Melly: CAR needs more time to stabilize

Central African Republic's interim Prime Minister Andre Nzapayeke, and his Cabinet stepped down on Tuesday as part of a peace agreement reached last month with Christian and Muslim rebel factions, interim President Catherine Samba-Panza said. Following talks with both factions, Samba-Panza said she would make the transitional government more inclusive. DW spoke to Paul Melly associate fellow for Africa programme at Chatham house in London

DW: Who is likely to succeed Andre Nzapayeke and from which community is he likely to come from?

The name which is circulating at the moment as the most likely successor is Karim Mekaswa. Now, he is interesting because he is a Muslim and the Muslims are the minority in the CAR. They are also the community many of whom have fled the country following the defeat of the Seleka rebels or the expulsion of the rebels from large parts of Bangui and the South. So If Mekaswa becomes the prime minister that will be seen as a gesture of confidence building towards Muslim Central Africans. But at the same time he is not from the world of the rebel movements. He is very much part of the political and administrative main stream. He was a senior official under a reformist southern prime minister quiet a few years ago and he got Engineering training in Paris. He is not only a technocrat but also someone who has been involved in politics and government for a long time.

Was this the right time to resign for the government bearing in mind that the violence is still continuing?

There probably is no good moment for the government to resign but there wasn't really much point in them staying on. Because after the interim President Catherine Samba-Panza took over early this year, she was chosen very much as a consensual figure and it was hoped that she would reach out to all segments of the community. She appointed Nzapayeke as Prime Minister but he was then very rapidly marginalized as she built up a sort of inner circle of advisers and that created quiet a lot of suspicion. It meant that some people didn't trust her as president and at the same time it made the official ministers or official government team look rather powerless. So in a sense the Brazzaville agreement of a few days ago is seen as an attempt to reset the clock on the transition. And although the agreement is really very fragile with many of the armed groups not yet signed up to it, in political terms at least it's an attempt to restart the transition process on a genuinely neutral basis.

How do you rate the performance of the outgoing interim government, what have they achieved?

Very little but that's probably not their fault after all the northeastern half of the CAR remains under SELEKA dominance and in part under the control of the Lord's Resistance Army rebels from Uganda because the international forces (French and African international peacekeepers) haven't yet managed to extend their control into that part of the country. Meanwhile large parts of the west are also effectively dominated by anti-Balaka Christian armed groups. The government's writ only runs really in parts of Bangui. So it's very hard to say that the government didn't do much because there wasn't much that they could do. The Central African state has been run down over a very long time and some people close to the administration believe that possibly two or three years may be needed to rebuild a properly functioning state and it's only really at that stage that one can measure how good the government is in any sort of conventional sense, the first stage is just to get enough stability that a wide range of factions will agree to participate in the government.

What can you tell us about the strength of the international peacekeeping forces in the CAR and the impact that they are having?

In the areas where they in control or where they are dominant, they are having quiet a big impact and they've been prepared to demonstrate serious force but of course they can't control the whole country because the CAR is a very large territory and the total number of peacekeepers is still far short of ten thousand. We are, I think talking about two thousand French troops and perhaps five or six thousand African troops and then a few hundred European troops. But little by little they are beginning to send out a message that armed groups that challenge the peacekeeping efforts which after all are internationally endorsed and mandated, will effectively get punishment for doing so. Some elements of SELEKA sought to challenge French forces the other day (4.08.2014), in the center north of the country, and the French responded not just by advancing with armored vehicles but they called in air strikes and sent a very strong message that they are the people who are mandate to establish some sort of rule of law and act in the name of the state and the African Union here and the armed groups don't have that legitimacy.

Interviewer: Mark Caldwell