20120110
AFP
The leader of the coup-prone west African nation of Guinea-Bissau, Malam Bacai Sanha, died at the age of 64 Monday in a Paris hospital after a long illness, his office said.The leader of the coup-prone west African nation of Guinea-Bissau, Malam Bacai Sanha, died at the age of 64 Monday in a Paris hospital after a long illness, his office said.

Sanha died at the Val de Grace hospital, where he was admitted in late November. A French official said he had "been in a coma for a while."

"The presidency informs Guinea-Bissau and the international community, with pain and dismay, of the death of his excellency Malam Bacai Sanha this morning at the Val de Grace in Paris where he was undergoing treatment," Sanha's office said in a statement.

The government decreed a seven-day national mourning period during which flags will be flown at half-mast and all concerts and festivities forbidden, read a separate statement.

Plans were being made to have Sanha's remains repatriated and buried.

Raimundo Pereira, the head of the National Assembly, from Sanha's African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), will continue to perform the role of interim head of state.

According to the country's constitution, new elections must be held within 90 days.

Sanha was elected in 2009 after his predecessor Joao Bernardo Vieira was assassinated, landing him at the head of the west African state with a history of coups, army mutinies and political murders.

However just six months after his election he was hospitalised in Dakar and then in Paris, saying he was a diabetic and had suffered a "drop in haemoglobin".

Thereafter he spent regular stints in Dakar and Parisian hospitals however the extent and nature of his illness was never divulged.

On December 26, while the president was gravely ill, a group of renegade soldiers attacked army headquarters in Bissau in the latest mutiny, which the regime said was an attempted coup.

Controversial navy chief Rear-Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto was swiftly detained as the alleged mastermind along with several other soldiers and political officials.

Some observers put the mutiny down to a falling out between army chief Antonio Indjai and Bubo Na Tchuto, who once fled the country after being implicated in a 2008 coup bid and has been dubbed a drug kingpin by the United States.

Na Tchuto was reinstated to widespread consternation in 2010 shortly after Indjai ousted his predecessor in a mutiny in which he held hostage Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior.

Power plays, score-settling and coups are nothing new in this former Portuguese colony which has remained highly unstable and steeped in poverty since independence in 1974.

Sanha had pledged to reform the defence and security sector, notably by downsizing an army of 12,000 men for a population of 1.5 million people.

The policy sparked concern in the powerful military which is often hard to distinguish from the state.

Sanha also vowed to crack down on crime, drug trafficking and corruption.

Analysts say the state, ruling party and army are all tangled up and in constant competition, with many high-ranking officials believed involved in international drugs trafficking.

Guinea-Bissau, with its porous coasts and an archipelago of islands where airstrips can be set up, has allowed Latin American drug lords to act with impunity, and political instability is good for the drug trade.

According to the UN drugs agency, some 27 percent of the cocaine consumed annually in Europe passes through West Africa and Guinea-Bissau is the worst culprit.

The country has made recent gains, setting up an anti-drug agency in February as a bid to combat trafficking, however institutions remain extremely weak and much-needed army reform the country's greatest challenge.