After intense shootings around the Guinea-Bissau government palace raised the alert for an attempted coup d’état this Tuesday (1st), President Umaro Sissoco Embaló said, in a phone call to the AFP news agency, that the country’s situation is under control.
In a statement later, the president said that the episode was more than an attempted coup. “It was an attempt to assassinate the president, the prime minister and the entire cabinet. [O ataque] It was well prepared and organized and could be linked to people involved in drug trafficking.” Embaló, however, did not elaborate on this hypothesis.
The president detailed that security forces prevented the “attack against democracy” and that many died, without specifying how many. According to him, the victims would all be agents and there were no fatalities among the ministers. He also said that arrests began to be made.
Embaló, who had strong support from the military in a previous crisis, also suggested that the army was not involved in the onslaught. “I can assure you that no camps joined this coup attempt. It was isolated. It is linked to people we fought against.”
Earlier, on an unverified profile on Twitter with the name of the representative, a publication was made along the same lines. “I’m fine, Alhamdoulillah [graças a Deus]. The situation is under government control.”
There were those who questioned the veracity of the publication, since Roch Kaboré had also disclosed that the situation in Burkina Faso, which had undergone a coup, was under control, for hours later the seizure of power was confirmed.
On Facebook, a post on the president’s official profile said that “calm has returned to Bissau”, with undated photos of Embaló – also known as Bolsonaro of Africa – sitting in a chair, talking like uniformed soldiers.
Before Embaló spoke, both the African Union and the regional bloc Cédéao (Economic Community of West African States) condemned the onslaught, classified as an attempted coup d’état. Cédéao, considering the military responsible for the physical integrity of the president and members of the government, asked them to return to their barracks and maintain a “republican posture”.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also urged an immediate end to the conflicts and “full respect for the country’s democratic institutions”.
The afternoon of this Tuesday was of confusion in the capital Bissau. The government headquarters, where an extraordinary cabinet meeting was allegedly taking place with Embaló and Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam, was surrounded by armed men. However, the cause of the shooting is still unknown. On the outskirts of the palace and in the rest of the capital, not far from the airport, the military kept civilians at bay.
An AFP journalist reported that an armed man, pointing his rifle, told him to leave. Many residents abandoned their homes, leaving markets empty, and banks also closed their doors.
The warning of a possible coup had already been given in August of last year, by the commander of the Armed Forces, General Biague Na Ntam, while Embaló was in Brazil. At the time, he said that several of its members were preparing an insurgency. On 14 October, Ntam claimed that some officers tried to bribe the troops “to subvert the constitutional order”.
USP geology researcher Orlando Silva, a Guinean who has lived in Brazil for 38 years, points out that Embaló “is not exactly a democrat”, but condemned “any movement of a military uprising to resolve political issues”.
He recalls that the current president ran over the highest instance of the country’s Judiciary by not waiting for the decision on the questioning of the presidential election – the court later ratified his election. According to Silva, there are still unconstitutional acts, such as the signing of a joint oil exploration agreement with Senegal, which, according to the Charter, should be submitted to Parliament.
“As a citizen, I think there are reasons to depose Embaló in a political, legal way”, he says. The contract with Senegal was even annulled by Parliament, triggering the discussion on the possibility of a process to remove the representative. “Our politicians are not playing their role, because they had to have a more present position in demanding from the president the excesses and violations of the Constitution that he has done.”
Silva reports that there are reports of kidnappings and beatings of political opponents, but he emphasizes that the country has a long history of coups and that it is necessary to respect the Constitution to prevent situations like this from happening again.
Wednesday’s episode comes on the heels of a string of coups d’état in Africa, with four concluded last year — in Chad, Mali, Guinea and Sudan — and one this year in Burkina Faso.
“It’s increasingly difficult to argue against the idea of a scam contagion,” Eric Humphrey-Smith, a risk analyst at consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, told Reuters. “When added to the successful coups carried out in the last year, there is no doubt that West African leaders are nervously suspicious.”
In Guinea-Bissau alone, a former Portuguese colony of about 2 million inhabitants, there have been nine military coups or attempts since independence in 1974 — the most recent of which was in 2012. Added to this history is the endemic corruption in the country. , considered an important hub for cocaine trafficking between Latin America and Europe.
The Guinean Armed Forces play a prominent role at a sociopolitical level —Embaló, for example, is a former general in the Army. He has been in power since the beginning of 2020, but the result of the election that made him head of state is considered to be contested by the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), a dominant political movement since independence.
Source: Folha
