A group of soldiers from Guinea-Bissau carried out a coup on Wednesday and claimed to have taken control of the country “until further orders,” according to a statement read at the Armed Forces General Staff headquarters by General Denis Nkanha, head of the military house at the Palace of the Republic. The officers, who call themselves the Supreme Military Command to restore order, announced the suspension of the ongoing electoral process and the cancellation of the publication of the results of the elections that were held last Sunday and which were expected to be held on Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse. In addition, they closed the borders and appealed to residents to remain calm.
The President of Guinea-Bissau, Amr Sissoko Embalo, announced hours ago that he was the victim of a coup attempt carried out by a sector of the army. Embalo himself confirmed it to the magazine JeuneAfrique After he was arrested in his office by a group of soldiers at noon, as were the Commander of the Armed Forces, General Biage Na Ntan, his deputy, General Mamadou Toure, as well as the Minister of the Interior, Buchi Kande, who were also under arrest. At the same time, gunshots were heard around the presidential palace and the headquarters of the Electoral Commission in Bissau, the country’s capital, where votes were being counted for last Sunday’s presidential election, in which Embalo himself was a candidate.
Embalo referred to the army commander as the person most responsible for this coup, as he stated that he was not subjected to any kind of violence, according to what was reported by the British newspaper “Daily Mail”. JeuneAfrique. In the hours before this military coup, Embalo’s supporters declared that their candidate had won 65% of the vote, while opposition candidate Fernando Dias claimed that he had won 51% of the vote. Both announcements caused increased post-election tension and fear of some kind of violence in a country known for its instability and military interference in political life through coups.
The elections took place in relative calm last Sunday with few irregularities, according to the monitoring mission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to which Guinea Bissau belongs. Twelve candidates, including the aforementioned Embalo and Dias, have come forward after the main opposition leader, Domingos Simús Pereira, supreme leader of the historic Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, was excluded from the presidential race for the Supreme Court. This party requested a vote for Dias, which increased its expectations of victory.
Embalo, currently missing and in the hands of the military, came to power in 2020 after another controversial election in which he faced off against Pereira. The Electoral Commission declared Embalo the winner, but his rival filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which demanded that electoral records be sent to him. The electoral commission’s refusal to send evidence of the recount plunged the country into a two-month siege until Embalo decided to declare himself president with the support of the military and against the standards of the country’s highest judiciary. The international community ended up supporting Embalo, who suspended parliament three years later after his party lost legislative elections.
Since its independence from the Portuguese in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has suffered a civil war and five successful coups, in addition to numerous coup attempts. Its population is about two million people, and it was under the supervision of international police forces because it was an important transit point for drugs coming from Latin America on their way to Europe. In 2013, the United States arrested Admiral José Américo Popo na Tchoto, who for years was head of the Guinean-Bissau navy, on drug smuggling charges.