Guinea Bissau Is Having Political Instability

‘The Absurd Is Becoming Normal’ in Guinea-Bissau as It – Finally – Holds Elections Guinea-Bissau Decades ago, the African Party of the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) led a 12-year liberation struggle against Portugal, which culminated in independence for Guinea-Bissau in 1974. Fifty-one years later, that party, Guinea-Bissau’s largest, has been essentially banned from running in the presidential and legislative elections on Nov. 23 for reasons critics call a “concocted” technicality. “…The absurd (is) becoming normal in our country,” said opposition leader Domingos Simões Pereira, PAIGC presidential candidate, of the ruling by the Supreme Court on Sept. 23 to block his candidacy: Judges said his application submitted on Sept. 19 was too late to meet the deadline of Sept. 25. But those types of political and legal absurdities are not unusual in this West African country, which has struggled with coups and authoritarian leaders for half a century, analysts say. “To survive (in the country), one must be in power,” wrote Vincent Foucher of France’s Sciences Po in the French-language edition of the Conversation. “This creates a cycle: a coalition of malcontents and opponents forms, and it manages to seize power through legal means via elections, the formation of a new majority coalition in the legislature, or through illegal means. Then the distribution of benefits provokes discontent within the coalition, which gradually fractures, inspiring the formation of a new coalition and attempts to seize power…” This current “cycle” started in 2020 after President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, a former army general, swore himself in as the president at a hotel in the capital of Bissau. Since then, he has overseen an “armed coup” against the Supreme Court judges, dissolved the elected parliament, and dismissed the opposition-led cabinet, replacing it with one of his own choosing. Pereira’s PAIGC won legislative elections in 2023 but says the president stopped them from forming a government. Meanwhile, voters in Bissau-Guinea were initially scheduled to choose a new president in November 2024. But Embaló postponed the vote, rescheduling it to November 2025, saying the country was not ready to hold elections. Critics, however, say his term expired at the end of February. In early February, the country’s top court extended his term to September 2025. Still, Embaló had pledged in 2024 to step down after his term expired. But then he backtracked earlier this year and said he would actually run again: “I will be a candidate in my own succession,” he said in March. While he has outlasted his initial five-year mandate, Embaló legally can run for a second term. As a result, analysts say, he’s doing everything he can to stop his leading rival from winning the presidency and the opposition from getting a majority in parliament. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies says the election chaos is just part of a long pattern of instability in Guinea-Bissau. The country has experienced four coups, more than a dozen attempted coups, and had 23 years of military-led government since 1974. Embaló says he has survived two alleged attempted coups since he took office in 2020. After an alleged attempt to overthrow him in 2023, he dissolved the opposition-controlled parliament, saying it was doing nothing to improve security. Critics say the coup attempts were not real but a ploy by the president to consolidate power and remain in office. Still, at the end of October, multiple senior military officers were arrested for plotting yet another alleged coup. Meanwhile, the political jockeying, the repression of dissent and the media, and the lack of focus on development leaves the average citizen struggling: 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, the country is looking to tap its mineral wealth, having made overtures to Russia this year for help in developing a bauxite mining operation. However, it will likely also remain a central cog in the international cocaine trafficking system – the country is dubbed “Africa’s first narco state” – an enterprise mainly run by the political elite. Regardless, analysts say the elections come as the country is at a crossroads, grappling with power struggles between the president and the legislature, the president and the opposition, and the president and a vigorous, albeit repressed, civil society – all watched over by a military that feels entitled to interfere. “Guinea-Bissau faces two possible paths: It could transition into a liberal democracy if presidential and legislative elections restore functioning institutions,” wrote Democracy in Africa. “Alternatively, it could slip into dictatorship marked by unchecked presidential power, repression of opposition, and lawlessness, including armed groups and drug trafficking. In a region already struggling with Islamist insurgencies and instability, Guinea-Bissau’s trajectory matters.”