I would like to begin
my statement by congratulating Ambassador John
William Ashe on his election as President of the General
Assembly at its sixty-eighth session. I would also like to
extend our congratulations to his country, Antigua and
Barbuda, which is honoured by the selection of one of
its sons to preside this year over the most representative
world institution.
The President carries on his shoulders the
responsibility for guiding the work of the current session
of the General Assembly at a time that all consider to be
politically very critical for the international community.
Indeed, the reality that the international community
faces today is that of a world troubled by dangerous
global geopolitical tensions and an international
financial and economic crisis that is deeper and wider
than any we have seen since the 1930s. The intensity
of the crisis has thrown millions of people onto the
unemployment rolls and created millions of new poor
throughout the world.
There are new fears, new dangers and new threats
around the world — from transnational terrorism
to arms and drug trafficking as well as frightening
interfaith tensions that often result in bloodshed. Other
dangers include the return of brutal, old-style piracy
to the modern age, not only off the coast of Somalia
but also in the Gulf of Guinea, threatening important
routes through which oil is transported to fuel the world
economy, creating insecurity for the international
merchant marine and facilitating illicit fishing and
all manner of illegal maritime trafficking in arms,
human beings and psychotropic substances; persistent
outbreaks of ethnic violence that cause enormous
human suffering; and unimaginable humanitarian
disasters in various areas.
I come from a small country on the westernmost tip
of the African coast. We are a poor country, but we have
not lost the hope of achieving, in peace, the progress
to which we are entitled. Two days ago we celebrated
the fortieth anniversary of our national independence,
so this is a good time for us to reaffirm the following:
during the entire period of armed struggle for national
liberation, the people that I represent believed in the
United Nations and in international law, and my country
today reiterates, maintains and further reinforces that
belief.
We achieved national independence in 1973. It was
not given to us by anybody but became possible only
as a result of the international solidarity of some and,
ultimately, the recognition of all.
To all without exception, I wish, on behalf of Guinea-
Bissau, to express our feeling of eternal gratitude, to
declare our firm desire to strengthen longstanding ties
of friendship and to affirm our willingness, despite
all that has transpired, to rebuild the foundations of
solidarity that united our peoples in the past.
From this rostrum I ask for the Assembly’s patience
and understanding and hope for its solidarity. I believe
that expressions of generosity are in no way inconsistent
with the cold rationality of relations among sovereign
States. I am the Interim President of the Republic of
Guinea-Bissau, and that title, as the Assembly is well
aware, indicates something particular and exceptional.
Indeed, the political and military events of 12 April
2012 created a new political environment in my country.
A military coup had ousted the interim President of the
Republic and a self-suspended Prime Minister who
had launched an inconclusive campaign to run for the
presidency. Faced with that situation, we wondered
what to do.
Fortunately, the best option available at the time, in
our opinion, ultimately prevailed. We were able to avoid
political problems that, had they taken hold, could have
thrown the country into a political and military tailspin
with consequences that would have been unpredictable
and certainly much graver than those we nonetheless
had to face and, in some ways, continue to face.
We therefore had to circumscribe the dynamics of
the military coup, control its political effects and limit
its institutional reach, and, as if that were not enough,
we had to deal with two opposing positions that emerged
both internally and abroad.
One of them was deeply detrimental to the peaceful
return to constitutional normality in my country, but
the other was much more realistic and thus more
promising in terms of the gradual re-establishment
of constitutional order. We had to deal with the first
so-called position, which was both curious and
dramatic. That position was taken by people who
would have preferred to see the worst possible situation
in Guinea-Bissau. Why? They were betting on the
degradation of the political situation in my country in
order to justify their views, confirm their predictions
and operationalize their political concepts of how to
resolve the crisis in Guinea-Bissau. Indeed, they made
every attempt to apply the formula of “the worse for
Guinea-Bissau, the better” — the better to serve their
own interests. With such a radical position, they were
truly able to touch the deepest sensibilities of a people
that is humble but refuses to be humiliated.
We are a true democracy, notwithstanding all our
flaws, the violations of the democratic purpose of the
State and the many detours taken. We are the first to
recognize that. But we must not forget that we are, first,
a State born out of centuries of pain and hope and of a
hard and victorious struggle for national independence,
which has had a strong influence on the determination
of the political values to be defended.
In order to enable the second option on the table
to go forward, we were able to rely on the realism
and prompt solidarity of the Economic Community of
West African States (ECOWAS). With the important
support of the Security Council, ECOWAS became
solely responsible for managing the agreed transition
period and created a reduced stabilization military
mission that became known as the ECOWAS Mission
in Guinea-Bissau.
At the political and institutional levels, the
parliament elected by the people of Guinea-Bissau — the
National People’s Assembly — remained standing and
thus was able to provide the political transition with a
legitimate and legitimizing institutional basis. In fact,
the Constitution of the Republic was never suspended.
That is the origin of the office of the Interim
President of the Republic. It did not come from a military
coup. It came, rather, from an elected Parliament and
therefore from a political and institutional process.
That makes all the difference.
I combined the position of Member of Parliament,
elected to the position four times in a row, with that
of First Vice-President of that body of sovereignty: in
other words, all modesty aside, I am a democrat with a
mature conviction and never carried out a coup d’état or
ordered any such action.
Indeed, with the inauguration of the Interim
President of the Republic, the political transition process
per se began. After some time, Parliament approved the
revised transition pact and the corresponding political
agreement. Later on it approved the programme
and general budget for the State, submitted by a
Government with a broad political base, which I, as
Interim President of the Republic, had appointed and
installed by presidential decree.
With those steps, the political transition truly
took off. I have signed a presidential decree setting
24 November as the date for the legislative and
presidential elections. What remains, which is no small
task, is to ensure the availability of funds to carry out
an effective, transparent and unquestionable electoral
process. To that end, we must create reliable voter
registries, something that can be accomplished only
through an accurate census or voter registration process.
That is where the political transition in Guinea-Bissau
stands.
Guinea-Bissau is the victim of two dramatically
interlinked evils: poverty and political instability. In
a society such as that of my country, poverty creates
a propensity for political instability. In turn, political
instability has an impact on the economic order,
reduces the rate of growth and thus increases the
poverty rate. The challenge ahead consists precisely
of escaping the two traps of poverty and political
instability. Overcoming this challenge obviously goes
well beyond the goals for this exceptional period of
political transition. Therefore, in that regard, we will
not go into further detail.
In the light of this enormous economic and political
liability, which has yet to be resolved, achieving the
Millennium Development Goals within a given time
frame is truly beyond our means, for the foreseeable
future at least. But this recognition does not mean that
the Government, civil society and Guinea-Bissau’s
bilateral and multilateral development partners
in general, including United Nations specialized
agencies, have given up on the effort. On the contrary,
in education, health, gender-equality policies, the fight
against poverty, environmental policies for sustainable
development, and other areas, our country has made
progress, though moderate and below satisfactory
levels.
With respect to the outcome document of the United
Nations Conference on Sustainable Development,
entitled “The future we want” (resolution 66/288,
annex), Guinea-Bissau will make every effort to carry
out the commitments undertaken. We hope that the more
developed countries, our partners, will do their part in
the fight against poverty, one of the greatest scourges
afflicting States such as Guinea-Bissau, which are very
fragile and therefore very vulnerable, and still suffering
from the grave consequences of armed conflict.
Guinea-Bissau supports the establishment on
24 September of the High-level Political Forum on
Sustainable Development. It replaces the Commission
on Sustainable Development and will develop the
United Nations post-2015 development agenda. As a
country of many islands, Guinea-Bissau welcomes the
Secretary-General’s initiative to convene the Third
International Conference on Small Island Developing
States, in Samoa, in September 2014.
We take this opportunity to thank the United
Nations, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in
particular, for their dedication to our country and for
appointing former President of Timor-Leste José Ramos-
Horta as United Nations Special Representative and
Head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding
Office in Guinea-Bissau. Mr. Ramos-Horta has made
excellent contributions to the political normalization of
our country.
The State of Guinea-Bissau is not oblivious to the
evolution of the international political environment.
Guinea-Bissau has never been indifferent to the hopes
and suffering of people all over the world. In that
regard, we stand firm in solidarity with our brothers
in ECOWAS. We wish the people of Mali the best of
luck. Mali has just demonstrated its immense maturity
by going to the polls during recent general elections
with civic pride, marking the end of a period of political
transition. That also sent a strong starting signal
for national reconciliation and efforts to rebuild the
country, which was destroyed by acts of terrorism and
unacceptable irredentism. We take this opportunity to
congratulate France on its crucial role in safeguarding
the integrity of Malian territory, which is the foundation
of the country’s sovereignty.
We repudiate the terrorist attacks that have taken
place in Nigeria and Kenya, spurred by radicalism in
the name of religious intolerance. We offer our full
support to the sister nations of Nigeria and Kenya,
Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Uhuru Kenyatta,
their Governments and the families of all the victims.
We hope that neighbouring Guinea undergoes a
successful electoral process, paving the path for true
national reconciliation in that country.
In Egypt and Syria, which has been ravaged by
war, we hope that dialogue and diplomacy prevail over
force, so that we can avoid sacrificing more human
lives. In the Middle East, we continue to defend the
Palestinian cause with as much conviction as ever. It is
crucial for the Palestinian people in particular, and for
political stability and peacebuilding in the Arab world
in general, that negotiations between the Palestinian
authorities and the State of Israel advance towards the
creation of a sovereign Palestinian State, in accordance
with the relevant resolutions of the United Nations.
As to Europe, we offer a special word of recognition
to France, which has never abandoned us and continues
very actively to seek better ways of helping Guinea-
Bissau overcome a political crisis. We also thank the
Kingdom of Spain, whose Ambassador to the United
Nations has been instrumental in efforts towards
political normalization. Our friend Timor-Leste, a small
country within the Community of Portuguese-Speaking
Countries (CPLP), has exhibited an admirable spirit of
cooperation with Guinea-Bissau, demonstrating that
friends do come through in the most difficult of times.
The Timorese authorities have understood the very
simple fact that supporting an institutional process of
political normalization is not the same as supporting a
coup d’état. It is, indeed, quite the contrary.
We very much thank President Armando
Guebuza, current President of the CPLP, for his fair
assessment of the political process in Guinea-Bissau,
for his encouragement and for appealing to the
international community to provide financial support
for general elections in Guinea-Bissau. We also take
this opportunity to congratulate Murade Murargy,
a Mozambican national who currently serves as the
Executive Secretary of CPLP, for his dedication to
the political normalization process in our country. We
hope one day, and perhaps one day soon, to see a full
normalization of our relations with the countries of the
CPLP, which is in the interests of all our peoples and
sovereign States.
With respect to Cuba, we call, as we have always
done, for an end to the decades-long embargo and
for the advancement of the reforms under way in that
friendly nation, with which we have so many and such
deep ties of friendship and solidarity.
With respect to Asia, we wish to express our
profound gratitude to the People’s Republic of China
for the extent and intensity of its cooperation with our
country. The fruits of this cooperation, particularly
in the construction of key public buildings, will enter
history as indelible symbols of a friendship that dates
back to our armed struggle for national liberation.
We express the profound gratitude of the people of
Guinea-Bissau to Mr. Alassane Ouattara, President of
the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire and current President of
ECOWAS, and to Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, President
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and President of
the International Contact Group on Guinea-Bissau, as
well as to all the Heads of State and Government of the
member countries of ECOWAS.