By Tamba Jean-Mathew III
The Citizen Correspondent
Dakar.  Senegal’s former president Abdou Diouf and head of the Francophone is in Guinea to help broker a national dialogue among the politicians and civil society groups there.

Mr Diouf, who arrived in Conakry on Wednesday upon the invitation of President Alpha Condé, was due to leave yesterday after several efforts to bridge the rift between the government and the civil society backed opposition.

Since the election of President Condé in a highly controversial election in December 2010, his government has failed to organize legislative elections and was forced by the opposition to postpone it twice.

The opposition suspects the president of planning to rig the polls and argue that the dates and arrangements made for the holding of the polls were unilaterally decided by President Condé’s ruling party, the Rassemblement des Peuples Guinééns or RPG.

The rift has led to several violent confrontations, arrests and detention of opposition figures that culminating in a failed assassination attempt against President Condé in his private residence in the suburbs of Conakry last July.Among other things, the opposition is accusing President Condé of failing to complete the transition process from military to civilian rule which has left many senior military officers in the civil administrative positions like regional governors.

Speaking in Conakry on Thursday, Mr Diouf expressed optimism that the national dialogue would "now resume and contine in all sincerity".He assured the Guinean political stakeholders that the Francophone  (the French version of the Commonwealth) to engage the different stakeholders in the country to push forward reconciliation.

He urged the political and civil society leaders to be tolerant and re-embrace the reconciliation process “in good faith”.Former President Diouf underscored the need for reforms in the electoral and judiciary institutions.

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