Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo escaped a coup attempt on Tuesday that left several people dead and injured, he said, the latest in a series of coups across Africa from West.
Mr. Embalo, a former general who arrived in 2020 at the head of this small country with a political history marked by such events, appeared on Tuesday evening before the press unscathed and serene, after apparently getting stuck with members of the State in the palace of the government, theater for several hours of exchanges of gunfire during the afternoon. The chief and the official members were surprised inside the palace, the seat of the ministries where an extraordinary council of ministers was held, by armed men whose motives are still poorly known, according to the testimonies.
Mr. Embalo did not specifically name the perpetrators of this coup attempt. This “must come from those who are against the decisions I have taken, particularly in the fight against drug trafficking and corruption”, he said, speaking of “a very well prepared and organized act”. He found himself “under heavy gunfire for five hours on the clock, he said. The assailants could have spoken to me before these bloody events which caused several serious injuries and deaths”.
After several hours of confusion and rumours, the president was bailed out in unclear circumstances. “Everything is fine,” he said in a brief telephone conversation with AFP, while he was, it seems, still at the government palace. Then, his services announced his return to the presidential palace and he himself wrote on Twitter: “I’m fine, Al Hamdulillah [Dieu merci]. The situation is under government control. Heavy gunfire rang out for much of the afternoon. The surroundings of the palace were plagued by movements of inhabitants fleeing the premises.
A 36-year-old French woman living in Guinea-Bissau, reached by telephone, said she went to fetch her two children in a hurry from a school near the government palace after being unexpectedly informed that all the schools were closing. Her husband, who works in a bank, was also instructed to return home. “It was the big panic,” said Kadeejah Diop, 36.
The palace found itself surrounded by heavily armed men. A wide security cordon has been put in place around the complex, keeping journalists and onlookers at a distance.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) condemned “this attempted coup”. The chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, expressed his “great concern”. Both organizations appeared to point to the military as responsible, holding them to watch over the security of the president and the government.
The part taken by the army, which plays a preeminent role in this country with a troubled history, gave rise to all the conjectures.
Guinea-Bissau, a small country of about two million inhabitants bordering Senegal and Guinea, is a subscriber to coups. Since its independence from Portugal in 1974, it has experienced four putsches (the last in 2012), a host of coup attempts and a waltz of governments.
Since 2014, it has been committed to a return to constitutional order, which has not saved it from turbulence, but without violence.
The country suffers from endemic corruption. It is also considered a hub for cocaine trafficking between Latin America and Europe.
Since the beginning of 2020, former general Umaro Sissoco Embalo has been the head of state, following a presidential election whose result is still disputed by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) , the dominant formation since independence.
Mr. Embalo, 49, had forced his destiny in February 2020 by putting on the president’s sash and settling in the presidential palace, despite the persistence of the dispute.
For months, he has been at loggerheads with the Prime Minister, Nuno Gomes Nabiam, and the threat of the latter’s dismissal and the dissolution of Parliament has weighed on political life ever since.
Tuesday’s events inevitably evoke the series of putsches that have shaken West Africa since 2020: in Mali in August of that year and again in May 2021, in Guinea in September 2021 and in Burkina Faso in January of This year.
Mr. Embalo is again called upon to take part this week in a summit of West African leaders where the situation in these countries is to be discussed.
Before the outcome, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he did not know the details of the case. But, he added, “we are witnessing a terrible multiplication of coups d’etat”.