Guinea-Bissau junta names interim leader after coup

Guinea-Bissau’s military installed General Horta Nta Na Man as transitional president on Thursday, an army statement said.

According to a declaration on state television, the interim administration would provisionally govern for a period of one year.

This followed a day after senior officers said they had deposed the president, halted the general election process, and formed what they called the “High Military Command for the Restoration of Order.” 

The streets of the capital Bissau were comparatively calm on Thursday, with many people staying home after an overnight curfew was lifted. Businesses and banks were shut. 

The timing of Wednesday’s reports of sustained gunfire in the government district, and then the army’s announcement of a takeover soon after, was conspicuous. 

It came just a day before the first-round results of Sunday’s general election, including a vote to pick a new president, were due to be released. 

Although incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embalo told French media later in the day that he had been detained, and his wife said the same after requests to the president’s office went unanswered, the military did not explicitly commented on the president’s whereabouts or status, except to say it had deposed him. 

Top opposition candidate says president and army conspiring to thwart his victory

Embalo’s leading rival in the first-round vote, Fernando Dias, meanwhile claimed that the incumbent president — himself a former general — was working together with the military to nullify Sunday’s election. 

Dias, like Embalo, had already said that he believed he had won the first-round vote outright prior to the coup. 

The 47-year-old political newcomer said in a video that the coup was “fabricated” and a bid to keep him from power, comments that echoed those of some civil society groups.

In a statement to the Reuters news agency, the coalition backing Dias demanded that the election results be released as previously planned. It also called for the release of Domingo Simoes Pereira, defeated by Embalo in the last vote in 2019, who has also reportedly been detained. 

Army alleges drug traffickers’ plot to subvert election

The military, meanwhile, had alleged a plot to destabilize the country and manipulate the vote. It claimed that “drug traffickers” and foreign elements were involved, without offering specifics. 

The “scheme was set up by some national politicians with the participation of a well-known drug lord, and domestic and foreign nationals,” military spokesman Dinis N’Tchama said.

The impoverished West African coastal country of around 2.2 million people is a renowned hub for cocaine bound for Europe from Latin America. 

The country has been shaken by multiple coups and attempted since independence from former colonial power Portugal in 1974. The government announced the arrest of senior army officers accused of plotting a coup as recently as the end of October. 

African Union, ECOWAS bemoan coup

The African Union (AU) said in a statement on Thursday, attributed to its chairman, Djibouti’s former Foreign Minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, that “respecting the ongoing electoral process and upholding constitutional order” in Guinea-Bissau was imperative. 

It said Youssouf “calls for the immediate and unconditional release of President Embalo and all detained officials, and urges all parties to exercise the utmost restraint in order to prevent any further deterioration of the situation.”

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) similarly condemned the coup, and also sounded the alarm about the status of its election observers who had been present in a country where results are often contested. 

Goodluck Jonathan, the former president of Nigeria, was probably the most prominent member of the delegation. 

“I wouldn’t say that he [Goodluck Jonathan] and others are trapped in Guinea-Bissau, but we don’t know his whereabouts,” ECOWAS spokesperson Joel Ahofodji told Reuters on Thursday. 

A Liberian senator, Edwin Snowe, also told Reuters that he had left the country on Wednesday and had not been able to reach fellow observers who were there. 

The UN said that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was following developments in Guinea-Bissau “with concern.”