Fresno State alum fights for his political life in Guinea-Bissau

In one of the world’s smallest and poorest countries, thousands of miles from the Central Valley, a Fresno State alum is fighting for his political life.

Guinea-Bissau is a little-known sliver of West Africa where most people survive on less than $2 a day. For Domingos Simões Pereira, a 1994 Fresno State graduate, it is home. And it’s in serious trouble.

Last year, Pereira was named prime minister of Guinea-Bissau, becoming the first Fresno State alum to serve as the head-of-government of any country in the world.

The mild-mannered 51-year-old pushed for intense reforms in his country, which for decades has struggled with rampant corruption, severe poverty and political instability. He cracked down on bribes and backroom deals in government agencies, put a stop to rampant illegal logging, and made sure international aid money went to the right places instead of lining the pockets of entrenched bureaucrats.

But the country’s president, Jose Mario Vaz, a prominent businessman, wasn’t happy with Pereira. The two men didn’t get along and disagreed about whom to place in key government posts. Last month, Vaz fired Pereira and dissolved the government, casting the country into political chaos.

It was yet another chapter in Guinea-Bissau’s tumultuous history. The country has suffered more coups than any other state in the region, and not a single president has completed a five-year term in the last 20 years.

Earlier this year, before he was fired, Pereira said he knew he was risking his career – if not his life – as prime minister.

“This job is not easy,” he said while riding in the back seat of his chauffeured SUV through the tattered streets of Guinea-Bissau’s capital city. “The danger is real.”

Pereira had a point.

Here in Guinea-Bissau, the Wild West of west Africa, politicians often don’t last long. In 2009, a bomb planted in a stairwell killed the country’s military chief. In retaliation, soldiers killed the president and hacked his body to pieces with a machete. The two men were rumored to be in a turf war over the cocaine trafficking business in Guinea-Bissau, an easy source of cash for the powerful.

In 2012, the prime minister at the time, Carlos Gomes Junior, was dragged from his home and held hostage by the army when he tried to run for president. The top brass didn’t like his talk of reforming the military. They left a giant blast-hole in the front gate of Junior’s downtown villa as a warning: We get to decide who will be in charge, not the people.

So far, the military has stayed out of the political brawl between Pereira and Vaz. But Guinea-Bissau is an unpredictable place.

Fresno State connections

Fresno State has produced famous pro athletes, best-selling authors and space explorers. But few in the Valley know about Pereira, who graduated in 1994 with a master’s degree in civil engineering. While the university boasts many alumni who have had successful political careers, Pereira is the first among the more than 800 international students who study at Fresno State each year to serve as prime minister of a country.

Pereira’s path to Fresno was a combination of luck and perseverance. He was born in Guinea-Bissau in a small town near the Senegalese border. His father, like more than 80 percent of workers in the country today, was a farmer. His mother cared for the family.

The same year Pereira was born, Guinea-Bissau rebelled against its Portuguese colonial rulers, sparking a bloody 11-year struggle for independence that ended in 1974. Many of the rebel leaders went on to hold high-ranking positions in the military – and still do today. In recent years, they have used their status as past liberators to justify their meddling in the government, saying they still know what is best for the country.

After graduating at the top of his high school class, Pereira studied civil engineering in the former Soviet Union, which at that time held Cold War-era ties with Guinea-Bissau. In 1991, Pereira and four other Bissau-Guineans received scholarships through a U.S. government-funded program to study at Fresno State. It was Pereira’s first time in the Western world.

“Fresno State was, in many aspects, an eye-opener,” Pereira said in a video he produced last year for West African Vocational Schools, a Fresno nonprofit that provides job-skills training for young people in Guinea-Bissau (and which I work for as executive director). “Very simple things were big lessons for me.”

During his first two years in Fresno, Pereira struggled to make sense of American culture, which promotes individualism over the communal values of west African cultures. Eventually, though, he grew to appreciate the differences.

“I really discovered what a free society means,” Pereira said. “Americans value freedom and opportunities for everyone.”

During his civil engineering classes, Pereira would daydream about how he could use what he was learning to build roads and restore electricity to his hometown in Guinea-Bissau.

“I remember taking a class on city planning and annoying everyone with my plans on how to transform my city back home,” Pereira said.

His roommate and fellow Bissau-Guinean, Alfredo da Silva, said everyone who knew Pereira at Fresno State realized his potential.

“He saw things that could be improved back home,” said da Silva, who still lives in Fresno. “I knew that he would be something.”

Guinea-Bissau politics

In 1994, after graduating from Fresno State, Pereira returned to Guinea-Bissau, where he joined the Ministry of Public Works and later worked for the World Bank. In 2008, he became director of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, an international association based in Lisbon known by the Portuguese acronym CPLP.

By then, Pereira was heavily involved in Guinea-Bissau politics. After finishing his term with the CPLP, he returned to Guinea-Bissau in 2013 and was elected president of the ruling political party. At elections in April 2014, his party won a majority of seats in parliament and Pereira became prime minister.

Western diplomats were cautiously optimistic about Guinea-Bissau’s future with Pereira in charge. With a master’s degree from an American university, years of experience working for international organizations and no corruption scandals marring his reputation, Pereira could have chosen to work almost anywhere in the world. Instead, he stuck with his country.

“Pereira has a different image than a lot of the other politicians in Guinea-Bissau,” said Vincent Foucher, senior west Africa analyst for the International Crisis Group. “Part of his appeal to voters is that he has a clean slate.”

During his short time as prime minister, Pereira’s government paved roads, installed solar street lights in villages and attracted desperately needed business investors. Pereira also insisted on structural reforms: Fire the wrong people and hire the right people. Open up trade. Collect taxes. He knew the reforms would create tension, but he believed they were the only way to bring lasting change to his country.

Despite the progress, Vaz, the country’s president, fired Pereira on Aug. 12.

In response, there were scattered protests in the streets, politicians loyal to Pereira issued statements of outrage and foreign diplomats warned that the country might lose its aid money.

Still, Vaz charged ahead and picked a new prime minister, Baciro Dja, a politician who had been at odds with Pereira. But on Sept. 9, the Guinea-Bissau Supreme Court ruled that Vaz’s appointment was illegal and Dja resigned.

At that point, Pereira could have kept fighting to get his job back. Instead, he chose to compromise and brokered a deal with the president. On Sept. 17, with Pereira’s consent, Vaz appointed an 81-year-old veteran politician, Carlos Correira, as the new prime minister.

Despite the revolving door of prime ministers the last two months, diplomats say they are heartened to see that this most recent crisis in Guinea-Bissau was resolved peacefully. And Pereira’s decision to reach a compromise rather than dig in may set a new, healthy precedent for the country – while at the same time positioning him for a potential return to power in the future.

“He chose not to fight to the death to be prime minister again, which was clever,” Foucher said. “Politics in Guinea-Bissau is often seen as a competition to get the best positions, best houses and best cars. People there are very cynical of politics. Pereira’s attempt to take another position shows he is trying to stand for something else.”

When I talked with Pereira in May, three months before he was fired, he said he believed that once his people realize that his reforms were working, they wouldn’t allow the country’s power-brokers to undo them. But, he acknowledged, this would not be easy in a country where 60 percent of the population is illiterate and rumors are used to turn actual heroes into imagined villains – and vice versa.

Still, Pereira said, it seemed like his only option.

“I hope it works,” he said.

This story was originally published September 26, 2015 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Fresno State alum fights for his political life in Guinea-Bissau."