ECOWAS has accorded the military junta in Guinea six months to return the country to constitutional rule after the September 5 ousting of President Alpha Condé.
According to ECOWAS communiqué issued after the Extraordinary Summit held in Accra on Thursday, the members of the junta, who are under the ensign of the National Committee for Reconciliation and Development (CNRD) and their family members have been slammed with travel bans.
They have also had their financial assets frozen.
ECOWAS urged the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations, and other multilateral and bilateral partners to support the implementation of these sanctions.
The summit took into consideration a report by the high-level Mission dispatched to the Republic of Guinea on 10 September 2021.
The West Africa regional bloc further iterated that no member of the CNRD be allowed to contest in the presidential election if Guinea is returned to constitutional rule.
Guinean PresidentAlpha Condé enacted a new constitution which allowed him to seek a third term in office.
Changing the constitution was hugely controversial, spurring mass demonstrations against the proposed amendments that left dozens of people dead.
A former opposition figure jailed under previous hardline administrations, Conde made history in 2010 as Guinea’s first democratically elected president.
The constitutional change has been noted as one of the reasons for the military take-over.
After a gun battle in Guinea’s capital, a group of soldiers announced the dissolution of the constitution, the closure of the borders and a nationwide curfew in a broadcast on state TV on Sunday evening.
Soldiers, led by special forces Commander Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, had stated regional governors had been replaced by military commanders and that Mr. Condé was under arrest.
The UN, African Union, and ECOWAS have condemned the coup and called for a return to constitutional rule.
The coup d’état in Guinea was the fourth attempted coup in West Africa in the last year with two military takeovers in Mali and a failed coup in Niger.
See the full communiqué below:
[embeddoc url=”https://awakenewsroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/UK-Communiqué-Final-Sommet-16-septembre-Situation-en-Guinea_210916_215714.pdf” download=”all”]
