Demonstration on October 24, 2019, Conakry (Wikipedia Commons).

Following Guinea’s widely contested (and largely boycotted) constitutional referendum on September 21, 2025, Professor Mohamed Saliou Camara argues that the military junta has exploited the electoral process to establish authoritarian rule at the expense of social democracy.

In this exclusive interview for CounterPunch, Camara, Professor of History, Philosophy, and Journalism and Chair of the Department of African Studies at Howard University in Washington, DC, shares his analysis of Guinea’s political crisis. As an authority on Guinean political and social history, Dr. Camara is the author of several works such as, His Master’s Voice: Mass Communication and Single‑Party Politics in Guinea under Sékou Touré, Political History of Guinea since World War Two, and Health and Human Security in the Mano River Union. In his work, he also analyzes the country’s democratic transitions and derailments by the military junta under Colonel Mamady Doumbouya. Doumbouya promised a return to civilian rule but never delivered.

In this discussion, Camara delves into the junta’s suspension of oppositional political parties, independent electoral institutions, and the revision of the transition charter which basically amounts to allowing military figures to manipulate current and future elections. He summarizes the importance of civil society movements (youth-led) and heroic people like activists and journalists Foniké Mengué and Habib Marouane Camara. Their enforced disappearances in violation of international law symbolize the cost of resistance in today’s Guinean political climate.

Daniel Falcone: How do you explain the suspension of Guinea’s main opposition parties so close to the constitutional referendum and how does it compromise Guinean legitimacy?

Mohamed Saliou Camara: The only logical way the CNRD’s unilateral suspension of Guinea’s main opposition parties so close to the constitutional referendum can be explained is by considering it within the broader political climate of intimidation, cooptation, and exclusionary governance that the Doumbouya government has instituted with one thing in mind:........

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