Parti Démocratique de Guinée — PDG
Complete social change was the avowed aim of Sekou Toure's government, and even before independence the party became the chosen instrument for remodeling Guinean society. Marxism was regarded as the only doctrine that promised — with some adaptations to African conditions — economic and social development.
Since 1957, when Guineans effectively began to govern themselves, the national leaders directed a many-sided assault on the traditional social system, aiming at a complete metamorphosis of human relations. New laws were passed regulating marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The party took over some of the functions of land distribution that had formerly been performed by lineage elders. Generally an attempt was made to lift the individual out of a world in which family and kin group define his place in society into one in which education, skills, and national citizenship take precedence.
The major tool in this task has been the Democratic Party of Guinea (Parti Démocratique de Guinée—PDG), particularly the party committee. Two years after independence some 26,000 local committees, varying in size from a few to several hundred people, were in operation. Hamlets that had been isolated since they were founded were suddenly thrust into the mainstream of national life. In 1964 the number of committees was drastically reduced because of changing party membership policies, but it was estimated that in that year one person in eleven, including children, held an elective office either in the government or in the party apparatus.
Many functions that had formerly been the preserve of lineage or family elders were taken over by the party. The work was directed by a chosen administrative official, not the descendant of a prestigious lineage. Directives were issued in Conakry and were transmitted to local party leaders who discussed them during weekly meetings and supervised their enforcement.
The attempts at total transformation of the social system reflected only the wishes of a small minority and that participation in and enthusiasm for party activities has waned as the desired economic gains have failed to be realized. The exodus from Guinea of a large part of the intelligentsia as well as other. segments of the population seemed to bear this out.
The party also was entrusted with implementing a program called human investment, which was popular during the first years of independence. In towns and villages citizens voluntarily and enthusiastically built schools, dispensaries, roads, and party headquarters and undertook cleanup campaigns and other projects with tangible results. They felt less keen about the cultivation of so-called collective fields. For the implementation of his programs, President Touré depended heavily on the young and on women. To both of these groups he assigned roles not held by them in the traditional social system, and both were represented as separate entities within the organizational structure of the party.
The men and women who represented the central organs of the party and the government since independence constituted a political and social elite whose authority reached down to the smallest village and whose prestige and status were recognized by everyone. As leaders of the PDG they made national policies and, as heads of the various ministries, agencies, trade unions, youth wings, and women's groups, they carried them out.
Although the party-state had been unstinting in its efforts to develop a national consciousness throughout Guinea and to unite under the leadership of one political party, since independence there have been indications that all traces of opposition have not been completely eliminated. In the early 1960s, for example, it was known that certain ethnic, regional, occupational, or other groups held grievances — real or imaginary — against the government or animosities toward each other.
As the 1960s progressed, an apparently increasing number of Guineans bore strong animosities toward the government and resented many of its policies. Particularly disliked were some of the economic practices and the concentration of political leadership in a single party. At times there have been indications of ethnic rivalries within the governing party, particularly between the aggressive Malinke, conspicuous in the party and the government, and the Peul, proud of their origin and military history. Personal rivalries also played a considerable role.
From the beginning of national sovereignty Guinean political leaders regarded resistance to government policies as entirely without justification. The party-state, with its pervasive organization, sought to indoctrinate the people to believe that any attempt to overthrow the existing order can come only from agents of “imperialistic” powers. During the early period after independence the majority of Guineans, therefore, seemed to be convinced that the PDG was their only safeguard against forces that sought to subject the country once more to colonial rule.
The government regarded all individuals or groups opposing or criticizing its policies as actual or potential subversive elements, and subversion was ruled a crime deserving of harsh and summary punishment. Accordingly party elements — including the militia and other security forces — were charged with keeping in close contact with the people in their areas of jurisdiction. They sought to prevent the development of situations from which opposition to party policies and projects might arise. The party sought to avoid the formation of social classes or conflicts of interest between groups and tried — with some success— to eliminate any special loyalties associated with ethnic origins, regional groupings, or religious beliefs. In implementing these policies, the government has made special appeals to the workers, to the villagers, to women, and to young people.
By the late 1960s the PDG was able to exercise total domination over all public structures — social, economic, and religious as well as political — around which any opposition to its rule could conceivably be gathered. It was by such methods, as well as through frequent and often violent purges of the secondary levels of leadership within and without the party, that President Touré and his associates were able to dominate the country effectively.
That major opposition to this domination existed could be judged from several factors, including the departure from the country since the early 1960s of hundreds of thousands of Guineans, the periodic arrests and trials of actual or alleged plotters, several assassination attempts, and a major invasion by external opposition forces in 1970. This apposition was fueled primarily by disenchantment with the governing party's economic policies, which had ruined the country's domestic economy, as well as by hatred engendered by the PDG's political actions. Among the intellectual minority, hostility sprang from differing political attitudes—some more conservative than the governing party proclaimed, others more radical than PDG practices implied.
One legacy of the PDG, a single party and party-state, was to mask its failure by designating the foreigner as sole and sole responsibility for his misfortunes. In Guinea this period represented as much the dream as the nightmare, and the political commitment was meaningful. On 26 March 1984, Sekou Touré died suddenly in the United States. Soon, a group of soldiers took advantage of the disagreement of their relatives to take the power and constitute, on 3 April, a Military Committee of National Recovery (CMRN), directed by Colonel Lansana Conté. The Democratic Party of Guinea and the state-party institutions are dissolved, many political prisoners are released, confiscated property is returned to their owners, and the pecuniary tax imposed on the peasants is abolished. Democracy is not established, however, and political parties are forbidden. At the fall of the regime, as soon as Sékou Touré died, a new era of hope and freedom was born. But very quickly it was thwarted by another form of confiscation of power.
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