Guinea-Bissau, beset by coups, votes in contentious presidential election

President Umaro Sissoco Embalo wants a 2nd word and is challenged by a comparatively chartless campaigner who is backed by a erstwhile premier minister.

Voting stations are unfastened successful Guinea-Bissau, wherever the authorities has been afflicted by repeated coup attempts and wherever President Umaro Sissoco Embalo is seeking a uncommon 2nd word successful bureau amid fierce backlash from the opposition.

Hundreds of thousands are expected to ballot connected Sunday arsenic the West African state faces a challenging predetermination successful a portion wherever civilian medication has been undermined by military rulers who person taken powerfulness by force implicit the past respective years.

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The victor needs much than 50 percent of the votes, oregon determination volition beryllium a run-off election. Nearly fractional of the country’s 2.2 cardinal residents are registered to vote.

There are 12 candidates, but the main contention is believed to beryllium betwixt the president and Fernando Dias da Costa, a little-known 47-year-old who is backed by erstwhile Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira.

Pereira, the runner-up successful the 2019 statesmanlike election, leads the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, but the person and the apical absorption enactment person been banned from taking portion successful Sunday’s election.

Embalo, 53, is simply a erstwhile service wide who has served arsenic president since February 2020. He was besides the premier curate betwixt November 2016 and January 2018.

Guinea-Bissau’s statesmanlike campaigner and president, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, centre, speaks to the media aft casting his ballot astatine a voting centre successful Gabu [Patrick Meinhardt/AFP]

The barred absorption maintains that Embalo’s word should person ended earlier this year, and the Supreme Court antecedently ruled that it should tally until aboriginal September. The predetermination was delayed until November.

Embalo dissolved the parliament, which was dominated by absorption figures successful legislative elections held successful 2019 and 2023, and has not allowed it to convene since December 2023.

He has promised to make the tiny country’s infrastructure and modernise its main airport, among different things.

But Guinea-Bissau remains 1 of the world’s impoverished countries, with fractional its colonisation considered poor, according to the World Bank.

The state has experienced galore coups and attempted coups since its independency from Portugal much than 50 years ago.

There person been astatine slightest 2 attempts since Embalo took power. The latest was astatine the extremity of October, erstwhile the country’s service announced that a radical of subject officers had been arrested for allegedly readying a coup.