the situation had become so dire in Guinea that the government had decided a free media would be a lesser evil. Discontent among Guinea's eight million people is on the rise. Soaring food prices, rising electricity bills and unpaid state salaries have sent students, miners and angry residents out onto the streets month after month. The EU, which has traditionally been Guinea’s principal donor, has been withholding more than US$ 100 million of aid because the government has failed to implement political and economic reforms to improve the quality of governance in this poor and notoriously corrupt country. Diallo took over as prime minister in early December. That was a full eight months after his predecessor, Francois Fall, resigned during a trip to Paris and went into exile after only two months in the job. Conte, who is 70 and took office in a coup in 1984, won re-election for a further seven-year term in December 2003 in a presidential election boycotted by all the mainstream opposition parties. They subsequently claimed that the poll, which gave Conte 95 percent of the vote, was riddled with fraud. Diplomats worry that Guinea has known only two authoritarian presidents since independence from France in 1958 and that Conte has appointed no obvious successor as the country crumbles beneath him.