Guinea-Bissau's Fake Coup?

Fake Coup? For Guinea-Bissau’s Voters, Only Time Will Tell Guinea-Bissau On Nov. 26, a coup rocked Guinea-Bissau. It was the latest in a string of nine attempted or successful military takeovers in the small West African nation of two million people. Yet some observers are skeptical about why the event took place in the former Portuguese colony, or if it was even a coup at all. “It is still too early to know the true intentions of Guinea-Bissau’s putschists,” wrote the Economist. As the BBC reported, army officers arrested President Umaro Sissoco Embaló. Afterward, they gave an address on state television announcing how they were now in control. But they also suggested that they plotted to take over because “unnamed politicians” who had ”the support of a well-known drug baron” were attempting to “destabilize” the country. Guinea-Bissau has become a hub for cocaine trafficking in the past 20 years. As the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime explained, the country arguably is Africa’s first narco-state. The military junta leader, Gen. Horta Inta-A, has vowed to crack down on the drugs and the corruption that the drug trade fosters, according to Bloomberg Television. Meanwhile, opposition leaders immediately questioned whether Embaló was behind the so-called coup, the New York Times wrote. They speculated that the president might have put the general in power in order to freeze electoral politics, leaving the current government in place, where Embaló might run things from behind the scenes. Nigeria’s former president said he believes the ousting of Guinea-Bissau’s president was staged. Goodluck Jonathan, who led a team of election observers from the West African Elders Forum to Guinea-Bissau, said the incident “was not a coup,” and noted how it was Embaló who first announced his own overthrow, an unusual move. Embaló had called France 24 and said: “I have been deposed.” Plenty of developments support this view. The coup took place a day before the results of the Nov. 23 presidential vote were expected to be announced. Guinea-Bissauan election officials said the junta took the ballots, confiscated computers, and destroyed other materials related to the elections, rendering the ballot moot, reported Al Jazeera. Inta-A vowed to transition to a new government in a year. In the meantime, he appointed a new cabinet of politicians and officials linked to Embaló. Also, among the military junta’s first acts was arresting Domingos Simões Pereira, an opposition leader who had been barred from running for office. Pereira is now closely allied with Fernando Dias, the opposition presidential candidate who threatened to unseat Embaló in the Nov. 23 election. Dias has since sought asylum in the Nigerian embassy in the capital of Bissau, added Africa News. Embaló is now in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, noted Reuters. It wasn’t clear what his plans are or whether he might be invited back. Regardless, analyst Ryan Cummings of Signal Risk consultancy in South Africa told Al Jazeera that Embaló’s past moves support claims of a sham coup that could see him reinstated by the military government. But, he added, it is also “highly plausible” that the military acted alone to avoid a deadlock in a country where about 70 percent of the 2.2 million population is poor. “There have been growing concerns that longstanding disputes between Embaló and (the opposition) had forced Guinea-Bissau into a political deadlock which has been detrimental to the socioeconomic trajectory of the country,” he said. Reaction among voters, however, has been mixed, with some praising the army and hoping for an orderly transition and others criticizing coup leaders. “I am not against the military regime as long as they improve the living conditions in the country,” Suncar Gassama told the BBC, while another voter, Mohamed Sylla, said he was unhappy about the situation: “This doesn’t help anyone because it puts the country into chaos.”