Guinea-Bissau, 2013

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.