General News of Wednesday, 29 September 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-09-29
Vladimir Antwi Danso is an international relations expert
The regional bloc of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, must help Guinea through the post-September 5 coup by supporting the junta to build strong institutions.
This is the view of international relations expert and academic, Dr. Vladimir Antwi Danso who holds that it is only by building strong institutions that future coups can be effectively averted.
Speaking on the sidelines of a governance forum organized on September 28, 2021, by the Insititute of Economic Affairs in Accra, Dr. Antwi Danso stressed: “Help them build democractic institutions. Help them have the structures in place to ensure that it (coup) doesn’t happen again.
“To stampede them to make any wishy-washy arrangement in place and excuse me, get any idiot in power for us to accept them does not solve the problem,” he cautioned.
On measures that ECOWAS can put in place to avert coups he proposed a robust use of “peer mechanisms to be able to ensure that in every country, constitutionalism and institutionalism is observed,” with that, he posited that: “there will be no coups.”
He stressed further that in the event that conditions lead to another coup, a gradual rebuilding of processes and institutions still remained the best bet for building back strongly
“If in the event that what we put in place does not work and there is a coup, let us again know that there is a deficiency, a deficit; that is why the coup took place and let us help them gradually,” he added.
ECOWAS has been playing a frontal role in Guinea since the coup that ousted Alpha Conde. He remains in detention as the military junta led by Mamady Doumbouya continues its transition plans to return the country back to constitutionalism.