United Nations Radio

The people of Guinea Bissau go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president.

Joseph Mutaboba

The West African country has experienced one crisis after another ever since the killing of President Joao Bernardo Vieira and the Chief of Staff Tagme Na Waie in March. The United Nations envoy to Guinea-Bissau, Joseph Mutaboba told UN Radio's Derrick Mbatha that in addition to a very fragile peace, the country is facing a number of challenges.

MUTABOBA: It is a very bad economy because the country itself is very high indebted and the production is not at the level where we need it to be. When you have people who still have got food security problem, we cannot talk of any kind of good sound economy. So we have to reform to be able to support them to make sure that they make the right plans and they make the right decisions. But, of course, we only have to rely on what they want. So the priorities are theirs. We can only help them to fine tune those priorities.

MBATHA: What have they identified as the priorities?

MUTABOBA: First of all the food security is a big priority. That's one. Two is education, three is health and four is security and where we have to help them to really initiate reforms in public administration, in its justice sector because you have to address impunity as a recurrent problem and the security sector reform and defence to make sure that whatever problems we have had with the army before we turn the army into a republican army which can defend the institutions and which can defend the population rather than being an agent of human rights abuses and so on.

MBATHA: One observation that has been made in the past is that the army in Guinea-Bissau is not totally controlled by civilians. .

MUTABOBA: Judging from the facts, everyone would be led to believe that and I have no doubt that even the military themselves feel the need to change that state of facts. So we have to make sure that progressively the military have their own way of doing things and they have to obey the rules of the country and they have to submit themselves to the civilian authority. They have promised to do that. So what is needed is to be able to help them to reform. We have to be able to address first of all their problems, their basic needs. They can't eat properly. We should be able to help them to produce food for themselves and start feeding the most vulnerable group of the army, the veterans, the other officers and so on, because once they eat, then they can talk and we can talk to them then they can listen because, you see a hungry man is an angry one.

MBATHA: To conclude, what do you expect to come out of this election on Sunday, I believe?

MUTABOBA: Well, definitely we are waiting for one candidate to come out as the president and the Bissau Guineans and the international community we are all waiting to see who is going to be able to inherit a broken country and see how we can help him or her to be able to really mend the fences and come up with goodwill to organize a national dialogue and be able to say this is the time to really come back to our senses and build Guinea-Bissau as the country because our future generations deserve a better future.

PRES: That was Joseph Mutaboba the envoy of the Secretary-General to Guinea-Bissau.

Diane Bailey, United Nations.

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