President forces head of army and nearly 2,000 soldiers into retirement

President Lansana Conte retired off nearly 2,000 soldiers, including the head of the Guinean armed forces, in his largest single reduction of armed forces personnel, a military officer told IRIN. In total, 1,872 military personnel, including army chief of staff General Mamadou Bailo Diallo, were listed in a presidential decree issued on Friday but not made public, a senior officer in the Guinean army, who asked not to be named, told IRIN late Tuesday. No official reason was given for the sudden measure which will come into effect from 31 December 2005. However, the source said the top officers were retired because of old age. Officials announced last June that hundreds of government workers, including ministers and diplomats aged over 60, some of whom had served for 30 to 40 years, would be sent into retirement within months. The director of the Labour Ministry, Ousman Bangoura, told IRIN at the time that more than 1,400 government workers were slated for retirement, including members of cabinet. “The question of retirement for these people is the sole prerogative of the president who in the first place appointed them into such positions”, Bangoura said. Mass retirements would create employment opportunities for hundreds of university graduates and other trained personnel who have been out of work for years. Guinea has seen no significant public sector recruitment over the last decade in a bid to keep the state sector at not more than 50,000 in line with World Bank and IMF policy. Many of the senior officers listed for retirement have proved themselves ardent supporters of Conte in the past. General Mamadou Bailo Diallo has served in the Guinean army for close to half a century and is one of a handful of remaining officers trained by former colonial power France before independence in 1958. He took part in the 1984 bloodless coup that installed Conte in the presidency and played a crucial role in repulsing attacks on Guinea in 2000 and 2001 by Liberian and Sierra Leonean rebels. Another senior figure on the retirement list is Mamadou Balde, inspector general of the armed forces, and the man credited with foiling a 1985 coup attempt against the newly installed Conte while he was on an official visit to Togo. And the secretary general for internal security in the ministry of defence and a former minister of defence, General Abdourahmane Diallo, will also be collecting his pension. Diallo, initially questioned for complicity in the 1985 coup attempt, had his name cleared after Conte personally intervened on his behalf. Altogether, four colonels, 10 lieutenant-colonels, 39 majors and 93 captains were retired off, though the majority -- 1,727 -- were non-commissioned officers, the source said. The source said that drunkenness and drug addiction were the main reasons offered for the dismissal of junior and non-ranked personnel. Others were retired for failing to turn up for duty over long periods, or after sustaining severe injuries in UN peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The forced retirement comes on the heels of a previous presidential decree signed 2 November that promoted some 1,000 non-commissioned and commissioned officers. Word of the military purge, which hit the streets of the capital Conakry on Tuesday morning prompted panic buying of petrol, a first sign of trouble said residents, in a country primed for instability. Conte amended the constitution in 2001 to allow him to remain president for life, but at 70 years old and suffering from a host of acute diabetes-related illnesses there are fears he may not be able to conclude his current seven-year mandate which expires in 2010.