By Alberto Dabo
BISSAU (Reuters) - Guinea-Bissau's election on Sunday to replace its slain president will be a test for West Africa's ability to stop the retreat of democracy as well as for a state destabilised by drug smugglers and army rivalries.
The fact the vote is happening at all is something of an achievement within four months of President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira being shot dead and after the killing of a top contender and another senior politician during the campaign.
The winner faces the challenge of reforming fractured armed forces and pulling the state back from failure, weakened by the influence of Latin American drug traffickers who use the swampy country of 1.5 million as a staging point to Europe.
"The election at least shows they have adhered to the constitution," said Kissy Agyeman-Togobo of IHS Global Insight. "What will really be the test is what comes thereafter."
Guinea-Bissau's broader significance stems not only from the risk of instability spreading to areas such as the adjacent Casamance region of Senegal, scene of an on-off insurgency.
After coups in Mauritania and Guinea, and with a festering political crisis in Niger, a smooth election in Guinea-Bissau would be a boost for West African countries keen to show they have broken from a past of putsches, war and chaos.
"There is some concern at slippage," said Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at think-tank Chatham House.
"The positive story that I see is the role of the Economic Community of West African States and the ECOWAS commission, which has been active in a number of these situations.
The trade bloc pledged support for Guinea-Bissau this week and urged respect for constitutions across the region, where improvements in governance and stability helped increase foreign investment flows before the global financial crisis.
Political analysts believe there may be no outright winner among the 11 candidates in the ballot of around 600,000 voters on Sunday, meaning a second round would be held.
CHAOS
The backgrounds of the three frontrunners point to Guinea-Bissau's troubles.
Malam Bacai Sanha of the PAIGC, the biggest party in the former Portuguese colony's parliament, was interim president from 1999-2000 after a coup and brief civil war.
Koumba Yala, a fiery former philosophy professor who wears a trademark red bobble hat and has the backing of the biggest tribe, the Balante, defeated Sanha in the 2000 election but was then overthrown in 2003.
Henrique Pereira Rosa is standing as an independent with a promise to do more for the poor.
He served as interim president until the 2005 election won by Vieira, who was shot dead by soldiers in March in apparent revenge for the killing of the army chief.
"It is not a national army in the true sense ... it is a hotchpotch of several militias," Aristide Gomes, a former head of government, told Reuters
"You can win power in polls but to exercise power in the long term you need allies at the heart of one of these militias," said Gomes, who fled Bissau after Vieira was killed.
The power of the military factions is closely tied to the influence of Colombian cocaine cartels, who are taking advantage of the political instability as well as the unpoliced islands and creeks to channel drugs to Europe.
Cocaine has brought evident new wealth for some in a country whose most important formal exports are fish and cashew nuts, eaten as bar snacks or used in Asian cooking.
Western countries have intensified efforts to stop the use of Guinea-Bissau as a drug staging post.
Angola is also an ever more important player in a country with which it has strong ties because of Guinea-Bissau's role in defeating Portugal's dictatorship in the 1970s and paving the way for independence for all its African colonies.
But it is unclear whether foreign support will be sufficient to help the new president take on the armed interest groups and break the cycle of coups and assassinations.
"Old officers have risen up in the ranks through patronage and drug money," said Agyeman-Togobo. "There needs to be a complete overhaul of the structure."
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