Guinea-Bissau: Who Is Toppling Whom, How and Why? Reporter DW (Deutsche Welle) November 27, 2025 | 11:55 pm TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – The atmosphere across Guinea-Bissau was tense but calm on the morning of November 26. Three days after the presidential election, the West African nation of 2.5 million people was waiting for the official announcement of the winner by the National Electoral Commission, as most of the votes had already been counted.At that time, both domestic and international election observers agreed: incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embalo appeared to have been voted out of office, with non-partisan opposition candidate Fernando Dias seemingly poised to declare victory. But at 12:40 pm local time, the sounds of machine-gun fire and panicked screams rang out from the presidential palace — as well as from the building that houses the National Electoral Commission. Panic spread instantly, as the blare of gunfire continued for half an hour.Regime change — by forceAt first, rumors circulated that soldiers had arrested Embalo amid allegations that he wasn’t going to hand over victory to his opponent.But two hours later, a statement aired on state broadcaster TGB brought some clarity to both locals and the international community:Dinis N’Tchama, a spokesperson for the Supreme Military Command, announced that soldiers had taken control of the country “to restore national security and public order.”The military leadership claimed to have foiled a plot involving several senior politicians as well as drug traffickers, who according to media reports have been operating in the impoverished African nation with impunity for years.Furthermore, the freshly self-appointed junta announced that the electoral process had officially been suspended — and it confirmed reports of the arrest of outgoing President Embalo.Embalo’s wife claims president is in distressDW has since been trying to reach the presidential palace as well the office of the president directly, but none of the calls were answered, leaving observers in the dark about the actual goings-on.Finally, DW succeeded in reaching the president’s wife, Suzy Barbosa — a former foreign minister who had spent the last days of the campaign at her husband’s side traveling across the country.Barbosa took the call at 2 p.m. — from Lisbon, Portugal. “My husband, the president, and probably also Interior Minister Botche Cande have been arrested by the military and taken to their main base in Bissau. It’s terrible. What is happening in Bissau right now is a military coup,” Barbosa said in the exclusive DW interview, expressing deep concern about the events unfolding in her country.A staged coup in Guinea-Bissau?However, Armando Lona, coordinator of the multi-party civil society organization Frente Popular, holds a completely different view on Wednesday’s events. In a DW exclusive, he insisted that what had happened was not a genuine coup d’etat but rather a spectacle masterminded by President Sissoco Embalo himself:”Sissoco is behind this so-called coup. It’s a disinformation campaign mainly aimed at foreign audiences, intended to provide a pretext to invalidate last Sunday’s elections,” he explained.He added that this was due to the unambiguous election result: According to his sources, opposition candidate Fernando Dias had won in almost every district. The coup, in his view, is a thinly veiled attempt for those in power to prevent Dias from being officially declared president.Opposition tries to mobilize peopleDias meanwhile is reported to have gone into hiding, according to a message posted on social media, in which he urged the people to take to the streets and demand the publication of the election results, stressing that he was the legitimate president-elect of Guinea-Bissau.”The defeated president staged this so-called coup because he lost the election and now wants to prevent the National Electoral Commission from officially certifying the results,” he said, stressing that the entire event was a farce, referring to Embalo — himself a military general — as the mastermind of the coup.Meanwhile, the most prominent opposition figure in the country, Domingos Simoes Pereira of the former liberation movement PAIGC, was reportedly detained in the wake of the coup — presumably for his vociferous support of Dias.Where in the world is Embalo?Embalo himself has not been seen for days; rumors have been circulating that immediately after the election he had flown to Paris on his private jet. There is no official confirmation about the claim that he was detained by soldiers as part of the coup. However, what is certain is that he technically is no longer the president, regardless of the election result: The military junta has already appointed a new “transitional president” — General Horta N’Ta.One year of interim military government expectedN’Ta had previously served as chief of the general staff to President Embalo’s personal guard; it is unclear how tightly aligned the two were in the past, but the opposition believes that the appointment of N’Ta as the country’s leader signals the fact that the coup leaders in fact are close allies of outgoing President Embalo.”The coup leaders are mainly targeting the opposition. They have not only arrested our party leader, Domingos Simoes Pereira, but also many others from our party who supported Fernando Dias during the campaign,” PAIGC Member of Parliament (MP) Dionisio Pereira told DW.Even more worryingly, Pereira adds that opposition voices have lost contact with many of their fellow party members since the coup. Whether they are hiding for their own safety or have already been arrested remains unclear.N’Ta meanwhile released an official communique on what the military junta plans to be the way forward: According to the document, the junta plans to remain in office as an interim government for one year, during which it says it hopes to prepare for the return to constitutional order and to “normalcy” in the country.But following this seizure of power by force in a country that has a history of both successful and failed military coups, “normalcy” may remain an idea that is elusive for many in Guinea-Bissau.Editor’s Choice: Brazil: Bolsonaro Sentenced to 27 Years for Attempted CoupClick here to get the latest news updates from Tempo on Google News
Source: en.tempo.co
