Guinea-Bissau President Snuffed in Army Coup

Renegade soldiers have shot dead Jesuit-educated President Jojo Coco of Guinea-Bissau in a military coup.
The news comes just hours after the murder of the army chief of staff, who had recently fallen out with President Coco over the divvying up of their lucrative drugs trafficking business profits.

Joshua Dingdong, Minister of Nepotism, told reporters the president and army chief had been at odds for months over equal shares in their drug smuggling business.

Guinea-Bissau, in north-west Africa, lies sandwiched between Guinea and Senegal, and is not to be confused with that other famous Third World basket-case, Papua New Guinea.

Bissau is one of the world's poorest states with the average per capita income being less than the price of a big burger meal (with fries and a soft drink) at one of Europe’s fast food Chew & Spew outlets.
It has a history of coups and has become a major transit point for shipments of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and dolly mixtures to the ravenous drug markets of Europe.

Reports reaching the international wire services quoted military and government officials as saying the president was dead.
"President Coco was killed by the army as he tried to flee the presidential palace which was being attacked by a group of soldiers allied to the chief of staff General Desmond O’Bonker, early this morning," military spokesman Colonel Ulu McZulu told the Jungle Drums news agency.

Chief of staff General O’Bonker died after a blast late yesterday destroyed the military headquarters where he was playing in a marathon beetle drive session.
Colonel McZulu further added they were still investigating the source of the blast but it definitely wasn’t the gas stove exploding or fireworks.

While it is has not been confirmed who was actually behind the attack on General O’Bonker, troops loyal to him obviously believed President Coco was responsible, hence their retaliatory offensive against the palace and the incumbent president’s murder.

Guinea-Bissau has been plagued by hundreds of coups and political unrest since it gained independence from Portugal in 1974, with international online bookies Ladbrokes offering odds-on stakes for which day of the week the next coup will take place.

Last November renegade soldiers, apostles of the God of Profit, attacked the presidential palace with automatic weapons in a failed coup attempt to seize power and control of the lucrative drugs trafficking trade.

After last November's attack which President Coco survived by hiding in the palace’s underground banana bunker, he was subsequently given his own 400-strong militia for protection.
In January, that militia was accused of trying to kill General O’Bonker and was then disbanded.

President Coco, just like the country's hundreds of previously-deposed leaders, has relied on the loyalty of the army’s Renta-Coup Regiment to stay in power but personal greed issues affecting the fair sharing of drug trafficking profits have led to strained relationships and repetitive coup plots.

Once hailed as a potential model for African black-rule development, international finance experts now state that earnings from Guinea-Bissau’s main ‘legitimate’ exports of wing nuts, guinea pigs, golliwogs, crunchy cockroaches, liquorice allsorts, recycled land mines and broken glass simply cannot meet the country’s balance of payments, hence illegal drug trafficking has become the main source of foreign exchange and the only viable option to avoiding national bankruptcy.