By George Murumba

6^th Dec 2010

Chief Justice Odoki

The results of the just concluded Guinean elections have dramatically put both President Yoweri Museveni’s and Ugandan Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki’s Supreme Court records to shame.

Both the losing Guinean presidential candidate and the Supreme Court of Guinea have shown their Ugandan counterparts that they have the guts and audacity to err decisively on the side of genuine democratic development in Guinea.

According to Guinea’s Supreme Court, long time opposition leader Mr. Alpha Conde secured more than 52 percent of the votes to win the country’s hotly contested presidential election.

Justice Odoki’s Guinean counterpart Mamadou Sylla, who is the Supreme Court President, announced the final results and said candidate Alpha Conde had won 1,474,973 votes, or 52.2 percent.

The second round of the presidential elections contest that was held in early November pitted Mr. Conde against former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo.  Initial results showed that Mr. Conde had won the election.

Mr. Diallo however petitioned the Supreme Court to reject results from two regions where he says anti-Peul riots weeks earlier caused his supporters to flee the area and were therefore unable to cast their votes.

On Thursday last week, Guinea’s Supreme Court however rejected Diallo’s claim and ruled that there wasn’t sufficient proof to show that Mr. Diallo’s supporters were intimidated from the polls.  The Court also, in a show of fairness and impartiality, threw out a similar complaint by Mr. Conde with regard to the election results in the Labe region.

Analysts have said Guinea’s recent vote is the first free democratic election since the country got its independence from France in 1958.  Alexandra Lambsdorff, head of the European Union electoral observation mission in Guinea, said international observers, as well as monitors from Diallo’s and Conde’s teams were granted full access to vote counting tallying exercises at polling stations.

“…The second round of the presidential elections in Guinea has been conducted in a way that was technically credible [and] with a degree of transparency that actually set an example or the entire region”, Lambsdorff said.

President Museveni

Besides, in a move that sharply contrasts with President Museveni’s recent declaration that he can never hand over power to people who never contributed to Uganda’s peace and stability, Mr. Conde’s opponent Cellou Dalein Diallo, who was Guinea’s former Prime Minister, conceded defeat immediately and said:

“…As Supreme Court decisions are final, we have no choice but to abide by this judgement.  Commitment to peace and a united Guinea commands us to stifle our frustration and our suffering [and] to remain calm and serene and avoid any form of violence”, Mr. Diallo said graciously.

The international human rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch however said that despite the evident transparency of the voting process, security forces in Guinea used excessive force after the second round of elections.

HRW’s report urged the new president to reform the security forces and work to ease ethnic tensions. END. Please log into www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.