Guinea-Bissau's new president Jose Mario Vaz on Monday vowed to fight
poverty and bring stability to the impoverished west African nation as
he was sworn into office. The 57-year-old is Guinea-Bissau's
first elected leader since the army mutinied in 2012, plunging into
chaos a state already in the grip of powerful cocaine cartels and beset
by political violence.
Standing before a crowd of 15 000 and
leaders from across west Africa in the capital Bissau, Vaz pledged to
work with other political groups to bring stability to the fragile
nation of 1.6 million. "The chronic instability in which our
country finds itself is not the cause of our problems," Vaz told the
crowds, blaming instead "the extreme poverty ... which we will all
fight". Vaz, from the dominant African Party for the Independence
of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), won an overwhelming 62 percent
of the vote against independent rival Nuno Gomes Nabiam in a May
election.
The vote was seen as a key test in a country where no elected president has ever finished his term in office. "This
day brings the return to the normal constitutional order and we hope
that Guinea-Bissau and its people will be supported by the entire
international community," Senegal's President Macky Sall told AFP. The
former Portuguese colony is the only west African nation to have
achieved independence through military force and, since 1974, the army
and state have been in constant, often deadly, competition.
Source: AFP
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