After a year and a half in power, the President of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, claims to have stopped drug trafficking in his country and reduced corruption.
Bissau-Guinean President Umaro Sissoco Embaló seems to have a new model: the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. Last week, the latter gave a debriefing speech to show how effective his fight against drug traffickers and consumers had been. Questioned by Le Monde Afrique, the head of state of Guinea-Bissau respects the record of the Filipino who, "in three months, put an end to many institutionalized practices".
Faced with drug trafficking, successive Bissau-Guinean presidents have failed to take effective measures. However, the finding is alarming: "Guinea-Bissau has lost control of its territory", summarized in 2007 the former director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa. Worse, according to a report by the West African Commission on Drugs (WACD), Colombian drug traffickers would have financed in 2005 the campaign of the former president of Guinea-Bissau, Joao Bernardo Vieira, who had been re-elected.
Firmness and will
Umaro Sissoco Embaló warned during his election at the end of 2019 that “Guinea-Bissau will no longer be the country you have known, where anyone does anything. It's over ! ". Among the projects that awaited him, those, closely linked, drug trafficking and corruption were the most important. Because the Bissau-Guinean public sector is one of the most corrupt in the world. An observation that Umaro Sissoco Embaló would now like to combine with the past.
To put an end to corruption, the president of this small West African country offers two watchwords: discipline and order. Words that must above all concern the Head of State. "When the leader is legal, society follows," he assures Le Monde before assuring that he will "never tolerate traffickers and corrupters". Regarding drug trafficking, Bissau is a hub of African and even global trafficking. Successive seizures by customs prove this.
Faced with this scourge, Umaro Sissoco Embaló wants to show firmness and determination. The president assures us, moreover, that the traffic has already decreased considerably since he came to power. But the presidential fight against drugs requires a policy of firmness vis-à-vis those who could be involved, at the highest point of the State: generals? Civil servants? "No member of the army is involved in trafficking any more," says Embaló.
If the statistics concerning drug trafficking are difficult to verify, Umaro Sissoco Embaló believes that the renewed diplomacy of Guinea-Bissau - with visits from the IMF or heads of state - shows the success of its first year and a half at the head of the country.