Guinea-Bissau - 2023 Elections
Guinea-Bissau is a multiparty republic. Presidential elections held in November 2019 resulted in two finalists: Umaro Sissoco Embalo and Domingos Simoes Pereira. Sissoco assumed the presidency in February 2020, following elections that the international community judged largely free and fair. Sissoco’s inauguration caused controversy because it occurred before the Supreme Court had ruled on a legal protest filed by the opposition. On May 16, Sissoco dissolved the government and announced that national legislative elections would be held on December 18. Ruling and opposition party leaders later agreed to delay the elections, tentatively scheduled for June 2023.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including violence against journalists; serious government corruption; lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence; and trafficking in persons.
Radio stations have suffered attacks, houses of political commentators have been vandalized, activists have been brutally beaten, bloggers have reportedly been kidnapped and tortured. Those who dare to criticize the regime — including the opposition — fear that their own homes may be the next target.
Prison conditions were poor. Except in the prisons in Bafata and Mansoa, electricity, potable water, and space were inadequate. Pretrial detention facilities generally lacked secure cells, running water, adequate heating, ventilation, lighting, and sanitation. Detainees’ diets were meager, and medical care was virtually nonexistent.
On 01 February 2022, armed assailants attacked the central government administrative center and took President Sissoco and some members of his cabinet hostage for several hours. Eleven persons were killed during the attack, and while some alleged perpetrators were reportedly incarcerated and awaiting trial, the attackers’ motive remained unknown.
President Umaro Sissoco Embalo of Guinea-Bissau said on 01 February 2022 that "many" members of the security forces had been killed in a "failed attack against democracy." Appearing in a video posted on the presidency's Facebook page hours after gunfire was heard near a compound where he was chairing a Cabinet meeting, Embalo said some of the people involved had been arrested but he did not know how many. "The attackers could have spoken to me before these bloody events that have seriously injured many and claimed lives," he said, without clearly indicating who was behind the unrest. But Embalo said the failed coup was linked to decisions he had taken "notably to fight drug trafficking and corruption".
Embalo, who launched an investigation into what he described as a well-funded and tightly planned assassination attempt, said former navy chief Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto and his aides Tchamy Yala and Papis Djeme were behind the coup bid and were among those arrested. The three men named by the president were arrested in April 2013 on board a boat off the coast of West Africa by undercover operatives from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), for their involvement in a high-profile US drug sting and conspiring to ship cocaine into the US.
Guinea-Bissau's current dilemma began with a power struggle between the president and the parliament at the beginning of 2022. President Embalo wanted deputies to approve his proposal for a constitutional revision, which would make the head of state also head of government — as is the case in the majority of constitutions of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). However, parliament rejected the constitutional amendments proposed by the president, which is how yet another institutional crisis began in the country. The presidency publicly favored a presidential system, while parliament, at that time, advocated for a semi-presidential system. This dispute will certainly continue in the next legislature.
The opposition in Guinea-Bissau condemned President Embalo's move to dissolve the National Assembly, saying it won't accept the decision. The Union for Change, one of the six parties with parliamentary seats, said it does not recognize Embalo's decision on 16 May 2022 to send lawmaker's home and to call for snap parliamentary elections in December. "Neither authorities nor the people accept the acts of this president as legitimate," said the Union for Change's permanent secretary Armindo Handem. "He is not a president vested with authority by the People's National Assembly," Handem told reporters in the capital Bissau. The West African nation of about two million people has been in a political deadlock for months because of divisions between parliament and the presidency.
President Embalo, 49, had served as president since February 27, 2020. His presidency was the first to come to power peacefully through the ballot since Guinea-Bissau's independence from Portugal in 1974. Embalo said his decision to dissolve parliament and hold elections two years early was prompted by alleged corruption among some parliamentarians. "The National People's Assembly has defended and protected, under the guise of parliamentary immunity, deputies heavily indicted for crimes of corruption, harmful administration and embezzlement," Embalo said. Fode Caramba Sanha, the head of the National Civil Society Movement called on officials to do "everything possible to ensure that the elections take place" on December 18, 2022 and allow eligible voters to register. The next elections were originally scheduled for December 2024. But holding the elections two years early meant the Election Commission had its work cut out for it.
The vote was supposed to be held in March 2023 already at the latest, following the dissolution of Parliament by President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on May 16, 2022. But that did not happen. For a year, Embalo has been appointing members of the government to manage the affairs of the country — without parliamentary oversight and without personally being held accountable for anything along the way. More than 890,000 voters are called upon to elect a new parliament in Guinea-Bissau 04 June 2023. The elections are taking place in a deeply divided country where basic democratic rights are facing enormous pressure.
Julio Mendonca, the secretary-general of the National Union of Guinean Workers (UNTG), the largest trade union in the country, says that such important issues have been sidelined in the current campaign, as the government appears to resort to increasingly draconian methods to control the people. "It is clear that the campaign... is run by millionaires connected to the state. People or party representatives who didn't even have a bicycle before are now driving brand-new luxury cars. It is an insult to the people," Mendonca said to DW.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
