Guinea-Bissau: opposition leaders refuse offer to join government

Domingos Simões Pereira and Fernando Dias were liberated last Friday after having been respectively detained and blocked in the Nigerian embassy for the past months. Now, the military authorities offered their movements seats in the government, but both opposition leaders refused.

They would not "dirty their names": Guinea-Bissau's two main opposition leaders Domingos Simões Pereira and Fernando Dias have refused an offer from the military authorities, in charge of the country since a military coup last November, to join the ranks of the government.

This follows Pereira's release from prison on Friday, where he had been detained for two months. Dias was allowed to leave the Nigerian embassy, where he had found refuge from persecution by the military authorities.

The offer to join the government could be seen as a way to seek peace with the two opposition leaders.

But both remain wary of the soldiers, and perhaps with good reason: although Pereira was released from detention, he remains under house arrest, despite never having been through a legal procedure warranting this measure.

And according to Dias, the offer to join the government did not come directly from the military authorities, but from an official release by ECOWAS, which has put pressure on Guinea-Bissau's new leaders to loosen their grip on the opposition and respect the country's constitution.

The proposal to join the government has also been criticised for its merely symbolic weight: the opposition leaders' movements would have received three jobs in the government and ten seats in the National Transitional Council - not enough to have real political weight, according to the opponents.