Guinea-Bissau: The President Takes A Rocky Road

Friends and Enemies: Guinea-Bissau President Takes the Rocky Road Guinea-Bissau The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) aims to promote economic integration and cooperation among a dozen countries, mainly along the continent’s Atlantic coast. The president of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, therefore garnered global headlines when he allegedly threatened a team of ECOWAS election officials who were trying to help him resolve a political dispute related to his decision to run for reelection. The ECOWAS team “prepared a draft agreement on a roadmap for elections in 2025 and had started presenting it to the stakeholders for their consent,” wrote the BBC. But they “departed Bissau in the early morning of 1st March, following threats by Embaló to expel it.” Voters in Bissau-Guinean were scheduled to choose a new president in November last year. Embaló postponed the vote, however, and rescheduled it to Nov. 30 this year. Opposition leader Domingos Simões Pereira, meanwhile, says the president’s term should have expired in late February. To further complicate the situation, the country’s top court has extended his term to September 2025, Deutsche Welle wrote. Pereira’s African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde won parliamentary elections in 2023, but contend that the president has stopped them from forming a government. Meanwhile, Embaló had also pledged to step down after his term expired. But then he backtracked earlier this month and said he would actually run again: “I will be a candidate in my own succession,” he said in March. A former Portuguese colony, the country has experienced numerous coups since gaining independence in 1974. Embaló, a 52-year-old former army general, has survived two attempted coups since he took office in 2020. After an attempted overthrow in 2023, he dissolved the opposition-controlled parliament, saying it was doing nothing to improve security. While he has outlasted his initial five-year mandate, Embaló technically can run for a second term, the Associated Press added. However, the opposition has pledged nationwide strikes to bring him down. “The current political climate is fraught with uncertainty, as the opposition’s actions and the government’s decisions could lead to significant instability in the region,” wrote Africa News. With its monoculture agrarian economy – it’s one of the world’s leading producers of cashew nuts, accounting for much of its exports and providing a livelihood to about 80 percent of the population – the country is one of Africa’s poorest, heavily dependent on foreign assistance. As a result, it’s looking to develop its mineral wealth. Recently, Embaló visited Russia, Azerbaijan, and Hungary, Xinhua noted. During Embaló’s visit to Moscow, Russian state television showed how Russian metals tycoon Oleg Deripaska attended the Bissau-Guinean president’s meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to Reuters, a Russian aluminum company wants to construct a railway and port for bauxite mining operations in Guinea-Bissau. The military will expect a share of the spoils, analysts say. But the country will continue on its potholed path. “More of the same looks likely – a power vacuum, entrenched drug trafficking, lack of economic viability – this will keep Guinea-Bissau stuck in a vicious cycle, preventing progress,” wrote GIS, a think tank. “Political volatility in Guinea-Bissau has deeper roots than electoral calendar machinations – it has an institutional and constitutional nature and is driven by the unresolved tensions regarding the powers of the president, the national assembly, and the judiciary – all playing out amid attempts to ‘presidentialize’ the regime,” it added. “However, the opposition to dictatorial tendencies will likely continue in the country, as will the sense of entitlement among the military elite.”